Banana Pants Crazy

 I would like to believe that if every American had to spend 15 minutes a day reading a random transcript of Trump's remarks, we have the 25th Amendment invoked before Christmas. Richardson talks about Trump's Affordability Tour stop in the Poconos. and she includes both excerpts from his remarks and one of his Truth Social screeds.

It is worth remembering that an ailing Joe Biden had a terrible debate performance and dropped out of the race, because it was manifestly clear that he could sustain running for office. Any given Trump performance is about that level of "bad" but we know he will serve out his term, barring the actuarial table asserting itself. There are signs that some Republicans are beginning to separate themselves from him, but most will not, in fact, cannot. The saga of Indiana's Republican state senators getting death threats because they are behaving like actual conservatives and not authoritarian drones is a good example of where this is headed.

As I've mentioned before, the primary virtue of democracy is its ability to self-correct. The elections that we have seen are an example of that, and I imagine the midterms will follow suit. However, the real immediate danger that Trump poses is that his authoritarian grip on the GOP does not allow his own party to self-correct. For every Rand Paul striking out on his own, there are a dozen more like Lindsay Graham warping himself into some craven creature sniveling and whimpering at Trump's feet like an abused dog.

Trump has always been a stupid person, but that is now amplified by his age related decline and the constant river of sycophancy that rushes through the Oval Office. He's crazy stupid and things are going to get worse before they get better.

The Vilest People

 The Times ran a story that they are uniquely able to cover: the Tates. Andrew and Tristan Tate are (accused) rapists and human traffickers and pretty much proud misogynists. The story lays out how various figures in the Trump orbit - including Barron Trump - have defended and helped these two awful human beings escape justice. 

I remember in my 20s not really understanding the world and why it wasn't my oyster. I remember being lonely and depressed because I was lonely (by lonely, I mean romantically; I had good friends). I'm glad that the sort of online shit wasn't around, though I doubt I would have fallen into it. The Tates and those like them are about taking that wounded grievance that young men very often feel and turning into a poisonous broth of violence, dehumanization and sexual depravity. 

The fact that the Trumpist Legions supported them is entirely unsurprising. The raft of pardons for terrible people are indicative of the low morality of those cretins. Still, it would be nice to return to a world where being an immoral shitbird was disqualifying from holding an office of public trust.

Accommodations

 Nowhere is Yglesias' manifest "confident ignorance" more apparent than when he writes about education. In the piece above, he does make some decent points, but he begins by misunderstanding the issue with accommodations. I have seen people who had a diagnosed learning issue who probably don't really have a substantial need for that accommodation, and I have seen students who absolutely need that accommodation to do credible work. The primary accommodations typically revolve around either time, testing environment or being able to use a computer to write an essay. Some students never really use a timed accommodation, whereas others simply can't function without it.

The issue is not that universities are destroying their standards, but that we have a class system where wealthier parents can afford to get their kids tested and accommodations installed. Yglesias does touch on this when he notes the consumer-mentality that schools have to engage in. We do, at times. We jettisoned our AP program, because it "looked bad" in comparison to other "elite" schools. Pedagogically, either having APs or not really isn't a massive difference in rigor, depending on how you replace the AP, but it was a marketing issue.

Similarly, with various accommodations, we are unlikely to deny a student's parents push for some form of accommodation. We have stopped giving 100% extra time, but the reality is that parents will argue - correctly - that we have an obligation to accommodate real learning issues. Are they overprescribed? Sure. Are they inherently bogus? Nope. Dyslexia has largely disappeared as a diagnosis, and been replaced by generic ADHD diagnoses, but dyslexia pretty much does exist. The accommodation of letting someone type their essay and utilize Grammarly allows them to accurately convey what they know that would be hard without being able to type. Woodrow Wilson was dyslexic and the typewriter saved his life. He obviously went on to a Phd, president of Princeton and then the United States. I'd say that accommodating his LD issue was worth it.

There are obvious issues with college education. Whining about accommodations is missing the point.

The Senate

 Winning the Senate is harder for Democrats than winning the House, despite Republican efforts to gerrymander House districts. The reason has to do with Democratic strength in urban and suburban areas not mattering in places like Nebraska. Dems can win Omaha, but not the state at large.

Yglesias catches on to the idea that this electoral environment puts the Senate in play for Democrats, despite it being an unfavorable map. The map is always unfavorable, frankly, but it's especially tough this year. Most of the races are in the South or the western bank of the Mississippi. 

The recent lessons from special elections is that people are not at all happy with Republican rule. Whether that translates into votes for a Senate candidate in Kansas or not is arguable, but I'd look at Tennessee 7th last week as offering two lessons.

The first, obviously, is compete everywhere. Recruit good candidates and put effort into every single race. This is especially true in the Senate, where terms last 6 years. Winning during a Blue Tsunami means that seat is yours for six years.

Secondly, make sure the candidate matches the district. Aftyn Behn was not really a great match for that district. Would a more moderate, safer candidate have won? Impossible to say, but it likely would have been closer.

Which brings me to Texas. The promise of flipping Texas has been out there for over a decade. The last time we came close was in 2018 during Trump's first midterm shellacking. Otherwise, it's like Florida: tantalizing but perpetually just out of reach. Still, we are seeing real cratering in support for Republicans among Hispanic groups. Yesterday, Democrats flipping the mayor's office in Miami for the first time in 30 years, because Cubans and other Hispanics are pissed.

Now, maybe that's good enough to flip Texas with any Democrat, but Jasmine Crockett seems like a candidate to rile up Democrats and alienate exactly the sort of middle of the road, low information, small-c conservative voters that you are going to need to win in Texas.

Yes, because she's a Black Woman. Sorry. It's not something you're supposed to say out loud, but Crockett's strength as a back-bench, mediagenic brawler makes for great news clips, but isn't going to flip the Houston and Dallas suburbs. What's more, most voters make decisions on pretty dumb metrics.

In her piece, Richardson talks about the Morris piece I wrote on yesterday. She goes further and looks at how Roger Ailes manipulated that irrational tendency of voters to respond to negative imagery. Democrats keep thinking that they can win with bold policy papers, when people really just react to things like how a candidate looks or talks. What makes Crockett so appealing to Democratic voters is how she taps into the outrageous racism, sexism, corruption and stupidity of the Trump Administration.

The problem is that the majority of voters in Texas are Republican voters - at least in the immediate past. Does she give them permission to swap allegiances? I just doubt it. 

I want to be clear, I'm not endorsing the racism and sexism that exist deep in the brains of American voters. I would note that Harris lost Biden voters who were Black, because it's buried THAT deep.

Leftists will argue that we need candidates like Crockett or Platner that excite the base. I think Trump has done all the partisan motivating we need. The 2026 election will be a persuasion election because we will be competing in R+10 districts and states.

I'd rather elect a White Guy Democrats who will vote for things that help minorities than nominate a candidate that represents those minority groups and loses.

No Wars But The Culture War

 Elliott Morris (behind a paywall) talks about a new academic paper that looks at how cable news broke out brains and made us - particularly on the Right - obsessive culture warriors. The interesting link is that we all know how social media algorithms prey on our outrage. Stories that anger you engage you more than stories that inform you. It is not at all surprising to me, because I grew of age in the era of Rush Limbaugh and the emergence of Fox News.

There were no algorithms back then feeding us outrage inducing clickbait. There were just radio and TV ratings that showed what played and what didn't. Limbaugh's culture war got listeners; NPR did not. 

Cable news, as such, really begins with Ted Turner's - at the time - fantastical idea that we somehow needed 24 hour access to the news. Before that, we waited for the 6 or 11 o'clock news and then waited again for the morning paper. ESPN was crazy, because you could find out if your team won without waiting for the morning sports page. 

Early CNN coverage was pretty dry. It felt a lot like the BBC World Service does today. The pivot was during the 1991 Gulf War, with Bernard Shaw and Wolf Blitzer describing the bombs falling on Baghdad from their hotel window. The sensational always sells better than information. Over time, dramatic stories were not only prioritized, but sought out. One staple of cable news is Missing White Girl, because it stokes a certain amount of interest and outrage in a population that devours true crime stories. 

Culture war issues are natural hot button topics. Arguments about trans girls in sports are engaging people in ways that are disproportionate to their actual impact on society. What I find interesting and disturbing is not just the prevalence of these stories, but the way they short circuit whatever reason and logic people possess. I've written before about how the Madisonian theory of government is dependent on people being rational about their interests - at least in theory. 

We have abandoned reason for outrage, and I'd like to blame it on Rupert Murdoch, but I fear it's simply how we are wired and how we are being catered to, not how we are being led astray. 

