Charles II

 King Charles II of England was known for his extravagant tastes. If you've seen Restoration Era furniture or plays, that comes from his aesthetic. His was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He also kept a stable of mistresses, and while he had no legitimate heirs (which led to his brother becoming King and the Glorious Revolution), he had numerous bastards via these mistresses.

Which brings me to our own king with gilded tastes. It is slowly seeping into the news about Trump's latest mistress, Natalie Harp. Jon Ossoff even referenced her in a speech, and he's been a pretty astute rhetorician when it comes to attacking Trump. There is also the rumor that Alina Habba will be the new press secretary, and there have been rumors about her and Trump as well.

Are Trump's serial infidelities "important"? They certainly are not the most important awful thing he's done - even in the past 48 hours. 

Still, just as I've been saying that "corruption" is the angle to go after Trump and Republicans, I think "character" is going to be the fundamental level for any Democrat running in 2028. Donald Trump's rancid immorality manifests across multiple levels. The infidelity is just one aspect of it. It is nevertheless an angle that demonstrates the omnivorous narcissism at the core of this man.

In the end, Charles died of high living and kidney disease. His brother was so manifestly unacceptably absolutist, that Parliament overthrew him and established the principle of Parliamentary supremacy.

Just saying.

Immigration

 Krugman has a wonky post where he points out that job growth has stalled and it's almost certainly a byproduct of Trump and Stephen Miller's pogroms against immigrants. I've been reading a book about national power by Phillip Payson O'Brien about national power, and he does a lot of recounting about how the world power dynamic shifted over the course of really the last 140 years. One thing he notes, is how the United States surpassed the United Kingdom, but did so in a way that the UK and US both found a way to live with.  The UK responded less enthusiastically to Germany's rise, for instance.

Anyway, the story of the last 140 years is the emergence of the United States as possibly the most powerful country in history. A lot of that is economic, and a lot of that economic vitality comes from immigration. 

I think about a country like Ukraine and how they will need to replenish their population and child bearing numbers are unlikely to meet those needs. Immigration would do the trick, but I doubt Ukrainians are different from other European countries in their disregard for immigrants. If you're from Nigeria and you want to better your prospects in life, Europe would be a natural destination, except Europeans are pretty hostile to immigrants (unless they play for their national soccer teams).

The real question is whether immigrants will want to return to the US after Trump is gone. You see a lot of rhetoric about how this or that aspect of America has been "destroyed" by Trump. I tend not to think in terms of binaries in a lot of those examples. The Department of Justice has been degraded beyond Nixon's wildest dreams, but has it been "destroyed"? Will we be able to inspire young lawyers to join the post-Trump DOJ to clean up America?

With immigrants, we clearly need a better process - especially surrounding asylum - and the law proposed in 2024 (that Trump killed) would have been a great place to start. The question will be whether we fix immigration and immigrants decide maybe they don't want to come to a place that might elect another Trump.

Pawns

 One of Trump's defining character traits is a complete lack of empathy to the point of sociopathy. He cannot see other people except as they exist to be utilized by him. 

His recent comments about the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln can be filed in the massive folder "Things That Would End Any Other Politician's Career." He has trapped himself within his ignorance surrounding the Iran War, but while he's "suffering" from cratering approval ratings, the sailors floating off the coast of Iran are truly suffering. Soldiers based in the Middle East are dying and being wounded by Iranian attacks. For Trump, though, their suffering is irrelevant. He needs a way to declare victory over Iran and if the troops suffer, well, they're just "suckers" anyway for volunteering.

Just a hateful human being, and I use the term human being loosely.

It should also be said that sailors and soldiers will endure a lot. If the mission is broadly legitimate. This one is not, and that has to weigh on the service members.

I've Been Saying!

 Krugman makes the political - as opposed to economic - case for allowing a public option within Medicare. The economics of single-payer are pretty well established. Yes, there is some rationing, but it is not based on ability to pay. There is, perhaps, some road in the US that leads to a baseline or floor of health care coverage that can be supplemented by private insurance. We travelled to Chile, where they have a universal system and a buy-in system. Everyone gets healthcare, but you can pay for private clinics. In an earlier post, Krugman notes that wealthy Canadians come south for some treatments.

At any rate, Krugman makes the political case that I've been making since Obamacare. We need a public option - not because it's the preferred policy outcome, but because it's a feasible policy outcome. If we allowed people and employers to buy insurance from Medicare the way they do from Aetna, then we should over time - if the theories are correct about costs and delivery - see more and more people elect to be covered by Medicare, until mandating the change only effects fewer than 10% of the population.

It would also allow the sort of gradual change that might prevent some of the problems that are attendant with big policy changes. When Obamacare rolled out, the system crashed. It was repaired, but first impressions and all that. Massively straining the Medicare system all at once would lead to the same poor first impression.

The other issue that would need to be addressed in the wake of Trump is how to insulate the new universal healthcare program from Republican fuckery. They will absolutely try and wreck whatever Democrats build and I'm not sure the American public has demonstrated that they are really smart enough to assign blame to the appropriate party. Slow rolling a public option would be perilous for this reason, but having corporate buy-in via cheaper costs could push back on this. If DynaCorp is paying 15% less in insurance costs, I would wager they'd be pretty eager to preserve that.

Finally, I have expressed by deep seething hatred of Joe Lieberman in over a decade, but man, what a horrific shitbag of a person he is. Yeah, Nelson of Oklahoma was also responsible for killing the public option in 2009, but Lieberman...man, I hate that guy. 

Limits Of The DSA

 A lot has been written about the collapse in support for Tiffany Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. As per usual, a lot of it looks wrong and serves to justify people's priors.

First of all, looking at a Marquette poll from late July, Hong was getting 38% support. On election night, she got...38% of the vote. She had clearly maxed out her ceiling and anyone who hadn't made up their mind seems to have shifted to Crowley.

There was also some sense that the more scrutiny Hong was placed under as the election got closer, the worse she looked. She did not exactly enthuse the usual rainmakers like Bernie or AOC either. 

It seems like Hong captured some imagination among younger voters and the "Fight!" crowd because she was a bit edgy, but some of those edges were natural attack avenues for Republicans. Abolish Thanksgiving? Abolish the police?

As Josh Marshal reminds us - not that we needed reminding - Zohran Mamdani is a very talented politician. He has expertly navigated between the somewhat utopian nature of DSA campaigns and the nuts and bolts nature of being a mayor. He is not "angry" and scary, and a lot of what he proposes are just solid, "improve people's lives" measures. 

There are two hobby horses that DSA flog nearly to death: Medicare for All and Israel. The distance between the DSA and the median Democratic representative in DC on Medicare for All is likely too small to measured with the naked eye. The median Democratic Rep just understands how the Congress works and how math works. On Israel, there is likely much more daylight, but the calculus of support for Israel - at least militarily - is also collapsing. The difference between the DSA candidates and normie Dems is mostly about rhetoric. 

For instance, I don't believe Israel's actions rise to the level of genocide - a word that is being diluted by throwing it around so much. I DO believe that we should cut off military aid and abandon our practice of protecting Israel with a UN veto. Does that make me "anti-Zionist"? No, I think Israel has a right to exist, but I think they have forfeited the right to count on unconditional support from the US. In policy terms, my difference from the DSA is pretty small. 

Where the DSA has been most successful is in overwhelmingly Blue districts where you have the "Fight" dynamic and often a rival who is too old. Not surprisingly, DSA candidates have done best with bougie, urban, college educated white liberals. They are not creating a "class consciousness" among non-college people - precisely the demographic that socialism is supposed to mobilize. A large part of that is because the DSA isn't so much about expanding social programs as bullshit, boutique radicalism like "Defund the Police" or "Open borders" that just repels a lot of people. 

It is absolutely healthy to have a left wing in the Democratic Party pushing for health care expansion as a first priority. But caterwauling about AIPAC or the systemic racism of Thanksgiving isn't helping anyone.

Phew

 It looks like Democrats avoided a very poor choice in Wisconsin last night. David Crowley edged polling favorite and DSA standard bearer Francesca Hong in the race for the Democratic candidate for governor. With Tony Evers term limited, this quintessentially purple state could become the most critical governor's race in the country. The Republican nominee is a rabid election denialist.

Interestingly, another very purple state, Georgia, is also having a gubernatorial election. Holding on to as many governorships as possible has become far more important recently. Not only do governors fill Senate vacancies (with some exceptions) they are also the central figure in maintaining state sovereignty in the face of Trump's assault on democracy. Losing Wisconsin because they nominated someone with the quirky and toxic views of many leftists in a state that seems to teeter back and forth between supporting Democrats and Republicans is not the way forward.

Yglesias has been beating this drum all year, the way he does when he has a juicy bone between his fangs. Yet, he has found a way to see the merits in Abdul El-Sayed's candidacy in Michigan. I do think that he continues to wallow in the Yglesias Fallacy of believing that swing voters really care about policy and not vibes and blunt personality markers. AES' liability is not his ability to finesse his positions on Medicare for All or even Israel. His liability is that he's Muslim in a country that still harbors a LOT of Islamophobia. 

AES has some real charisma and juice (though I wouldn't put him in the same vein as Mamdani, despite some superficial similarities), and Stevens looks like she's going to go all in to help him win. (I wonder if Hong will do the same for Crowley. I have my doubts.)

While there have been some head scratching results from some House primaries, generally a robust sample size of Democratic voters have proven themselves equal to the moment. They are retiring reps who are over 75 - John Larsen lost last night, and that's a good thing - but they aren't always running to some extremes when they do so.

I believe the coming months will see more movement towards Democrats. I think Trump hiding in a catering truck while using the press corps and White House staff as bait on Air Force One is going to have some legs. He's not going to find a way clear of Iran; prices aren't going to fall; corruption isn't going to stop; ICE will kill again. The only thing that can stem the damage for Republicans is Democrats nominating people who will drive Republicans to the polls in negative polarization. The key to winning the Senate is keeping a lot of dispirited MAGA home in November.

Wisconsin understood the assignment. 

Trapped

 The Iran War (and tariffs) have started to create inflation that is deeply hurting Trump and Republicans. Under Josh Marshall's Unitary Theory of Power, a decline in power in one area leads to a decline in power elsewhere. If people don't like your tariffs and your Gestapo killing Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, they aren't going to care for your triumphal arch or your war with Iran.

And the war with Iran is going very, very poorly. As Philip Gordon notes:

“U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”

This is the logical outcome of an Administration that has spent a year and a half pissing off the rest of the world and then being so immune from internal debate and criticism that it thinks Iran is Venezuela. I've written about how people want "disruption" because they think that everything sucks and incumbent politicians are at fault. What Iran and the entire Trumpist foreign policy is demonstrating is that breaking things because they aren't perfect returns us to a state where we understand why those institutions were created in the first place. Allies matter and behaving like a petulant toddler means that in this moment, Trump stands alone in a shithole of his own making. 

No one is coming to help us.

Here is the situation that Trump (and Hegseth) have led us into:

- We are running dangerously low on precision munitions that allowed Trump to exert miliary force from a stand-off distance.
- We are also running dangerously low on anti-missile ordinance.
- The American people do not support the war and never have.
- Prices are rising because of the war, and that is one thing they won't accept.
- There are no more levers to push to get Iran to surrender. They know all of the above are true.
- The only way to free the Straits of Hormuz is to send in ground troops that will lead to thousands of flag draped coffins.

Iran has been deeply damaged, but the regime doesn't care about the suffering of its people. The US has been deeply damaged in terms of its credibility. 

The only winner of this war is likely to be China. In fact, Xi has a real opportunity here to place China at the head of the table here. If the pain from this standoff gets worse, then Xi can come in a broker a deal. The Iranians rightly don't trust Trump, but they can trust China (I can't believe that's where we are). 

Europe won't help us, because we've pissed them off repeatedly. The other Middle Eastern countries are exasperated by Trump's fecklessness. That more or less requires some other head of state to come in and resolve this issue. India is to Islamophobic, so that pretty much leaves China, I suppose the EU could try, but would Trump trust them? Would they trust Trump?

We are learning in real time how Trump managed to go bankrupt selling gambling, football and steaks to the American public.

Why Netanyahu Will Never Agree To A Peace Plan

 It's unclear the degree to which young people's anger over Gaza tilted the election away from Harris. I have my doubts, simply because it was not those demographics that really hurt her. It was also not like 2016 where a few thousand votes could have swapped the result.

Still, Israel and Gaza remain a contentious issue within the Democratic Party (and though less of one, an issue among the right as well). The most recent effort to fashion a peace deal has foundered when Netanyahu rejected it.

To really understand WHY Netanyahu rejected it, you really should read Martin Longman's piece in full. 

Is Netanyahu a terrible person? Why, yes. He is. But he's also acting out of political and personal necessity that is shaped by the electoral politics of the Israeli right.

Worse Than Watergate

 Richardson reminds us that Richard Nixon was not hounded from office by Democrats, but he resigned because Republicans in Congress placed the rule of law and the interests of the United States above party loyalty. 

Trump's scandals are worse than Watergate. On a daily basis. What is truly worse than Watergate, though, is Congressional Republican spinelessness.

This Is Bad

 Pete Hegseth's little war with Iran has consumed most of our advanced stand-off munitions. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to create these missiles that can be safely fired outside the range of defensive batteries. Cruise missiles and the like are very effective...and very expensive and very hard to make.

Hegseth is a preening idiot whose qualifications to lead the world's most expensive and professional military is that he was a Fox News blowhard. His macho posturing worked...ok...when dealing with alleged drug boats that he could simply blow out of the water. Even the raid on Venezuela worked well, because it was so limited in scope.

Iran has been preparing for this moment since 1979. We know this, but Hegseth ignored the warnings. Now, we have degraded our advanced weaponry to the point we have degraded our overall national security. He should lose his job, but he never should have had it in the first place.