Killing The Atlantic Charter

 Donald Trump and his myrmidons are attacking the fundamental American foreign policy since 1941: the Atlantic Charter. The Charter was an expression of British and American goals for World War II, agreed upon even before the US had formally entered the war. It proposed liberal institutions like the UN and free trade impulses that would become Bretton Woods. It eschewed imperialism and right of conquest and supported freedom of the seas.

Trump wants to make America Hungary, and Hungary's politics is based on racial resentment of immigrants that underpins Orban's authoritarianism. The new national security document is basically a nakedly white supremacist document with all sorts of assertions of the Great Replacement Theory. The attacks on Europe are simply the echoes of Orban's own arguments, and we know Orban is a perverse figure of admiration on the American Right.

There is also, of course, the support for Putin and the criticism of Ukraine for...defending itself from invasion. Trump wants to retreat into a regional hegemony where we can murder Venezuelans with impunity while winking and nodding at Putin doing the same to Ukrainians, Netanyahu doing the same to Palestinians and Xi doing the same to Uyghurs. It is nakedly authoritarian, yes, but it's also deeply, deeply reactionary and opposed to the entire Pax Americana that has brought stability to the world.

Few Americans vote foreign policy. Trump's mishandling of the economy is going to weigh him down more than his killing Venezuelans or even kowtowing to Moscow. However, as Marshall notes, we can likely repair a lot of Trump's damage domestically, beginning in the midterm elections. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, and we have survived worse than Trump's corruption and malevolent incompetence. However, the destruction of the world created by the Atlantic Charter and the postwar liberal institutions might not be so easy to repair. Ideally, Europe learns to support itself without leaning on us, and then when (we hope) non-fascistic leadership returns to the White House, the Atlantic relationship will be one of equals.

It's also worth remembering Marshall's dictum that "all power is unitary." Trump's dismal approval ratings on the economy will - I think - get worse as the economy contracts. Small business are shedding employees, and that's a canary in the coal mine. As Trump fulminates against the Fake News of growing stagflation, his approval will fall further. He might even crack his previous floor. If so, that will actually make his pro-Putin, pro-Orban foreign policy less popular, especially among people who don't really follow the news much. (Hell, I teach International Relations and my students don't even follow the news.)

It's not too late. It almost never is. I'm sure it felt "too late" when Hitler invaded Poland and France and Britain could no longer avoid war. I'm sure it felt "too late" when Paris fell or Pearl Harbor burned. 

Still, this is...bad.

The Other Information Economy

 The superpower of Trumpism is the shameless lying. The weakness that they use is the press's inability to ask a meaningful follow-up question. For Trump, you'd have to have someone in your ear saying something like, "Mister President, you just said that 46% of Somalia-Americans are child rapists, when in fact there were only three Somali-Americans arrested for statutory rape over the past four years."

When it comes to the Clown Caucus, the big dodge is "I haven't seen/heard that" when asked about the latest Trump outrage. Mike Johnson apparently lives in a hermetically sealed chamber 23 hours a day, only venturing forth to say how hard he's been working and that he can't possibly be expected to know what the President of the United States and leader of his party has said or done.

If you have some bobble throated slapdick like Tom Cotton on your show, and you ask him about killing people without due process, and he says he knows nothing about that, then show him the clips of Hegseth bragging about it. 

The utility of bothsides never was good journalism, and I understand that it can inoculate you against some of the more vengeful actions from Trump's DOJ and Commerce department, but there's no reason to allow lies and evasions to keep happening.

"Affordability"

 A few months ago, the Democratic buzzword was "abundance," based on the book of the same name. Mamdani and other's victory this fall has shifted the lexicon to "affordability." Krugman has been doing a primer on Affordability as a concept, and he has another entry today (paywalled). He's noted that in general ways, wages have kept pace with prices, and so while people feel that price inflation was "done to them", wage inflation was something they earned. Still, wages and prices have generally jumped together. 

So why are people unhappy?

He mentions Adam Smith, and Smith's idea that prosperity if fundamentally cultural rather than absolute. The passage he quotes notes that in some places, it's OK for the poorer classes to be barefoot, but in other places, everyone who doesn't have shoes is considered desperately poor. In 21st century America, Krugman argues, homes are the equivalent of Smith's shoes. Even if the price of groceries has been matched by wage increases, it doesn't FEEL that way, and because everything is expensive, a home purchase feels like a fantasy.

His conclusion is most important, though. It's not just that people feel like housing is too expensive; it's who they blame for it. Generally, they blame the rich and powerful. In a Politico poll, Krugman relates the following:

(T)the poll asked respondents who found health care difficult to afford who they considered most responsible (they were allowed to choose more than one.) Some 48 percent named the Trump administration — clearly bad news for the G.O.P. But almost as many, 45 percent, named insurance companies — there’s a reason there’s so much sympathy for Luigi Mangione, who murdered the CEO of United Healthcare. Another 19 percent named “billionaires,” while 15 percent named “businesses.”

On high housing costs, 42 percent named the Trump administration, but 34 percent named landlords, 19 percent billionaires and 17 percent businesses.

That's bad news not only specifically for Trump, but more generally for Republicans, because Republicans are typically considered more friendly to the wealthy. The great political triumph of Trump was somehow convincing people who hate billionaires that he was their champion. His destruction of the East Wing, his current argument that affordability issues are a "hoax" and the coming surge in ACA costs...none of these are going to make him more popular, especially with certain segments of his voting base. As Elliott Morris notes, maybe a third of Trump voters are not committed, lifelong Republicans. They are perhaps younger, less politically informed and likely more fluid in their loyalty.

This CNN story looks at how we are in one of our eras of wild swings in who controls government. From 1930-1994, Democrats held the House for all but about 4 years. They held the Senate, too, for much of that period. That's no longer the case, as control of Congress swings wildly back and forth. There have been numerous - and wrong - predictions about "emerging, permanent majorities." 

However...if Trump continues to screw up as badly as he has screwed up so far...if we enter the Crypto/AI recession...if he continues to prioritize his ego over voters concerns...maybe this time, we will actually get a realigning election.

Today In White Supremacy

 The 2025 National Security Strategy document came out and...boy howdy. It's a fevered wet dream is racism and imperialism. It's one of the many instances during Trump 2.0, when it feels like a policy decision was made with the sole purpose of pissing people off. As Richardson notes, it's full of the sort of racial and ethnic panic that Stephen Miller has put at the center of American government. It abandons NATO in fundamental ways. It suggests that we will be doing some incredibly unsavory things in Latin America, that the Venezuela Boat Murders are only hinting at.

Not racist enough for you? The National Parks are - and amazingly this is true - no longer offering free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth. Instead, Trump's birthday will be a fee holiday in the park system. This really combines the two of the three themes of Trumpistan: Trump's narcissism and Trump's racism. (Trump's corruption is the third.) Let's denigrate Martin Fucking Luther King and elevate Trump. I guess MLK's Nobel Peace Prize isn't as good as Trump's FIFA Peace Prize.

It is difficult frankly to completely catalog how awful the petty stuff is. The Park stuff is just lame. The NSS document is way more concerning, and I wonder how much that stuff is coordinated. Do they pair idiotic nonsense like the Park stuff with the NSS in order to hide the manifest evil in the former?

Anyway, if Congress was alive right now, they might have been angry at this. The reality is that no one votes on the issue of defending NATO, but they do vote the economy. When the economy is bad, they tend to turn on the foreign policy stuff ex post. Power is unitary and so on.

Let's hope the stirring of Congress will arrest this abject surrender to Putin.

Not Actually Surprising

 The man arrested in the January 6th pipe bombing case is both an anarchist and a Trump supporter. He sounds a bit...deranged, but then again, he's a Trump supporter and an anarchist. 

The idea that someone who loves Trump might also have anarchistic impulses is a reminder that Trump himself is an arsonist to our institutions. For millions of Trump supporters, the destruction is the point.

More On That Oncoming Train

 Two more commentators have looked at Trump's cratering support. Krugman looks a bit more deeply at the coming crisis in ACA. For me personally (even though I made up my mind about Trump in the 1980s) I am now probably looking to postpone retirement until I can go on Medicare, and that sucks for me. And it's absolutely HIS and the GOP's fault. 

It also strikes me that a certain segment of Trump voter will be really slammed by this. That small town entrepreneur who generally supports Republicans because "business" is going to find it impossible to insure themselves. It will also slam people like me - the moderately well off who want to retire a few years before 65. That's a generally "conservative" demographic, though as Paul Campos notes, opposition to Trump should rightly be considered "conservative."