His ridiculous emphasis on cartoon masculinity does not inspire confidence in making wise decisions. The overall corruption of the administration is also not inspiring confidence in making good decisions in the face of this legitimate crisis. The great strength of a functioning democracy is course correction. During the Civil War, both sides struggled early in the war with "political generals" who earned their stars by being political figures who could raise a regiment of volunteers. The rise of actual competent generals like Grant, Sherman and Sheridan happened because feedback was assimilated in ways that doesn't happen in an authoritarian system. Apparently Trump didn't know about the munitions shortages, because no one wanted to be the one to tell him.

The solution to this emerging crisis is actually fairly simple. We should partner with Ukraine to mass produce drones. They could get 33% of the drones we build in return for their knowledge. Drones do not have the range of a cruise missile or an ATCM, but they could move to immediately repair the hole in our munitions.

However, we do not have competent people running the Defense Department and the Executive Branch. Hegseth is mewling about testosterone and there are unlikely to be enough corrupt kickbacks in a drone program to make it worth Trump's while.

We are a weaker country because a bunch of insecure men in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris' laughs. We have a president whose admiration of Putin has replicated Putin's disastrous defense posture.

From Tiny Acorns...

 The job market is softening, even as inflation remains relatively hot. Meanwhile we are starting to see Trump endorsed candidates lose Republican primaries. The two that stick out are a candidate in Michigan who had suspended his campaign and still won. The other is that truly awful Rep Andy Ogles went down last night in Tennessee. 

There are a few things that will create a Blue Tsunami in November:

- Low approval ratings for the president. Check.
- Economic unhappiness. Check.
- Enthusiasm on the part of the "out" party. Check.
- Dispirited members of the president's party. Check.

Gerrymandering will cut into this a bit, but a sufficient wave will actually swamp the gerrymanders. 

We aren't there yet, and I'm prone to hitting the Hopium Pipe. but we should win the House and I think we can win the Senate, too. 

It's The Corruption

 My summer work has been to add to a student reader in US History, as we have to condense readings for a new schedule. The last installment was on the 1920s. I wrote about Harding's scandals and the market crash, while reading Sorkin's book on 1929. There are echoes today.

Richardson runs through the revelations about Trump's money laundering and the way big banks sheltered Epstein. Capitol One suspended Trump's accounts because they reeked of money laundering (though they waited until he left office, because they know he's a vindictive prick). We have the president of the United States with MASSIVE money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes...and there is seemingly nothing we can do about it. 

Harding himself - like Grant - does not appear to have profited from his office. His Attorney General sold liquor licenses (under Prohibition you needed a special license) and pardons. He did not serve any prison time, of course, but he was put on trial. His Interior Secretary did go to jail for selling strategic oil reserves to a private oil company. His Veterans Bureau leader also pocketed millions in kickbacks and bribes. What distinguishes Trump is that he personally is getting rich off his office. That has never, ever happened in our 250 year history that we know of. 

In the aftermath of the crash of '29, Congress eventually got around to holding hearings - the Pecora Hearings - on the financial crimes and mismanagement that Wall Street committed in the bubble of '28-29. The thing is, they didn't find many crimes, because there were no laws against insider trading, tax evasion and market manipulation. Those hearings led to a few prosecutions, but I can't recall many convictions - similar to 2008 in the lack of convictions. Instead, it led to the New Deal financial reforms, like Glass-Steagall and the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Now, we have a (deeply unpopular) president who is at the nexus of a myriad of financial crimes and possibly a pedophile ring. He is building gilded monuments to himself with taxpayer money, while raking in bribes by the literal billions. 

Meanwhile, the Republican Congress is obsessed with Anthony Fauci and 45% of Americans will still vote for these corrupt fuckers. 

Spent The Day On A Tractor

 Moving stuff from one place to another. Mostly rocks. Had to get off and hand load the bucket a lot.

Freaking exhausted. I am not a young man anymore.

Vengeance

 The Incumbency Problem has been stalking global politics since Covid, but really since 2008. The financial crisis brutalized a lot of people, but not the actors most responsible for it happening. As Krugman notes (indirectly), Democrats have let people off the hook far too often when taking power. In Obama's case, Krugman faults him for not prosecuting those who lied us into Iraq, but the stronger argument was in failing to prosecute Wall Street. 

The recovery from 2008 was solid, but tilted initially far more towards Wall Street than Main Street. Biden was not going to get caught in that, and his recovery plan from 2021 was designed to help the average person, as well as forestall an economic contraction. Even more than just "helping", it really does seem like what the average person wants is vengeance. 

Sure, the Covid checks were nice, but they want to blame someone for being afraid, for disrupting their lives. That's why we have these stupid attacks on Fauci. The problem is that there really isn't someone to "blame" for Covid. I would argue that Trump's feckless, moronic leadership made things worse, and the high death rate in the US would seem to back that up. But the virus itself can't be held accountable. It's a virus. So instead, we have the Lab Leak deadenders, the Fauci Jihadists, the Antivaxxer Brigade. None of it really makes sense looking at the evidence, but it does make sense if you understand that people want to blame other people, not the impersonal universe.

This is why incumbent parties lost power all over the world since Covid. People need to blame someone, so they blamed those in charge. Sadly for Democrats, people don't seem to remember who was in charge in 2020. If Covid 19 had been Covid 18, I think Democrats win in 2024. 

All of this brings us back to Trump and his brazen lawlessness. Elliot Morris notes (paywall) that Trump is obviously hated by Democrats, but increasingly hated by Independents, too. What's more, his own supporters are getting more and more disillusioned by him. All of this points to another Blue Wave election - even with the gerrymandering. 

If Democrats do win both Houses, they cannot try and "govern" in the way they typically do when there is divided government. They have to go medieval on Trump's diapered ass. The reason why insurgent candidates are cleaning up in primary elections is not a deep and abiding love for "socialism" whatever that might mean to voters. It's a deeper feeling that Democrats have spend far too much time trying to repair the damage Republican policies have wrought and not enough time putting heads on spikes. Why trust that cadre to do anything different this time?

Presumption of Regularity

 In her recounting of the dismissal of charges against David Hearn, Richardson points out that judges are starting to deny "presumption of regularity" to Department of Justice lawyers. Basically, judges assume that DOJ lawyers aren't lying or otherwise being sketchy (like hiding evidence from a grand jury. Presumption of regularity is based on centuries, really, of precedent that the government is not captured by a patrimonial strongman bent on destroying American democracy to sate the void in his soul. Certainly there have always been DOJ lawyers who fucked around with this principle, but the presumption requires this to be treated as an act of individual malfeasance. Judges are now saying that this is policy.

Joe Biden made two huge mistakes as president. The first, obviously, was deciding to run again at an advanced age with a speech impediment that was getting worse. He simply could not communicate well on a daily basis.

The second was Merrill Garland.

Garland was a judge, not a prosecutor. He had been denied a seat on the Supreme Court by Mitch McConnell (is he dead yet?), and that moment was really a watershed moment in Republican fuckery. Holding a Supreme Court seat open for a full year in order to gamble on a Republican winning the next election was a huge violation of "norms." Garland was supposed to reestablish the professional neutrality of the Justice Department, but in the process  delayed in prosecuting Trump for his many crimes. One has to think that Trump actually being in jail in the winter of 2024 might have made a difference. But "norms" man.

Making Garland Attorney General was not just a consolation prize, it was an effort by Biden and Democrats to reestablish those norms like regularity. Democrats have the burden of defending flawed but critically important institutions in the face of an historical moment when people are strongly anti-institutional. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration can be painfully slow in approving new treatments. However, RFK, Jr deciding that vitamins can cure measles is not a step in correcting this.

There has been talk in some quarters about the need for a Democratic Project 2029. Given the unpopularity of Project 2025, I'm not sure I see the point. However, there are some topics that Democrats need to coalesce around. Some are easy: kill the tariffs, restore America's alliances, raise taxes on the wealthy, undo the GOP's attacks on healthcare, end environmental degradation and his incessant building of monuments to himself. 

When it comes to norms in the Justice Department, this gets trickier. You absolutely need an impartial, professional DOJ. You also need to have real, tangible accountability for the orgy of corruption under Trump. 

Threading that needle - the creation of an independent commission, perhaps - will be an important part of restoring the presumption of regularity, by not engaging in the Garland-style caution about norms and prosecuting those leaving office.

UPDATE: And just on cue, the Republican holdouts against Todd Blanche as Attorney General have caved, because of course they did.

A True Reflection

 Richardson recaps the saga of the Trump reflecting pool fiasco and the indictment and then retreat from that indictment of David Hearn, the former Olympian who was arrested for vandalism for touching the algae mucked water in the reflecting pool.

I think this is an interesting angle on the question from yesterday: Is Trump suffering from dementia? As I wrote, Trump is of mediocre or below average intelligence; he has never been interested in the discomfort of educating himself; he is now surrounded by a host of sycophants who feed his delusions. This case is a great example of Trump making a stupid claim to assuage his ego and then having the machinery of the Federal government have to support that stupid claim.

For all the very real failure of Congress to act as a co-equal branch of government and the corrupt enabling of Trump by the Supreme Court, the courts - in general - have held. Especially when it comes to the many, many lies that Trump says, the Courts require proof and he has none. This exposes his "legal" team when they have to defend these lies. 

Trump is a malignant narcissist, and as such is psychologically incapable of admitting when he has been defeated. Whether in court, in the Persian Gulf or in an election, Trump cannot lose. It's simply impossible for him to admit this. 

So we get the spectacle of this farcical arrest, the quagmire in the Straits of Hormuz and January 6th. And millions of Americans felt this fucking guy deserved to be returned to the White House.

Is Trump Experiencing Dementia?

 Maggie Haberman - who has been a weird sort of insider reporter in Trumpistan - thinks that Trump is as sharp as he's ever been. Now, my position is that Trump has always been pretty stupid, especially if we are talking about higher, abstract cognitive functions. He has a base ability to bully and cajole and "sell" himself, but he is not a deep thinker. He has also spent his entire life at war with the world, and that stems from his lack of overarching intelligence. He was the not-too-bright failson of a self-made asshole from Queens, and he simultaneously craved the attention of the Manhattan set and resented them for not accepting him, except as a punchline.

As Rofer points out in the linked piece, saying that Trump is not suffering from dementia does not imply that he is operating in a productive cognitive state. Trump's business was an extremely small outfit of co-conspirators. During his first term, he was surrounded by the "adults in the room" - people who understood how government worked and what American principles generally were. 

Now, Trump is surrounded by sycophants who lavish North Korean-style praise on him. He is increasingly in a bubble, where bad news isn't really penetrating his inner bubble. The result is the Iran fiasco, the inflation, the various legal setbacks, and the complete inability to pass legislation despite having control of both houses of Congress. 

Haberman's point that Trump does not exhibit "dementia" is probably only slightly accurate. Having watched people fall into dementia, it's not a light switch. You slowly degrade in ways that can be very hard to pick up by people who are around you all the time. Still, there's a chance that we have someone who was not very smart to begin with, is experiencing normal aging and is walled off from information that might wound his fragile ego. 

This doesn't account for the falling asleep in meetings, the unexplained medical visits and his incessant bragging about passing a dementia test. As someone who felt that Biden was suffering not from dementia but from an acceleration of his speech impediment, I suppose I should extend the same benefit of the doubt to Trump.

I just don't feel like it. 

Even More Idiocracy

 When Trump was inexplicably returned to the White House by a feckless American electorate, I remember a conversation with a colleague about what might be the worst outcomes of Trump 2.0. He and I both agreed that losing the Federal Reserve's independence was high on the list of bad outcomes. 

I'm reading Aaron Ross Sorkin's 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History - And How It Shattered a Nation. I'm only about a quarter way through it, and I've already learned a lot, including how the Fed tried to rein in the speculative bubble on Wall Street in March of that year. That was news to me. Wall Street kicked back against that effort. I am anticipating that this was a major fuel to the conflagration that erupted in October.

When Jerome Powell retired and was replaced with Kevin Warsh, that was a really troubling development. He's a partisan hack rather than a dispassionate economist. As Krugman notes, Warsh made a statement on Wednesday about the decision to leave rates where they are and that tanked the bond market. Some of that was that there were three dissenters - and that's unusual. Some of it was that Warsh was placed on the Fed to give Trump what he wants, and Trump wants low interest rates. We are experiencing inflation from Trump's misguided tariffs and mishandled war, so we need to get ahead of inflation - the way we did in 2021. In that instance, the Federal Reserve was able to quickly address the Covid inflation and quell that fire without shoving us into a full blown recession.

Now, we have Warsh who is part of the Legion of Dumb surrounding Trump and his statements reinforced the perception that he is not interested in shepherding the economy through an inflationary period, but rather he just wants to assuage the Toddler in Chief with the binkie of low interest rates.

Can we come back to our old role in the world once Trump is gone? Kind of. It will be different, as Europe and the rest of the democratic world has seen that we can no longer be completely trusted. Still, we are a critically important country, and if we return to sanity, that will be welcomed in most corners of the world. 

If Trump really can corrupt the Federal Reserve, though, we might be headed for another economic catastrophe, which will take decades to crawl out from under. 

Bliss...Until It Isn't

 One of the nice things about the trip we were on was that I didn't feel compelled to read my writers every day. I didn't need to process all the hot takes and sage musings that I usually do. Driving through the Colorado high country, I could just take it all in and enjoy the company of friends and family.

It strikes me that this is how most Americans live and it must be nice. Sure, there are times when things seem really bad, and you don't have the cognitive architecture to process and understand it, but most of the time, a certain amount of ignorance really is blissful.

I did peek in on Krugman's shorter pieces, and it was interesting the theme of the past week has been just how damaging ignorance can be when it typifies the people in charge of government. Two examples that Krugman cites are the willful ignorance (or more like obstinate refusal to acknowledge facts) around climate change and the lying ignorance around the Iran war. 