Elliott Morris looks at the numbers and see where Trump could easily lose another 3 points of popularity/job approval. Morris notes that Trump is being shored up by Republicans who don't think he's doing a good job on the economy. Think about that. They don't like his performance on the single most important issue that people vote on. In one sample, if you're a Republican who thinks he's done a bang up job on the economy, you give him a 94% approval rating. Delusional, but it still makes sense. If you don't think he's "achieved his goals on the economy", approval falls to 64%. If economic anger grows, that number goes down. What's more - though Morris doesn't address this - if Trump becomes more and more toxic, then people will simply stop identifying as Republicans. Or if they can't switch parties, they will simply drop out of the electorate.

The High Cost of Incompetency

 The only important attribute in Trumpistan is loyalty - absolute, blind loyalty - to Hair Furor. This means that you get an administration full of incompetent bozos like RFK, Jr.,  Pete Hague-seth, or Kash Patel. As Paul Krugman notes, the assumption that Trump will name simpering moron Kevin Hassett to head the Federal Reserve is pretty awful.

We are already seeing some impacts of this massive concentration of morons in things like new outbreaks of measles, the constant roiling scandals around military strikes in Yemen and the Caribbean and investigations compromised by the need to get "content" onto social media. If Hassett becomes Fed Chair, Dog only knows what impact that will have on the global economy. 

Back during the shutdown, my wife and I differed one whether Democrats should re-open the government, given how many people were getting hurt. I've come around the idea that it was probably best that the did end the shutdown, as they had probably wrung as much benefit as they could from the situation.

However, we are going to have to learn to live with a country where people get hurt, as long as Trump empowers the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet to run complicated public services. It's going to get worse. At best, we get the Habba/Hannigan legal fuck ups that actually make things better. Or maybe it's the impending collapse of Trump's stupid tariffs. 

Millions of people are about to lose their health insurance. Trump and Republicans did that. I wish it weren't happening, but it is. The fact that it is terrible has to be the point. Kludges and patches that push this beyond next November are politically counterproductive, even if they are the humane thing to do.

The American people keep voting for the reality TV star who's congenitally stupid and cruel and also slipping quickly into senescence. The lesson has to be driven home that there is a cost to this.

UPDATE: Martin Longman reminds us of another matrix of incompetence: The GOP war on Obamacare is about to start claiming victims. As people lose their health insurance - and even those of us who still have it may more for it - at precisely the same moment all other sorts of expenses increase (Affordability!) they are going to focus their anger on the GOP. 

That's why looking at the special elections which are around a +11 Democratic shift is premature. It's just as likely to get worse before next November.

Close, But No Cigar

 Yesterday, the special election in Tennessee's 7th District was intended as a bellwether for the coming midterms. Democrats ran an unapologetic progressive in an R+22 district and lost by 9 points. The usual circular firing squads were out on Twitter arguing about whether a candidate more suited to a deep red district might have won. I doubt it, and Republicans did come home when they nationalized the election in the last few weeks. It was unlikely that anything about Behn herself that alienated voters, aside from the D next to her name.

Still, the interesting pre-election hubbub was that a single digit GOP victory would set off alarm bells in the GOP caucus and might trigger a wave of retirements. That 9 point margin is juuuuuust at the edge of single digits. Maybe a Generic White Dude gets the margin to 5 points, and you get a bigger freakout, but this was never a realistic shot. It was a chance to see how competitive Democrats had become, and the answer is: pretty darned competitive.

Basically, elections have swing 11-17 points towards Democrats since Trump took office. At the link, Morris argues that a national ballot of D+6 gives the House to Democrats next year with about 235 votes. If it's a D+8 election, then they could very easily win the Maine, North Carolina and Ohio Senate seats and be competitive in Texas and Iowa. In the Senate, I do think candidate quality matters, and someone like Jasmine Crockett is a poor choice for Democrats in Texas, because she's a Black Woman and that's just not going to be appealing to swing voters. You don't have to like that to acknowledge that this is true.

What I would add is that the environment is pretty much locked in at D+8, maybe D+12. It's almost a full year until the midterm election and it's pretty unlikely that Trump will become more popular. If - as I suspect - we are teetering on the edge of a sort of stagflationary slump, then that number gets worse for Republicans. 

If it really becomes a D+10 election next fall the following Senate seats could be in play based on Partisan Voting Index: South Carolina, Alaska, Nebraska, Montana, Florida and Kansas. 

The key thing to keep an eye on is Republican retirements. Watch and see if the rats flee the sinking ship.

Hague-seth

 There is a growing feeling that maybe Pete Hegseth may have finally gone too far. He's on record as basically endorsing war crimes and trying to meme his way to immunity. He's a fucking idiot who stands out for his idiocy in an administration full of idiots. 

Not only is he facing Congressional anger - bipartisan Congressional anger - but he and the White House may have also blinked. Both Hegseth and sentient butthole Karoline Leavitt have started to shift the blame for the strikes on Admiral Mitch Bradley. If Bradley is as competent as most admirals and generals - and that is miles more competent than the average Trump official - then he has notes. Copious notes. 

The basic ethos of Trump 2.0 is A) commit crimes B) commit those crimes in the open C) know that the DOJ won't investigate D) if someone does, Trump has demonstrated that he will pardon you. For whatever reason, Hegseth is now worried about not getting a pardon or perhaps being sacrificed to the President's critics, similar to the way Donald Rumsfeld was sacrificed after the 2006 midterms. 

Trump is a mentally unfit old man who doesn't know what's going on beyond what he sees on Fox News. I doubt that he even knows who Juan Orlando Hernandez is, yet he signed the pardon thrust in front of him.  If Susie Wiles tells him to jettison Hegseth, he just might do it. There is the counterargument that Trump cannot show weakness, but he might need to placate his own party by getting rid of this blithering idiot at Defense.

My guess is that  it could depend on the results of the special election in Tennessee's 7th CD today. It's a solid, deep red district, but the Democrat is running surprisingly strongly. (I would wager the Republican ekes out a win.)If she wins...Hegseth's firing would be the step a normal administration. But a normal administration would have fired him after SignalGate. 

Converging Narrative

 I read Richardson, Krugman and Yglesias every morning. One reason is that they often offer very different viewpoints or stories. Yglesias, in particular, writes about some weird shit. 

Today, there was a rare instance of them all converging on one big narrative: the corruption of the Trump administration and its impact on international affairs.

For Yglesias, he wrote about the "bizarre march to war with Venezuela"  which is only bizarre if you ascribe normal policy making or political instincts to Trump. He describes it as "intra-coalitional management" of both Latin American and immigration hawks, but he also notes how corrupt Trump has been in dealing with all issues surrounding foreign policy.

Krugman takes this a step further by linking Trump's avid support for crypto to his criminality. What's more, the seemingly contradictory actions of killing Venezuelans and pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez and other drug figures. How can you justify war crimes against drug traffickers while simultaneously pardoning the kingpins? Because you are corrupt. The intra-coalitional service being done here is between the people like Rubio who want to depose Maduro because they hate Latin American socialism and the whacko libertarian techbros who want more drugs and love Hernandez.

Richardson adds a term that really ties the room together. She summarizes all of the above but then talks about the "Epstein Class" - a group of very wealthy men for whom the rules simply don't apply. 

That's...brilliant. The need for a "Democratic Populism" that doesn't abandon minorities or retreat to naive protectionism makes sense electorally, but it's been hard to come up with a frame that works for that. "The Epstein Class" works brilliantly to remind people of how much they hate those rich fuckers who skate through life without consequences. Especially as AI grows increasingly unpopular because of energy bills and the potential for job losses, saddling Republicans with defending the predatory billionaire class could be exactly what Democrats need to not only win next fall - I think that's close to a lead pipe cinch at this point - but win decisively.

Trump is the leading figure of the Epstein Class.

Department of War Crimes

 Since the first strikes on Venezuelan boats, there has been more than "concern" that these strikes are illegal. They seem pretty clearly to be outside international law. Recently, we have reporting that Pete Hegseth gave a "no quarters" order to kill the survivors of the initial strike. This is a black-and-white war crime. Simultaneously, we have Trump threatening to launch airstrikes on Venezuela without Congressional approval. 

The bloodthirsty drive to kill brown people is Trumpian enough, but the real cherry on top of the Sundae Bloody Sundae is that Trump is going to pardon a guy who was definitely in bed with cartels. The Times, being The Times, writes that this seems to be a contradiction in Trump's "strategy." 

The "strategy" in Venezuela is not about drugs. Venezuela is not a major source of drugs in this country. The pardon of Hernandez demonstrates that Trump doesn't give a fuck about drugs. Hell, his indifference to cocaine trafficking might be the first sign that he really loves Don, Jr. 

Venezuela has oil. Maduro is an admittedly bad guy, and it would be better if he were not in charge of that country. However, forcing him to leave under threat of imminent violence is pretty sketchy. Pressuring him to abdicate by killing Venezuelans on the high seas and then machine gunning the survivors is criminal. Still, if your desire is to return the ancien regime to Venezuela - the sort of corrupt oligarchs that used to keep the oil flowing while the people starved - then this isn't an illogical way to go about it. 

It's just illegal. 

And again, Trump being Trump, there is a very good chance that Venezuelan exiles and other forces are paying for Trump's services either upfront or with future deals once they are returned to power. The stupid part is that Trump might force Maduro from power and then a true democratic president might assume power and shut out those oligarchs, so Trump and Hegseth will have to put boots on the ground in order to get the outcome they are hoping for. The idea is simply to kill a few dozen people, threaten Maduro with military action, have him leave and then profit. I doubt it will be that linear. 

Will Congress rise from the floor and stop these criminal acts? There is quote that Richardson highlights is from a "senior Republican":

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all—appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

Of course, this quote is anonymous, because they are pissed but still scared. 

Hegseth is a criminal. (OK, alleged criminal.) Trump will undoubtedly pardon him. A future Democratic president will have to expedite him to face justice overseas where the corrupted pardon power holds no sway. Pete Hegseth needs to become Pete Hague-seth.

Stripping Out The Copper Wire

 Ever since he disappeared during Labor Day weekend and subsequently altered his schedule, Trump has looked and sounded weaker and older than ever. Not a bright man to begin with, his blurting out about his "successful" dementia tests and MRI results combined with him falling asleep during meetings suggest that Trump's juice is drained. He's a lame brained lame duck.

This informs the recent spurt of news about seemingly bizarre decisions coming from the White House. The "peace plan" that Steve Witkoff produced doesn't make sense, unless we accept to conditions. The first is that Trump loves Putin. Sure, that's part of it. But Putin also dangled lucrative bribes for Witkoff and Jared Kushner. This administration can be bought.

Don't believe me? We had the outright admission from Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth that he ordered the military to shoot survivors of the attacks on those Venezuelan boats. This blatant war crime was "justified" by saying they had to keep these dangerous drugs out of the US. With almost the same press release, we learn that Trump is going to pardon Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been convicted of...wait for it...working with drug cartels. This one only makes sense as a cash grab by someone.

Trump? Maybe, but I doubt it. The fact is that he has surrounded himself with fellow grifters and grafters, and he will sign anything a hot blonde puts in front of him. Since he can't be challenged by the media, any reporter who asks him about it, he attacks. It's a perfect grift. Take a bribe from the Crypto guy or a drug runner, put the paper in front of the senile old man and cash in, especially if you believe that his days are numbered. 

There are basically two factions working together in the Executive Branch right now. You have the outright fascists like Miller and Hegseth and then the blatantly corrupt like Witkoff and probably Noem and others we don't know the names of. The fascists seize their headlines, directing attention at their violation of our laws and Constitution, meanwhile, the grifters strip the copper wire out of the White House.

Interesting Parallel

 Krugman's ongoing Cassandra routine about crypto makes an interesting parallel. Stable coins are effectively the same as 19th century banknotes. Back before we had a Federal Reserve and FDIC, banks were effectively unregulated. What's more, currency was specie - which is to say: gold and silver coins. Because those coins were limited, they were valuable...but also limited. Paper money was issued by banks, based on their own reserves of specie.

The relentless crushing cycle of boom-bust during the Gilded Age was caused by the gold standard, but today, we are not longer wearing "golden fetters." Instead, we now have an unregulated currency in addition to a fiat currency. That, of course, doesn't make sense. The point of a fiat currency is its flexibility. You can boost inflation during a recession and spur a recovery, or restrict the money supply if inflation gets out of control. Having "digital bank notes" is completely pointless.

Krugman does point out a possible motive for this, which is that crypto can be a bit harder to trace, which of course has made it the dream currency of drug traffickers and money launderers. That also makes it a great vehicle for bribery. Allegations/revelations that Steve Witkoff is knee deep in Tether, a stable coin, combined with his clear stenography of Russian victory demands as a peace deal...man, I would not be shocked if he or Trump or both are making serious (stable)coin from all this.

Elite Impunity

 Rational people have spent year now trying to understand how a bozo who inherited a fortune and turned it into a smaller fortune could somehow become the avatar of working class and evangelical grievance politics. Clearly, in many ways it's a case of motivated reasoning. People told them their vote in 2016 was stupid and they've spent almost a decade now doubling down on that decision. 

But why did they make that initial decision?

I keep coming back to Trump's empty boast of "I alone can fix it." That seemed to resonate, especially with those who saw the system as hopelessly skewed against them. Trump was a rich insider who promised to prosecute their crusade of butthurt against "them". 

In the Trump Cinematic Universe, Trump's obvious corruption meant that he was a system insider who could take it all down for them. A decade later, it's becoming clear to them that he was never going to do that. 

Many of these grievances are not anything Democrats can leverage to their electoral advantage. The idea that elites get away with everything is one that you could attack. This whole idea is at the heart of the Epstein Files controversy. Is Larry Summers a "Democrat"? OK, whatever, he's also an asshole, so screw him. Was RFK a branch of the Kennedy clan? Yes, but the extent that benefitted from this - especially the latest soap opera with Olivia Nuzzi - is just another example of elites running interference for each other.

The idea that "There is a club and you ain't a member" is pretty powerful. I think we all have experience in our lives of people who were promoted above their talents because they were just part of the group that gets promoted above their talents. There are a lot of reasons for Democrats to embrace younger politicians, but "not being in the club" is a pretty obvious one. 

This, of course, meshes with the oligarchic takeover of our government and the rampant corruption of billionaires in and out of the Trump Administration. Anyone want to bet that Steve Witkoff personally will profit from selling Ukraine down the river?

Time to revive the idea of left wing populism without engaging in crank conspiracy theories. The fact are bad enough as it is.

More From AI Dysfunction

 First, we have Josh Marshall noting that AI is gobbling up computer memory. This goes along with the mass consumption of energy and fresh water that we already know about. This is something that contrasts - a bit - with other bubbles. The Dot Com bubble, the Real Estate bubble, the various railroad bubbles: none of them warped other sectors of the economy quite so profoundly. Railroads spiked the need for steel, but that actually just spurred the development of the steel industry that spilled over beneficially to other sectors like construction. Real Estate sucked up money, but the home building spurt didn't really warp other sectors quite so much. If you've seen your energy bill spike, you're seeing this AI effect.

Krugman speaks about how AI is largely tracking with predictions about interest rates. By comparing it to the Dotcom crash, he shows how even as the NASDAQ was bleeding out, they had rallies corresponding to interest rates changes. In short, as long as the easy money might continue to flow, the bubble might persist.

My own theory is that crypto functions as a cash flow operation for AI, as if you have access to the awesome computing power of AI chips, you could very easily find a way to raise cash off the volatility of crypto and even meme coins. As the bubble starts to get shaky, principles look for a way to salvage their balance sheets. Again - just a theory but - I thought the massive oil price spike in 2008 was finance bros manipulating the market to bring some quick cash onto their books.

There is, no doubt, some role that this massive advance in computing power will have in the future that will be beneficial to the human race. However, I'd wager in the short term we are crushing massive amounts of resources, warping the macroeconomy and creating a ticking bomb in the economy for more realistic fake porn and the ability of middle schoolers to cheat on their book reports.

Laws Still Hold

 For the most part, we have seen Trump and his ankle-biting minions fail to achieve many notable success in "lawfare" against his political enemies. The law seems to be holding, at least in part because Trump's lawyers are a pack of gibbering morons. I saw Trump Knob-Polisher Johnathan Turley noting that the charges against James Comey and Letitia James were dismissed without prejudice, because the ruling was that the appointment of Lindsay Halligan as acting US Attorney was illegal. The Department of Justice could bring new charges once they legally appoint a new US Attorney.

OK, Turley really is an idiot for missing the central fact here: Trump can't find lawyers who are A) capable and B) willing to do his dirty work. Those are mutually exclusive circles. The same goes for the bullshit threats to prosecute Mark Kelly for being in a video reminding service members that their oath was to the Constitution and not to Hair Furor. First, Kelly and the others were right on the law: servicemembers cannot obey illegal orders. Second, Kelly is likely protected by his role as a Senator. Finally, I would imagine discovery would include determining the legality of the strikes on boats in the Caribbean. 