Of course, you can't have any of this without the signature fact of the age: Donald Trump is a deeply stupid and damaged man. He has then surrounded himself with other deeply stupid people and smart people who make themselves stupid to twist themselves into courtiers to sate the omnivorous ego of this awful fucking man. 

The bizarre spectacle of the Fauci obsession is another brick in this towering edifice of stupidity. Anthony Fauci - and really the whole communicable disease community - were groping in the dark in the early days of Covid. They erred on the side of caution, but the stupidity and lack of leadership of Donald Trump and the fever swamps of right wing and woo woo conspiracy sites made Covid something it wasn't. "It's just the flu." 

In the end, over a million Americans died earlier than they otherwise would have because of Covid. If things like masking where taken seriously, that number would be lower. If people took the vaccine, that number would be lower. America had one of the worst records during Covid, because we were led by deeply stupid people in the early days of the pandemic, and because right wingers politicized it. 

People will point to the closing of schools as being a mistake, because kids rarely died from Covid (How many dead kids would have been too many?). This neglects that teachers - many of them older - were also part of school communities. 

All Fauci did was try and save lives. His caution and the desperate need for Covid to be a "lab leak" made him out to be a villain. Six years later, he's being dragged before Rand Paul because RFK, Jr. searched every file to find his personal diary - a diary that does nothing to discredit his decision making. 

One of the conversations we had in Colorado was with an old friend who works in the tech sector. He said he read a definition of intelligence that was basically: the ability to make predictions. I have been thinking about intelligence as a concept, and I came up with four different levels of intelligence.

The first is "Training" or simply the ability to be trained. A dog can be house trained, and a kid can be trained in spelling. The second is "Knowledge." This is the ability to recall information. Again, a dog can remember where her favorite plushie toy is, and a kid can remember the French word for toy. The third level is - with a nod to my friend - "Prediction" or "Analysis". Can you use knowledge and your mental training to predict things or draw meaningful connections? The final level is "Wisdom". Do you know the true value of things - not its price, its value?

When I think about the Trumpist movement - extending beyond Trump himself to his whole movement - I can see some Training, but when it comes to Knowledge they are so warped in what they "know" because they just don't want to understand the complexity of the world. They don't value complexity. 

This is how you get the Iran War. This is how you get inflationary tariffs. This is how you get a tariff on Canada for not raking their forests. 

The root of populism is that any person is as good as any other person and therefore rule by elites - especially cognitive elites or experts - is disdained in favor of putting loyalists into positions of authority and even in the implementation of policy.

It's stupid and it's degrading this country a little bit every single day. 

Been Travelling

 We were out in Colorado having a sort of mini family reunion. I brought my computer, but (luckily) there wasn't enough down time to really pull it out and keep the string going.

A Unified Theory Of Trump

 Tim Kreider wrote this exceptional piece on Donald Trump. I really, really recommend reading it, because it captures the whole media failure of the past decade. 

He starts by talking about the movie Psycho that starts as a crime thriller, and everyone - especially the investigator Arbogast - thinks they are in a crime story. In fact, they are in a horror/monster movie, and that tension is what makes Psycho one of the greatest films of all time.

Anyway.

Kreider's point is that journalists think that they are covering a politician, when in fact, they are covering an idiotic monster. This is the crux of it:

If you’re writing an op-ed or political analysis, or appearing as a guest on a podcast or discussion panel, you feel a professional obligation to try to come up with a novel insight, a “hot take”—ideally, something smarter than whatever all the other smart writers and speakers are saying that day. Something other than the obvious. The problem is, the object of so much of that labored ideation, Donald Trump, is obvious. He is not a complex figure of Nixonian contradictions. There are no depths to plumb; his biographers are going to have to pad out their books with a lot of background information and photo sections. He does not engage in subtle Machiavellian maneuvering; the only moves he knows are the playground rudiments: brag. Deny. Bully. Bribe. There’s nothing there for a smart person to figure out; they’re writing think pieces about a guy who doesn’t. His operating principles, the only rules you need to remember to understand absolutely everything he does, are simple:

1) He is a very stupid person who has never read or learned or ever been really interested in anything that didn't directly benefit him and (not unrelated)

2) He genuinely doesn't give a shit about anything other than himself - not his voters or his party or his allies in Congress or his "friends"/business associates or his own family. I have no doubt he would sell his daughter to a Saudi prince if he could negotiate a good price.

He also does not have what you would call a hidden agenda. His goals are as crude and basic as a flatworm's. He wants:

A) to make as much money as possible any way he can
B) to have everyone pay attention to him all the time
And - increasingly a priority the past few years -
C) to stay out of prison

(His conspicuous cognitive decline complicates all of the above, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental principles at work.)

The fallacy’s derivation notwithstanding, I’m not arguing that Donald Trump is psychotic; he’s not that interesting. He has the conscience of a toddler and the ethics of a tick but he isn’t mentally ill. He’s just a soft, spoiled, weak, mean rich kid who no one’s ever said no to and no one’s ever loved. He inhabits a sterile inner landscape of panicky, fragile vanity and unappeasable, suppurating resentment.

Josh Marshall once talked about Trump's Razor. The idea was based on Occam's Razor that - all evidence being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. With Trump's Razor, the stupidest and most venal explanation is usually the accurate one. 

"Why doesn't Trump try and address Democratic attacks on affordability?" 
Because he's a big dumb donkey.

"Why does he keep screwing up the situation with Iran?"
Because he's a big dumb donkey.

"Why does he harp on his vanity projects in DC as opposed to kitchen table issues?"
Big. Dumb. Donkey.

Weider continues (the format seems to work here):

“Sanewashing” is what critics call the journalistic tendency to try to describe and explain Trump in the language of conventional politics, presuming that it’s a media conspiracy to normalize his pathology and gaslight us all into thinking we’re overreacting. There may be some truth to this, but I think the explanation is more complicated; people who have spent their careers covering politics simply don’t have a vocabulary for what’s happening now; they’re like noir detectives in a slasher film. There’s no real precedent for someone who wields more power than any other individual in human history simply having no idea what he’s doing, or behaving with such naked, shameless self-interest. They can’t not report on what the President said or did that day; but it’s too terrifying, unimaginable, to acknowledge that the guy with access to the nuclear codes knows much less about geopolitics than your fourth-grader, or that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is way lower on his to-do list than building that bigass arch. Two days ago, after Trump dismissed the Iranian leadership, whom he’d earlier called “smart, strong people” as “scum,” I got to listen to a White House correspondent halfheartedly float the notion that the abrupt contradiction might’ve been a bargaining tactic, struggling to avoid the conclusion that nothing the President of the United States says really means anything much at all.

If we ever have a clear understanding of this era, we have to grapple with the fact that Trump is a reasonably stupid person who has one skill - selling "Donald Trump" - and we have tens of millions of Americans who are also dumb enough to believe in what he's selling. That latter point is not one Weider makes, but I think is important. If you're a political junkie, how do you reconcile your years of study and passion with the realization that millions of your fellow countrymen - this bedrock of democracy - are fucking just as stupid as Trump is?

Read the whole thing.

Wierd

 Yesterday it wouldn't let me post.

I may have to migrate to Substack to write this shit that no one reads.

Class In America

Yglesias, the other day, raised the issue of how hard it is to define "class" in America. This is not a new challenge and it remains in many ways the single greatest obstacle that those self-styled socialists have in trying to win friends and influence people.

When Marx wrote back in the middle of the 19th century, he predicted that his communist revolution would most likely happen in America - a country he never set foot in. His reasoning was that the revolution had to occur in a place that had a highly developed industrial economy that relied on wage labor - the proletariat - coming to the realization that they were being exploited by capital - the bourgeoisie. Once they realized that, they would rise up in their numbers and overthrow the existing system of exploitation and replace it with a utopia where the fruits on industrial production would be shared equally.

So that never happened.

Where "communist" revolutions happened were in fact economically backwards societies like Russia, China and Cuba where you had the old feudal-style relationship between land owner and peasant. This was not at all what Marx predicted and predictably, those countries struggled to distribute the fruits of industrial production because they lacked industrial production. C'est la guerre.

This did lead to a bunch of feverish arguments all the way into the 20th century of why class-based politics never took hold in the US. Britain and other countries had Labour parties and Socialist Parties that routinely won elections. The Socialist Party in the US maxxed out with a 4th place finish in 1912. Despite real anger among many working class people, there simply never developed a fully "class conscious" proletariat in the United States.

Fast forward to the post-industrial US of today, the elements of class based politics is even tougher to create. Yglesias' jumping off point is the Graham Platner debacle in Maine, because Platner's definition of "working class" is so expansive, it's meaningless. Platner himself "qualifies" because he doesn't have a Bachelor's Degree, because he dropped out of college. He also went to Hotchkiss, which is not exactly working class. His attraction was that he seemed working class at first blush. He had a bushy beard; he was a veteran; he was an "oyster farmer." 

For that group of political consultants that elevated him to relevance, this was an antidote to "HR liberalism" that policed your pronouns and did land acknowledgements. (It was very much a gendered critique of current Democratic politics.) Platner looked credibly working class, so he must BE working class, and this will return working class voters to the Democratic Party.

Except wherever you look, including the current face off between the DSA Left and the Standard Liberal in the Michigan Senate primary, you see candidates like Platner or Abdul El-Sayed running much stronger amongst college educated voters than the "working class" voters that they purport to advocate for. In the NY House primaries, the DSA candidate defeated the head of the Hispanic Caucus by relying on voters in the Columbia University part of the district, not the Hispanic working class part of the district.

In other words, the biggest supporters of class-based leftwing politics are college educated voters who are not usually lumped into the "working class" basket. THOSE voters are not interested in "defund the police" or "Free Palestine". What's more, they typically don't really think government is going to work for them anyway, so what's the point in voting for someone who promises them "Medicare for All" when you don't expect Medicare to be there when you retire anyway?

Rather than grapple with this dynamic, WAAAAAY too many on that Left of Left of Center space are simply throwing out vibes candidates like Platner - who turned out to be a train wreck. You have a similar situation in Ohio's 7th CD, with a Republican who is credibly accused of violence against women facing another "working class" non-college graduate with some history of troublemaking in his past, too.

There is ONE version of class-based politics that I think does land, but I'm not sure who coined it: The Epstein Class. If you want to take down Trump and the GOP, that's a brilliant rhetorical flourish, because it links Trump's heavily implied crimes with Epstein's documented crimes with the heavily implied crimes of a bunch of rich creeps who hung out a private island and may or may not have raped a bunch of children. And except for Epstein, none of these super rich perverts has faced a whiff of legal consequences in this country. 

However, when you think about the "Epstein Class" you aren't differentiating between wage labor and salaried employees or between people who hold college degrees and those who don't. You're talking about a corrupt system whereby the very rich escape the consequences of their lawlessness. But if you simply attack the whole system as being corrupted beyond redemption, does that include the system that underwrites your mortgage? That raises taxes to educate your child? We are seeing the effects of dismantling the regulatory state in the explosive diarrhea moment. Isn't THAT system worth preserving?

If you're a DSA-type, you have to see the whole system as corrupt and needing to be replaced by a vanguard of non-politicians who arise from a working class that you likely never really were part of and who have no real credible plan to achieve their change via policy. Focusing instead on the specific corruption of Trumpism is less satisfying (especially because for many in the DSA, the real enemy isn't Trump but "establishment Dems").

Americans have never really seen themselves as part of a distinct class. Even in the Gilded Age and the New Gilded Age, when socio-economic mobility is deeply constrained, Americans have typically not seen themselves as "working class" and that term is now even more meaningless. As a teacher, am I working class? I have a graduate degree and a salary, so probably not. But you aren't going to create a mass class politics excluding people like me. In fact "people like me" are your most likely to embrace the DSA critique of America. 

I'll conclude by noting the most successful DSA politician in the country, Mamdani, has succeeded by being really good at providing public services and for embracing the joy of community. He's a really, really good administrator and a really, really good communicator. His popularity is not based on seizing the means of production, and where his earlier professions of DSA sort of politics like Defund the Police have caused him problems, he has simply jettisoned them. AOC also has a similar pragmatism to her politics. 

What we are seeing is that a pragmatic left is capable of real success, but waiting for Marx's moment of class consciousness is a non-starter.

Fever In The Heartland

 The other day, I finished Timothy Egan's book A Fever in the Heartland about the rise and fall of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Interestingly, I can remember a student paper from many years ago that tackled this same subject. In the '20s, the Klan was reinvented from a specifically Southern terror group aimed at unraveling Reconstruction to a national group simmering in the resentments of small town Protestant outrage over a changing America. They lashed out beyond their traditional hatred of Black political and economic autonomy, but also immigrants, cities, modernity and religions they felt were un-American.

Sound familiar?

Coming out of World War I and the Influenza pandemic of 1920 and centered in the struggling farm economy of the '20s, the resentment towards the new urban power was broadly held - especially in states without a center of gravity in the new industrial urban landscape. Places like Indiana, but also Colorado and Oregon, were natural centers of the new Invisible Empire.

Egan's book centers on D.C. Stephenson, a charismatic con artist and drifter, estranged from his family and harboring a deep need for sexual dominance. As he built up a massive empire, he took his cut from membership dues and bilked the rubes for their dollars. He was also a serial rapist.

Again, sound familar?

In the end, Stephenson - despite controlling the Klan that controlled Indiana - was put on trial for the rape and murder of a young woman. Even as the jury deliberated on his guilt the Klan slate of candidates won victories in the November election. However, shortly after the election, Stephenson was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He expected a pardon from his creature in the governor's mansion, and when it didn't come, he exposed all the corruption that he had participated in with the elected officials who abandoned him. This caused a collapse in the Klan in the North. It would briefly resurrect itself again in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, but it would never again reach the heights it had in the 1920s.