Maybe Hegseth tries to prosecute Kelly, but does anyone really think he's getting good legal advice? John Cole recently put it: "When everything you do is performative, performance is everything." All of this - the entire bullshit thing - is about what it looks like on the Fox News feed that is mainlined into that old fucker's "brain." His administration is full of Alina Habbis and Lindsay Halligans: dumb hotties from the Lionel Hutz School of Law.

I suppose we should be worried that Trump will find competent lawyers to do his dirty work, but I think this is where his manifest decline kicks in. Do you really want to hitch your wagon to this guy? It made sense when he was ascendant for any ambitious, amoral tool to sign up. Do a few years for Trump, then become a Fox News Personality. Does that still make sense?

The looming conundrum for Democrats is this: When they retake power, there will be dozens upon dozens of Trumpist capos who committed real and serious crimes that need prosecuting, but prosecuting them will be seen as more "vengeance" when really it's just the fact that Trump is a criminal who has surrounded himself with other criminals.

Clowns Playing With Dynamite

 The worry about the various clowns that Trump has empowered in his second administration is that they would eventually cause some sort of irreversible calamity. Adam Smith's quote that "There is a lot of ruin in a nation" suggests (and I agree) that a lot of short term disasters can be overcome because states are largely resilient and "sticky" institutions. That doesn't mean that there won't be absolute disasters, just that the US might survive as something still vaguely recognizable as the US.

However, we are seeing one of those moments, perhaps, where the damage done could be truly catastrophic, and that is with Trump's embrace of Putin's "peace" plan.

These are transparently ridiculous and maximalist demands from Putin. Some AI studies (sigh) suggest that the text was written in Russian and then translated into English. Would anyone be surprised? There seemed to be some conflict within the administration with Vance supporting the deal and Rubio undermining it, but it's all chaos and clown shoes, so who knows. The "deal" was apparently "negotiated" by Trump's idiot friend Steve Witkoff, who has taken Jared Kushner's place as lickspittle errand boy and bagman. It would absolutely not shock me, if Witkoff, Kushner and others were not being paid off by the Russians to push this capitulation on Ukraine.

This, however, is another area where there are real divisions within the GOP. A few Republican Senators are already outraged over this. As deep as their heads are buried in Trump's diapered ass, they still know that Russia is our enemy. Trump's declining power and poll numbers might make it more likely that some Republicans might defect and support Ukraine.

Can Ukraine survive with just European support? That's the impossible question that Zelensky has to face right now. What's more, it's not clear that Ukraine can survive these surrender terms. 

As for Europe and the rest of the world, they have relied for decades on a United States that could be relied on to speak with one foreign policy voice. Sometimes that voice was toxic (rot in hell, Dick Cheney) but it was always consistent. Now, you seem to have various factions vying for supremacy that have positions wildly at odds with each other.

Absolute disaster, if it goes through.

Ignorance Is Amiss

 G. Elliot Morris writes about how people in polls tend to move towards Democrats once voters are informed about Republican policies. This is a variation of push polling, but in push polling, you often get inflammatory priming statements. "If you knew that Kamala Harris personally wants to perform gender reassignment surgery to third graders, would you be more or less likely to vote against her?"

With Morris' survey, he could say something factual about tariffs or ICE or bailing out Argentina, and then ask for respondents' opinion and they move left. This raises the question: Why don't they know this shit already?

There are a legion of infuriating things about the 2024 election, but the refusal of the media to cover and the Democrats to stop talking about Project 2025 is pretty high up there. The public learned about Project 2025 and largely couldn't believe that it was real, so they actively discounted it when making their voting choice. Could that have swung the election? Morris' work seems to suggest that if more people had an accurate understanding of what Trump was promising to do, that might have moved the electorate 2-3 points toward Harris. That would have moved Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin into Harris' column.

Krugman has been trying to figure out why people are so pissed about the economy over the past two years, when the US did about as good a job as possible getting out of Covid. Inflation as a discrete economic event ended in late 2022 or early 2023. However, because prices remained high and because people had little lived experience with inflation of this sort - you'd have to go back to the '70s to find anything similar - they tended to be angry that prices didn't snap back into place. Trump benefitted from a honeymoon period on the economy, but inflation isn't THAT bad right now and he's getting hammered on the economy.

IQ is not a terribly good measure of intelligence, but it does measure "something." The fact that IQ in general increased is a result of increased wealth as a society. The fact that it's reversing and declining is fodder for a thousand hyperventilating think pieces. For the health of our civic democracy, though, it could be a catastrophe.

WTF Was That?

 Donald Trump can't decide if his new best friend is Mohammed bin Salman or Zohran Mamdani. With MBS, it's a pretty straightforward case of two kleptocrats recognizing each other. Mamdani...?

What's more let's look at two images.

When was the last time you saw Trump smile like that? Ever?

Maybe he just loves Middle Eastern guy? Guys he thinks are terrorists and should be banned from entering the country?

Or maybe he's medicated out of his fucking gourd right now.

Thrashing About

 I feel fairly certain that Trump and his lackeys will slow roll or cherry pick the Epstein information. He didn't obstruct their release because it makes him look good. At the same time, we should see stuff trickle out via leaks. All of this means he's getting weaker, and when he gets weak, he lashes out like the malignant narcissist that he is.

We perhaps saw this dynamic already play out with Trump's fascistic call for the execution of members of Congress. The crime of these members - all of whom have served in the national security services - is that they reminded military and intelligence officers that they should not follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. This is enshrined in the military code. It is not - or never has been - controversial. Service men and women should not follow illegal orders, because "I was just following orders" was not a valid defense at the Nuremburg Trials.

Impressively, none of the members made any direct references to Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela or his illegal deployments to American cities. They simply reminded people of their obligations to follow the law. This anodyne statement sent first Stephen Miller and then Trump into a rage. Labeling this as "sedition" and "insurrection" led them to call for the execution of the members of Congress. (Not for nothing, but the free debate clause protects members' speech.) 

Ironically, Trump/Miller's freak out made sure that this message was amplified.

Yeah, this is bad, but it could also be a sign of Trump's increasing weakness. If internal GOP polling is as bad as the public polls, the GOP could be waking up to the idea that tethering themselves to this addled old shitbag is a bad idea, especially if that means appealing to extrajudicial killings.

The weaker Trump gets, the more outrageous he is likely to become, the weaker he will then become in turn.

Buckle up!

Vibecession

 Krugman professes to be somewhat surprised by Trump's collapsing approval ratings on the economy and consumer confidence in general. He suggests that it might be a result of Trump's constant lying and maybe even the fact that - while we have no official numbers - the job market seems to be softening. A lot.

Trump paid a price not just for the shutdown, but the way he held SNAP benefits hostage, the fact that he demolished the East Wing to put in a Mar-A-Lago ballroom and the fact that he held a Gatsby party while people were suffering.

As Marshall reiterates, power is unitary. Trump is increasingly out of touch - or rather he is now being seen as out of touch. This is perhaps the real cost of the Epstein cover up. He said he would release them, backtracked and you can't lie your way out of those basic facts.

Bitcoin fell another 3.7% today. Things are getting shaky and the clowns running things have zero answers.

Has It Started?

 Krugman drops off a quick note that it looks like the Crypto Crash may be upon us. Bitcoin, the Cadillac of Crypto, has dropped from a high of about 125,000 a month ago to about 91,000 today. Ethereum peaked at around 4800 in August and is around 3000 today, three weeks ago is was around 3800.  

David Frum points to the real peril that stable coins might pose to our broader financial institutions. The speculative frenzy surrounding some cryptos - to say nothing of the incoherent madness of meme coins - was supposed to be tempered by the stable coins. Because stable coins are redeemable in real currency, this could lead to runs on financial institutions.

Part of me is regretting not putting my money where my mind mouth is and shorting crypto. Part of me wants to jump in now and make some bucks off the venality of others. There is, however, a risk when you bet against a fraudulent system. 

We are building a house for retirement, so we have a lot of cash on hand which should be safe in a crash. We are also near that retirement and a crash...won't be great! I suppose to bright side is that Trump has bound himself to crypto in such a way that when the crash comes and if it truly devastates the economy, that will combine with Epstein to drive the nails into the coffin of his authoritarian plans.

The Human Connection

 This piece is about an AI engine designed to help you "cheat" at conversations. The author found it really distracting and did not, in fact, help her with her conversation.