Reading the book, it was impossible not to see the parallels to our own age. For instance, the widespread prevalence of sexual predators in the MAGA-sphere precisely mirrors the sexual violence in the Klan, which extended beyond Stephenson. The nurturing of resentments to create a climate of hatred is the classic "Populist" playbook, and it was not unique to the '20s Klan, but I think the more interesting question is not "Is the Klan's spiritual successor MAGA?" because it clearly is. The question is: If we finally get a full airing of Trump's sexual crimes - especially as it relates to Epstein - will that be enough to break the grip of this particular fever?

And So It Ends...

Today the Men's World Cup ends. 

I has sad.

This has been the pinnacle of sport. Unlike the ADHD schedule of the Olympics, where you bounce from sport to sport, here you have multiple games of the same sport, played at the highest level. What's more, this Cup has been joyous. It has been dramatic (and controversial). It has featured the greatest player to ever play the game doing things at 39 that defy age and belief. It has seen tiny Cape Verde push the two finalists to the brink. It has seen fans scream and laugh and cry. Yesterday's 3rd place match - typically a desultory, listless affair between teams upset they aren't in the Final - was the most insane, entertaining game you could hope for. 

At a time when we feel more divided and angry at each other than ever, due to the unique attributes of Trump and the schisms that the social media algorithms exploit, this World Cup has been a beacon of joy and wonder. 

I am sad it's ending. I am grateful I was able to watch so much of it. 

Fascism

 During Trump's first term, I tried very hard to avoid using the term "fascist" to describe his presidency. I felt that he was a patrimonial authoritarian, and to a certain degree, I still hold that belief. Trump believes that the state should exist as an extension of his will and as a means to his personal enrichment. The state should reflect glory and power onto him. I also felt that many of the creatures around him are, in fact, fascist.

At this point - as Richardson so capably catalogs - any plausible argument that Trump is not a fascist has evaporated. The change might be because he's been marinating the increasingly crazed world of people like Stephen Miller and the echo chamber of Fox News. Trump has always denigrated his enemies, but now he's dehumanizing them, and that is the first step on a very, very dark journey. 

His unhinged speech last night and the eager willingness of Markwayne Mullin to threaten to illegal imprison state election officials gives us a pretty clear picture of where things are headed. Republicans must be getting slaughtered in their internal polling, because they aren't even making a case to win elections fair and square. I think they hoped that their gerrymandering would prevent a Blue Wave, but that plan seems to be unravelling on them.

I honestly don't know how successful they can be in finally destroying American democratic governance, but I do know that if Democrats don't win control of at least one, but preferably both chambers of Congress, we are mightily fucked. 

Living Within A Narcissistic Wound

 I didn't watch Obama's speeches; I sure as hell wasn't going to watch President Sundown scream and slur his way through a tired list of grievances. It is of course dangerous that in order to be nominated for any position, including Director of National Intelligence, you have to be willing to coddle the fragile ego of the world's oldest man-baby.

We have to consider the following:

- Trump was a spoiled little shit, who likely struggled with undiagnosed learning disabilities. We know he really doesn't read anything, and he was shipped off to New York Military Academy, which was effectively a reform school.
- Trump spent a LOT of time trying and failing to live up to his more intelligent brother in the eyes of his distant and harsh parents.
- Trump subsequently spent decades in real estate and marketing. He went bankrupt numerous times. He became tabloid fodder and the particular target of Spy magazine back when it was a thing.
- Trump was able to resuscitate his exhausted status via reality TV. This created a false image of the sort of business acumen that he never really possessed.
- Trump then rode misogyny into a fluke 2016 electoral win that endeared him to millions and created a cult of personality around him. 
- Trump - who has struggled his whole life with the gap between his image of himself and his actual accomplishments - now has a coterie of minions and a legion of cultish fans. His omnivorous id is now consuming every scrap of praise and gnawing on every criticism and slight. 

Anyway, we are screwed as long as the Worst Person in American History is effectively in charge of all three branches of the US government.

Working

 After a great deal of deliberation, I rented a tractor-backhoe to do some heavy landscaping on the property we are building our retirement home. Felt I could save some money. (The tractor did what tractors do: it broke down halfway through the first of the two days I rented it.)

What was striking was that I planned the rental around a brief heat wave in order not to die. Instead, I had to worry about whether I could breathe the air, as Canada is once again on fire and the sky is choked with smoke.

The good news is that I'm sure I can bet on whether the World Cup final in New Jersey will be played under air quality that is basically the same as being inside a chimney. 

Pillaging

 This summer, I am writing a student reader - an abbreviated textbook replacement - to compensate for a new schedule with fewer class meetings and therefore fewer homework readings. Who cares about learning, when you can follow the trendy herd in school scheduling?

Anyway, I'm condensing six textbook readings on the Gilded Age into three readings (see "who cares about learning" above). As I do so, I find myself including things like posse comitatus or the Wong Kim Ark case that likely wouldn't be in an accelerated text, because they have such relevance today with Trump's plan.

This morning, I was reminded by a better historian than I that one of the primary assaults on the Post-Progressive State that Trump and Project 2025 have launched is on the idea of preserving public lands. The National Park system is something that my wife and I have inordinate fondness for. I doubt we will get to every single park - American Samoa and the Alaska parks around the Arctic Circle are a wee bit remote - but we are going to give it our best effort. In a few weeks, we are headed to Colorado to finally see Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Yeah, sure, sure, we are going to see our kids, but also Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 

Trump's decision to allow mineral exploitation of public lands and his efforts to shrink protected lands is something that isn't a headline in the avalanche of Trump's malfeasance and corrupt governance, though I would wager that bribes changed hands to make this happen. Some of this is corruption; some of this is kowtowing to businesses over the public weal; some of this is ideological hostility to a government that actually does things that people like; some of this is just "pwn the libtards."

What it is, is not good or popular. 

In the midst of our first Gilded Age, there were still enough public spirited people to create the National Park ideal. There were still enough farsighted people to see that preserving nature was both morally and economically proper. Republicans want to return us to the cavalcade of corruption and self-dealing of the first Gilded Age, but that age ended, and Dog willing this one will, too. 

Institutional Serial Killer

 According to Richardson's research, ICE is responsible for killing 10 people on the streets of America. In ICE run detention centers - outside of the public eye - another 21 people have died this year.

The tactical decision to throw the outright Nazi, Greg Bovino, out the door has reduced the rhetorical temperature and some of the more egregious public displays of force in American cities. This has not meant a change in culture within Trump's Brown Shirts. They can't help but feel that they are immune to public accountability, as the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still shielded from the consequences of their actions.

The killing yesterday of Juan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine is a sadly typical extrajudicial killing for ICE. They targeted the wrong person based on appearance - a Kavanaugh Stop - and then got trigger happy. Guerrero was shot in the head in front of his 3 year old daughter. Guerrero is legally able to work in the US, but for the Nazis like Stephen Miller, it is not his legal status but his skin color that makes him a target. His crime was not crossing a line on a map without paperwork, but being brown skinned.

It is worth noting that this happened in Maine. Susan Collins will not have the luxury of facing a rapist with a Nazi tattoo. Maine Democrats will select a replacement soon, but Collins will have to go before the voters of Maine and explain her support for an organization that has killed 31 people in about six months. 