Meanwhile, Yglesias writes a long post about how he likes his - seemingly profound - neurodivergence. That piece definitely shores up my impressions about a certain vacantness in his analysis. He says he makes him more objective, but the AI engine kind of has the same problem that it short circuits real human connection. There is nothing wrong with being neurodivergent and aphantasia is a striking example of a specific form of being different. That does allow him to offer his spicy hot takes that keep him in business, but it also leaves something soulful missing from his work.

AI, of course, has no soul.

So, yeah, anyway, we're all doomed.

Unitary Theory Of Power

 Josh Marshall has what he calls a "Unitary Theory of Power" that states that all power is unitary. A President is not powerful on one area and weak in another. This is why you see presidents' approval ratings fall across the board when they suffer a failure in one area. If Trump loses on the tariffs or the House vote on the Epstein files goes bigly against him, then he is weakened everywhere else.

The flop sweat emanating from the White House is because they very much understand this dynamic. The central idea of Project 2025 was to overwhelm opposition to Trump's authoritarianism with speed before the unpopularity of that project could be coalesced into a united front. "Move fast, break things" only works if you have sufficient mass behind the destructive force.

Marshall points to things like the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco as example of that veneer of omnipotence being stripped away. He also says that an increase in leaks (and I would argue the willingness of corporate media to report on what those leaks say) demonstrates that people are losing their fear of Trump's ability to retaliate.

Trump's verbal declaration to countenance the discharge petition is an example of this. Trump cannot lose. He certainly cannot lose when Republicans are the ones voting. He would rather give the appearance of being fine with the release so as not to lose the coming vote. Once it passes the House (and presumably the Senate) then perhaps he will find a way to delay or selective release some things. He isn't saying "Release the Epstein Files"; he's saying "I can't afford to publicly lose this vote."

The thin reed I'm hanging my current hopes on is the special election in Tennessee 7th CD. This district has no business flipping, but it is within that 10 point partisan margin that could surprise people. That might also be the reason why more and more Red States are not gerrymandering, because you could wind up with a dummymander where they turn reliably Republican districts into swing districts in a wave election. 

Every loss in any arena is a loss everywhere for Trump.

A Democratic Populism

 Do Democrats need to embrace the sort of populist politics that elevated Donald Trump? Maybe, maybe not. But if they do, there is one really, really easy way to do so: Billionaires.

The GOP alliance with great wealth is well known and goes back to the years after the Civil War. There have been wealthy Americans who embraced progressive politics, but the vast majority of the very well off have historically trended towards the party of low taxes and less regulation.

The politics of it today are even more stark. People apparently really are pissed off about the destruction of the East Wing and the Gatsby Party that Trump threw. They really are pissed off about the evisceration of public services. And they really are pissed off about the Epstein Files.

Rumors online is that the dreaded "Democratic consultants" were urging Democrats to focus on "affordability" over Epstein, because people really are upset about the cost of living. The thing is, Epstein is about a cabal of ultra wealthy scumbags - of whom Trump is the avatar - getting their way while everyone else suffers. Millionaires and billionaires raping girls, while the Guatemalan roofer or the Salvadoran line cook gets beaten and abused on the streets of Chicago (which drives up construction and dining costs).

Richardson lays the wood this morning with a comparison of Matt Gaetz and the Andrew Mellon. Gaetz likely paid a 17 year girl for sex so she could pay for braces; Mellon funneled wealth upwards until it created the conditions for the Great Depression. In both cases, wealth and power insulated them from the consequences of their actions. Mellon appropriated millions, Gaetz committed statutory rape, because elites don't face the same consequences as you and me.

A system that engorges the bank accounts of those already rich, while depriving millions of access to health care is one that is ripe for a left wing populism. Focus on the Malefactors of Great Wealth and you can target both affordability AND Trump's deprivations with Epstein. They are the same damned thing.

The Dog That DID Bark

 Senator John Barrasso was tasked with defending the continued hiding of the Epstein Files. His argument was not about the merits of transparency - there are none - or protecting the victims - they want them released. His argument was that this was just a Democratic ploy to make Trump a lame duck. Now -technically - Trump IS a lame duck. He is barred from running for reelection in 2028. He has hinted that he might try and violate the 22nd Amendment, and it's always an open question whether this corrupted Court would let him get away with it. I've always felt that they wouldn't, because there is just no reading of the text that they could torture into a partisan decision.

What Barrasso is hinting at, to me, is the idea that once Trump sinks below a certain level of unpopularity, once he's (again) a massive anchor on the Republican Party, then and only then will they completely turn against him. The threat of a third term is about staying powerful and relevant. All lame ducks struggle to control the agenda of their last two years in office. Reagan slipped into dementia and the Iran Contra Scandal; Clinton had Lewinsky; Bush saw Iraq collapse, New Orleans drown and Social Security galvanize opposition.

Republicans have to be exhausted defending this guy. On Monday, you're defending his tariffs because they will be good for the economy and on Wednesday, he's saying he will repeal some of them to bring down the price of food. They can see the writing on the wall, but as long as Trump is "powerful" they have to kowtow to him. If the stuff in the Epstein Files is half as bad as it appears to be, that day hastens when the GOP stops defending him. When he truly becomes an addled old king wandering his Court screaming at paintings.

What A Year The Past Few Days Have Been

 A running list of scandals from the past few days:

- Trump appears in Epstein's emails something like 1,400 times.
- Epstein calls Trump a degenerate. Epstein. Calls someone else. A degenerate.
- Trump then instructs his AG to investigate Democrats in the Epstein files a few months after saying that there was nothing in there to investigate.
- Trump says he will reduce tariffs on certain foods to reduce inflation...thereby proving that tariffs are inflationary.
- We've apparently funneled MORE money to Argentina than originally reported.
- Trump is authorizing a $50,000,000 payout to traitorous scumbag Michael Flynn.
- Trump continues to throw pardons around at some legitimately horrible people. In normal times, the repeated criminality of the January Sixers in particular would be Willie Horton on steroids.
- Kristi Noem is shoveling Federal funds at a shady ad firm to make ads extolling DHS. There is almost certainly a kickback going on here, either to her or Corey Lewandowski.
- The two clowns leading the FBI did not have to pass background checks.
- Talented Weirdo, Olivia Nuzzi, states that RFK, Jr. is still doing a ton of drugs.
- Marjorie Taylor Green is showing more fight against Donald Trump than John Fetterman.
- We are moving more military resources towards Venezuela without Congressional approval.
- We are replacing the Bureau of Labor Statistics with DoorDash, apparently.
- Trump keeps having MRIs, but he doesn't know why.

Seriously. This is what we've learned in just the last 72 hours. Of course, in some ways, we all knew this. Trump is an adjudicated sex offender who has boasted of sexually harassing and assaulting women for decades. We know he was quite close to Epstein. We know he threw over previous wives for "younger" women, and we know he openly lusted after his own fucking daughter.

We know that he was a corrupt businessman his entire fucking life. We know that he's a brittle narcissist who is lashing out at anyone he can to deflect from the manifest emptiness and ugliness inside what is where his soul should be.

Of course, I guess (I hope) millions of Americans decided that they didn't know this. That when Democrats pointed this out, they dismissed it as politics as usual.

If they decide that they know it now, will it finally make a difference? If even more smoking guns come out linking Trump and Epstein, will that do it? Finally? Can we bid rid of this cretinous creature?

The Death Of The GOP

 It's one of those days when both Richardson and Krugman seem to align, though it maybe doesn't look that way at first glance. Krugman looks at the state of the Heritage Foundation, noting that it was always a hack, far right shop, but the recent controversy over Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson has stripped away the plausible veneer. Richardson looks at the accumulating sense that the Trump Administration is just so far out of touch with the American public. The performative cruelty, the Epstein shit, the weakening economy, and while she didn't mention the various aesthetic outrages like the demolishing of the East Wing...these all create an overwhelming impression of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Back in the before times, you have that tentpole quote from Lindsey Graham saying in 2016 that if the GOP nominated Trump "We would get killed and we would deserve it." Then, of course, Trump drew to an inside straight in 2016 and won again in 2024, despite having more baggage than Delta Airlines. This has created an understanding among Republicans that Trump cannot be defied - not only because of his unexpected electoral success, but because of his petty and vindictive nature. Thou Shalt Not Cross Trump.

The problem is not merely that Trump is a flawed president along normal metrics like "understands policies" or "builds consensus" or "speaks to the concerns of average Americans." He's also an aspiring autocrat who is either empowering the fascist cruelty of people like Stephen Miller or actively directing it. Even more concerning for Republicans: He's a doddering old man whose policies are actively damaging to America.

Since 2016, the GOP has steadily remade itself in the image of Donald Trump. This can't be sustainable, because Trump's hold on the public is really a hold on the 27%. As his poor policies and temperamental flaws are shown again and again and again...it becomes harder to justify supporting him...yet the entire raison d'etre of the GOP is genuflect before Trump.

The potential does exist for the Epstein stuff to finally cause a rupture that cannot be healed.

Obviously, the Republican Party isn't going to "die." It will transmogrify into some other beast. Ideally, we get schisms and chaos, like what just happened at Heritage. Ideally, many of Trump's fervent supporters just stay home for the next two or three electoral cycles. Still, the crisis that Graham predicted is coming. The fact that he has so enthusiastically embraced Trump, too, is what makes it so delicious.

UPDATE: "Populism" was always a scam.

I Dunno

 Seems like this Epstein stuff is pretty bad.

Still, the idea that this - finally - will end Trump's presidency seems to misunderstand the nature of the GOP in 2025.

Lies Won't Get Him Out Of This

 Krugman runs through a great false equivalency in press coverage of Biden and Trump's respective economic messages. Biden people cherry picked or massaged certain economic indicators that were 100% true, but didn't FEEL true or didn't jibe with people's lived experience. Biden was also a poor spokesman for himself. The result was Trump winning the election. While on a strictly policy front Biden did well, people didn't experience the improving economy in their actual day to day lives. This is why likely the only Democrat who could have won in 2024 was a governor.

Trump, on the other hand, is just doing what he always does, which is lie like a rug. The sheer volume of lies is nothing new; Trump lies as he breaths: constantly. However, when he gets up there and blathers on about gasoline being $2 a gallon, there is literally no one who believes this is actually true. His incredible disconnection from reality is one of the biggest reasons that his approval ratings are tanking. When you combine it with demolishing the East Wing and his Gatsby party, you really have someone who is completely detached from the lived reality of most Americans. 

Look, this was always true, but now it's unavoidable. 

It Still Sucks, But...

 Capitulating on the shutdown is painful, because it means that the pain of the shutdown accomplished very little in policy terms. About the best thing we can hope for is that when the Senate compromise passes, the House will have to take it up and Grijalva will be sworn in and the Epstein stuff will get released.

Richardson characterizes this as a pool table with balls careening this way and that. One of those balls is dispirited Democrats, but another is tossing the vote for ACA subsidies - written by Democrats - into the Senate for a vote. The one year extension would collapse around the midterms, so ideally, that will be the bill written by Democrats, if they can't get a permanent extension. If Republican Senators vote it down or it dies in the House, then Republicans up and down the ballot next November will be on the hook for ripping health insurance from millions of Americans. 

As it is, I just got a notice that I will see a massive spike in my contributions to my employer-based insurance. This is the "bad old days" of pre-ACA insurance dynamics. Republicans will own that. 

Krugman thinks that they just can't help themselves when it comes to depriving people of public goods. I wonder. I mean, yes, they don't believe that the government should spend millionaires' tax dollars on working people's health insurance, but you usually don't see parties strip away established programs. When they do, as Bush tried in 2005, they suffer for it. In fact, Bush's attack on Social Security likely led the way to a 60 seat Democratic majority over the next two cycles that enabled Obama to pass the ACA.

I think there's another dynamic at play, though. Trump HAS to be seen as strong and winning. Part of it is his brittle little ego, but another part is the self-fulfilling logic of authoritarian politics. The leader is strong, because the leader is strong. If Democrats force a compromise on Republicans - EVEN ONE THAT COULD BE POLITICALLY BENEFICIAL TO THEM - Trump would see this as a "loss", which is why he refused to negotiate.

It's true, as Krugman points out, that Republicans have no policy chops and no policy shop on health care, beyond stripping it away. This is the famous "concept of a plan" that should have sunk Trump's candidacy. Marshall sees this as an emerging new Democratic caucus that "gets it" when it comes to fighting not just Trump but Trumpism and the entire autocratic GOP.

Looking at the Traitorous Eight, Fetterman will likely lose his primary. Kaine, too, though the he has time to recoup his lost standing. Durbin and Shaheen are not running for re-election. Shaheen's own daughter - running for a House seat - has blasted the deal. Enjoy Thanksgiving! If Stefany Shaheen loses her primary, you can chalk that up to voter anger over her mother's capitulation. King is likely safe and I have no read on the Nevada landscape. 

While Schumer blasted the deal, I think anger with him is justified, as he cannot whip his own caucus and having exactly the eight votes needed to reopen the government suggests that he gave clearance to guys like Durbin and Kaine. As I said, unequal to the moment.

This isn't over yet, and obviously there is both the (possible) vote on ACA extensions in the Senate and another looming deadline after the holidays. 

However, Republicans are trapped by Trump's insistence that there be zero negotiations and that instead they just scrap the filibuster. Maybe it was smart to bring back SNAP and air travel for the holidays. Personally, I do think we are going to have to pass through hell in order to escape it.

Unequal To The Moment

 The Republican strategy for the shutdown was clear from the first week: make Americans miserable. The efficacy of this strategy was borne out last Tuesday, as voters rewarded Democrats with victory after victory. Republicans responded by ramping up the pain on the American public. The specter of snarled air travel for Thanksgiving loomed alongside the growing hunger for many Americans. 

It was, in fact, very painful.  I get that.

However, the Traitorous Eight who capitulated last night - and it was very much a capitulation - have made sure that the suffering that did happen was for nothing. What seems to have gripped their (mostly old) brains is the idea that the Senate Club will insure that the deal will be honored and vulnerable Republicans will have to take a vote on ACA subsidies at some point in the future.

This misunderstands the politics of 2025. First, let's assume that Thune actually does call a vote on ACA subsidies. Maybe it does pass, but I have my doubts. Does anyone think Mike Johnson will even allow that Senate bill to come to a vote in the House?

What's more, this moment is a fight with emerging dictatorship. If you can't see that, I have no idea what blinders you are wearing. Autocrats are bullies, by definition. Bullies thrive on weakness. What the Traitorous Eight have demonstrated to Trump and his ghouls is that bullying, starving and immiserating the American people is a sound strategy. This capitulation largely empowers Trump at precisely the moment that Democrats were handed a victory in the off year elections.

It's a fascinating rogue's roll of hacks, too. There are Very Sensible Centrists in King, Shaheen and Hassan, then you have both Senators from Nevada for some reason. You have Senator Shrek who's become the new Sinema -  a worthless toady of the worst impulses. Tim Kaine I guess wanted to protect his constituents who are Federal workers, but still...Finally there is Dick Durbin who took whatever reputation he may have clung to and lit it on fire and pissed on the ashes. He should resign and let Pritzer select his replacement.

Needless to say, in the overheated moment, people are blaming the entire Democratic Party for this and that's both unfair, unfortunate and unsurprising. Durbin's participation suggests at least some tacit approval from Schumer, even he personally voted against it. They needed eight votes and got eight votes, and it's not clear that Schumer really whipped against it.

A great example of where this is heading is that Mike Lee, Rick Scott and Ron Johnson - three of the absolute worst in that awful chamber - were not going to vote for the measure until Trump told them to. Not EVERY Republican  Senator is completely supine to Trump - Rand Paul is a no on the CR - but enough are that even if Democrats get a vote to extend the ACA subsidies and EVEN IF IT PASSES, it's folly to expect Trump to follow it, if he feels it manifests weakness.

I think it was Josh Marshall who coined the term Senate Brain to describe a certain mindset held by Senators that theirs was a cozy club of like minded public servants who only had a few partisan differences, but the institution was all that mattered in the end. Certainly in the background of this fight was Trump's threat to end the filibuster, which would have been a positive development in the long term health of democracy in this country, even if it would have ended the shutdown without getting ACA back.

Josh Marshall suggests that this isn't the end of the world. Of course it isn't, and he does have a point that the CR only goes through January; that this has focused attention on the ACA subsidies and who is killing them. What he also notes is that we need a new Democratic Party in the Congress. We can't be the fucking doormats that we have been in the past. Some - like Chris Murphy - get that. These mealy mouthed losers - and that is the name for those who lose - don't get that. If this pushes us further down the road to a Senate caucus without people like Dick Durbin or Shrek, then so much the better. 

I'm a Big Tent Guy, and I think heterodoxy is important. Healthcare, though, is not one part of the Democratic Party's beliefs; it's the central tentpole. That's why Republicans want to kill it. If you can't understand what you're fighting for or what the stakes are, you have no purpose being in Congress in 2025.

Is There A Deal Being Discussed?

 There are contradictory reports of a deal to end the shutdown. One has a pretty comprehensive cave from Democrats - basically, we will give you a brief CR in return for the promise of a future vote. The other seems to be better - a one year extension of ACA subsidies and one of those tiresome "Gangs" that they put together to solve an issue. I think the last Gang was to solve the amnesty issue in immigration and Trump promptly threw Lankford under the bus after he negotiated a pretty good deal.

A one year extension of the subsidies is a win for Democrats. Full stop. First, you have had people stare numbly at the coming catastrophic increases in their ACA bill, then you can claim to have reversed it.  Hurrah! Even better, the extension will lapse right before the midterm election. So, the GOP can either make the reversal permanent or make it a massive electoral issue in 2026.

Right now, the Republicans are feeling the wrath of voter anger from the shutdown and rightly so. However, we are now staring down the face of widespread hunger and the complete implosion of air travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. That's a recipe for a "curse on both your houses." 

The one year extension is good on the merits - people keep their insurance - and it's good politics, as it tosses a very good issue for Democrats into the heart of the midterms. It's also a clear "win" for Democrats and a loss for Republicans - which is why Thune and Trump are currently saying no. 

That's OK, let them say no! The Democrats have a reasonable compromise on the table. Let the GOP veto it. 

A+ Messaging

 For all the Conventional Wisdom about how bad the Democrats are at political messaging, the fact is that Democrats have handled this shutdown really well. Now, we have a reasonable compromise from Chuck Schumer to end the shutdown in return for a one year extension of the tax cuts. The logic is that voters have seen what those increases look like. Democrats will have saved them from that increase for one year, tossing the issue into next fall's midterm elections.

What we have now is Trump and the GOP making the following argument. "We are going to starve children and old people; we are going to snarl air traffic; we are going to deny soldiers pay...unless you allow us to take health insurance from millions of Americans."

Brilliant. Please proceed.

Affordability and Abundance

 Derek Thompson argues that last Tuesday gave the Democrats a winning theme - if not quite a winning platform. By focusing on "Affordability" they can focus voters' ire about rising prices, the same ire that turned Democrats out of power last November. A year is eternity and Thompson does acknowledge that there are a few problems, but I'd expand on them.

First, the primary driver of rising costs in 2022 was the post-Covid supply chain issue. That was an exogenous event that had little policy roots. In 2025, the primary cause of inflation is a combination of tariffs and deportations. By raising the prices of imported goods and raw materials and also restricting the labor supply, Trump seems bound and determined to create a stagflationary spiral. The problem for Democrats should they win in 2026 is to actually reverse many of those problems, and that will be very hard to do with Trump in the White House. You probably will be able to reverse the tariffs, but the workforce issue will not improve as long as Stephen Miller has an office in the West Wing.

Secondly and relatedly, even where you can and could act today or in 2026, it takes a long time to turn an economy around. In 2021, inflation was at 4,7%. High but OK. In 2022, it was 8%. No bueno. In 2023, it was at 4.1%, which would suggest it was calming down and in 2024, sure enough, it was at 2.9%. That rate would have been fine, if it wasn't for the fact that prices had been rising for three years. That almost 3% increase was happening to an already elevated number. The policies pursued by the Federal Reserve and Biden Administration were good and working, and if the election had happened a year later, I bet the result might have been different. 

Still, if your Sherrill or Spanberger or even Mamdani, you are very unlikely to effect wholesale reductions in prices. Whereas Trump has pursued inflationary policies because he's a fucking idiot, you could try and reduce some regulations and that would be a really good policy outcome, but it might not rein in prices for two reasons. First, making it easier to build housing should be a priority in every Blue polity, but that will take 2-4 years to actually show up as places for people to live. Second, Trump's policies will supersede what you are doing. If you make it easier to generate electricity in your state, that won't help if unregulated data centers gobble it all up. If you reform housing codes, it won't matter if Trump deported all the Latin American tradesmen. 

Of course, who cares. If Democrats can win control of both house of Congress next November running against Trump's terrible economic policies, then democracy might be saved. Voters will still blame his party in 2028. Hopefully, the AI/Crypto bubble bursts and data centers wither on the vine, freeing up electrical generation for consumers. Maybe we finally get a comprehensive and humane guest worker program and more legal immigration in 2029. 

Paul Campos refers to our era as the Age of Unhappiness, which I think is accurate. That has political repercussions, but we need to recall how well Democrats did in 2022 relative to expectations. If Trump continues to immiserate the population, then any breath of fresh air in 2028 could reshape political coalitions.

Joe Biden's age was not a question of infirmity, so much as it rendered him incapable of making his case to the American voter. Making a case for abundance as a formula for affordability is something that doesn't require a politician to have the charisma of a Mamdani.

This Man Is A Sociopath

 

Trump stands aloof as someone faints behind him. 

One advantage Trump has had is that - as Troll in Chief - he's pretty good at "driving the narrative" via visuals. Between his Gatsby Ball, demolishing the East Wing and now this...Yeah, not so much, Donny.

Welcome To The Pantheon

 Nancy Pelosi was certainly the best and most effective Speaker of my adult lifetime. Especially in the 19th century, but even in the 20th, the Speaker was probably the second most powerful person in Washington. The nature of the House requires keeping the kittens herded together, and this became even more true as ideological partisanship increased during the last 40 years. Pelosi proved herself far superior to the Republican men who couldn't count votes, couldn't extend flexibility to their vulnerable members. Pelosi more than any other Speaker, at least since Tip O'Neill, knew how to count votes. She was Old School like that. "Czar" Reed never called a vote that he didn't know he could win. Same with Pelosi. Even as the House has slipped in power, Pelosi fought back to try and preserve it's historic role. (Also kudos for stepping down from the Speakership and for knowing the time was right to retire.)

Compare her to Mike Johnson:

Nancy Pelosi is 5'5", but she towers over the men who tried and failed to replace her.

Winning Matters

 Josh Marshall likes to say that the DC corpse is wired for Republicans. Here he notes how they are scrambling to understand the ass whupping the GOP got on Tuesday. What he points out is all the breathless articles about how Trump seems to be unpopular were true on Monday, but no one was writing that then (aside from filthy bloggers and Substackers).

Part of the "logic" of Project 2025 was to "move fast and break things" because that creates its own theory of power. It's not only about "flooding the zone" but creating a certain momentum that allows you to run roughshod over institutions. I would wager that even some Trump loyalists are surprised at how quickly some of those institutions caved.

The No King Rallies, the electoral rout and now the apparent limits of SCROTUS tolerance when it comes to tariffs have all begun to strip this imperial presidency of some of its momentum. This leaves aside Trump's seeming rapid aging that has him falling asleep at weird times. I'd wager that one reason Trump hasn't sat down with Schumer and Jeffries to negotiate an end to the shutdown is that his aides realize he's simply not up to the task.

These small victories add up. Acquitting "Sandwich Guy" matters. It's not just that "hope matters" but that Trump has asserted that he has dictatorial powers in a country with very elaborate structures to prevent that. The more toxic he becomes, the less ability he has to assert this, but the weaker he becomes, the more obvious that is.

ADDED: There's a strong argument that we should hope that the Court rules his tariffs illegal but that he tries a new rationale to keep them in place, forcing yet another round of court cases. The worse the economy gets, the better, but him losing is also good.

Candidate Quality

 G. Elliot Morris is a Data Guy. His takeaway from the election is that we are likely looking at a D+8 environment in 2026. I could argue that Trump is so bad, so chaotic, that we could see something along the lines of a D+12 environment. I could also see a bigger movement towards Dems in rural areas, since Trump seems to be doing everything he can to punish farmers.

Still, as Dems approach the midterms, I don't think that simply relying on Trump's toxicity is enough to win by margins large enough to counteract voter suppression. Good candidates matter. It sucks that Jared Golden isn't going to run, because he's a really good candidate for that district. (It wouldn't shock me if Maine elects to redraw that district in the face of Republican efforts to do the same elsewhere.)

You can even see this in the White Elephant case of Mamdani. He's a really impressive politician, especially when it comes to messaging. Ideally, you can find some really well-tailored candidates for their districts. I'd love to see Mary Peltola run for the Alaska Senate seat. 

An underrated flip side to this is that the Republican Party increasingly is made in Trump's image. Nancy Mace is mentally unwell, but she could win her primary for governor and lose because she's insane. As he remakes the party in his twisted image and his approval rating dips into the mid 30s, candidate quality could cut the other way. Running a dipshit like Markwayne Mullen will work in Oklahoma, but it might not work in Kansas or Iowa.