According to the Gestapo's own statistics, there have been 9 killings (including manslaughter) by undocumented aliens so far this year. From 2023-25, the number ranged from 23 to 29. That means ICE is responsible for more deaths than the so-called "dangerous aliens" that they have purportedly mobilized against. At this pace, they will extinguish the lives of about 60 human beings, which is an par with the worst surge of violence committed by undocumented people during the crisis of 2021-2.

ICE is often compared to a criminal gang, but I also think they are like an institutional serial killer. They operate across geographic distance to dilute their crimes, they prey on a certain ethnic group, they escape accountability for far too long.

We are governed by psychopaths. 

The Cost Of Incompetence

 I've argued repeatedly that an underrated peril of Trump and the general Republican Party being able to control government is the long slow (and now accelerating) erosion of governing competence. Martin Longman makes the case that Lindsay Graham - despite his myriad flaws and failings - was one of the final pillars of the GOP that had at least some vague desire to keep the lights on.

Now cometh the pestilence. Typical GOP stupidity looks at basic health and food safety measures as communism or something, so we gut the agencies responsible for preventing screwworm or hamstring the ability of the relevant agencies to track foodborne illness. Trump has always governed like a Facebook rant from your crazy uncle but now he's doing shit like opening up drilling and mining in endangered habitats, which is just venomous, but also likely really stupid.  Same goes with the various cuts to public health measures: Who exactly is asking for this shit?

You can be "pro-business" and still assume that government regulation is possible and necessary. One of the ideas about regulation that the Progressive Movement argued for was that it would create a level playing field where everyone would follow the same rules. Now there are no rules and no reason not for some businesses to engage in a mass rush to the bottom.

So, if you're keeping track, under Trump we have had three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We have had the Pale Horse of death under Covid; the Red Horse of war in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere, and now the Black Horse of famine is saddling up. 

The White Horse, is the Anti-Christ, a charismatic figure who will corrupt the world, so maybe we've had all Four. 

Lindsey Graham

 I suppose the admonition not to speak ill of the dead deserves following. However, I do think that Graham's death will and should be focused on how a man who was a devoted acolyte of John McCain and who knew instinctively what a piece of shit Donald Trump is could become so incredibly compromised in his support of a man who seemed to stand in opposition to the previous years of public service.

Whatever Graham's actual accomplishments were - and I don't imagine the list is long - he is now reduced to his servile devotion to that horrible creature who hijacked his party and his political career.

For all the other Republicans in Washington who know better, consider that Graham's legacy is not public service and devotion to "conservative values" but a craven submission to Donald Trump.

Slaughtered

 Richardson notes one of the myriad scandals that flies under the radar in the never ending onslaught on professional governance wrought not just by Trump but by Republicans. The Slaughter decision seems to give the President the ability to fire the heads of independent commissions created by Congress. This was an egregiously terrible decision in the way so many decisions - Citizens United, Rufo, Shelby, Trump - have been. It's a wholesale attack on the capacity of the government to produce neutral public goods and competent administration. For the Federalist hacks on the SCOTUS, poor government performance is a feature, not a bug. The worse the government performs, the more it justifies the anti-government, pro-business positions that are what truly motivated the Federalist Six. This makes a 2008 style crash far more likely.

So far, the lower courts are protecting the independence of our elections, but this is why the outcome in November is so critical. Two more years of unfettered Trumpist attacks on the fabric of civil governance and there might not be a government left to save. 

The good news is that the pissy little drama queen watched the Housing Bill become law at midnight last night without his signature. The subsequent problem is that some elements of the bill will have to be put into effect by his cronies and grifters, blunting the ability of the law to actually help ease the housing crunch.

Josh Marshall is correct when he has been arguing that Court reform has to be at the top of the list of any incoming Democratic trifecta.

There Is No Base

 Josh Marshall makes an interesting argument that the Democratic Party does not actually have a "base."  Plausible groups that make up a substantial part of the party are Black voters - especially Black women - women in general, college-educated liberals and the Left.

Of course, the Left isn't really a PART of the Democratic Party. Their shriveled avatar is Bernie Sanders, who isn't even a Democrat. They prefer to slam Democrats more than Republicans. They tend to be overwhelmingly young men who are processing their own psychodramas through their own form of identity politics. The final boss of this form of leftist politics is Graham Platner. If you want a succinct synopsis of this argument, check out Jamelle Bouie's video at this post, and you can skip to the 4 minute mark.

Marshall also notes that the two most important voting blocs - Blacks and college educated liberals - are VERY different culturally. Blacks are among the most regular church goers and white liberals are the least. 

Marshall also notes that the while the Republican Party has factions, they are overwhelmingly white, conservative Christians. That gives one group a stranglehold on the party, and conservatism - as a psychological expression - is already hierarchical, so Republicans can fall in line pretty easily, once its evangelical base makes its preferences known.

Trump was able to become the unlikely leader of this faction because he channeled their grievances, not because he was Christian (Jesus wept, he is not) or because of policy, but because he hated all the right people. Once in charge, his positions became the evangelical's positions, because they tend not to be wildly independent in their thinking to begin with. Oh, sure, "I wish he didn't tweet so much" but c'mon. They abandoned their decision making to him once he mocked those they wished to be mocked.

Ideally, the factionalism of the Democratic Party would make it more robust with internal debates that force groups to defend their positions and policies. However, the Terminally Online nature of, well, everything means that factional disputes harden and become permanent wedges. There are people who have made the specific naming of Israeli actions in Gaza "genocide" not just a deeply felt policy position, but their whole personality. If you are a Democrat who is insufficiently in tune with this, you are simply part of a "corrupt" system.

Republicans, meanwhile, just eat Trump's shit and ask for more.

Still - and this is REALLY important - Democrats won more votes than Republicans in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Then 2024 happened, which was kind of the fracturing along these lines combined with anger over nominal prices and Covid policy. 

Republicans combine structural advantages based on the House of Representatives and thus the Electoral College that work hand in hand with the servile fealty of their evangelical base. Democrats spend far too much of their ammunition on the circular firing squads. 

Mainiacs

 I'm not sure I have much to add about the Platner disaster. I think the broad contours are roughly that

- Platner had a superficial charisma that drew in a bunch of pencil necked consultants and cosplay socialists.
- Maine Democrats were gun shy about taking on Collins for reasons that I guess have to do with her electoral overachieving, but really just speak to a certain weakness among elected Democrats that is driving anti-establishment politics on the left.
- That left the choice between Platner and the aging Mills. That choice was made easier by Mills' apparent lack of fire to fundraise and campaign.
- Unsurprisingly, the very green Platner turned out to have a May Day Parade's worth of red flags. I saw a post talking about why are only the worst people running for office. Generally speaking, though, civic minded people run for office, starting with local offices and working their way up. Some recidivist drop-out has never stood before voters and never been put through the ringer and the organic vetting process that comes with running for multiple offices.
- Republicans in the Age of Trump will excuse all the flaws of someone like Platner, if the candidate has an "R" by their name, because they've done it for their Orange Jesus.
- Things Republicans will excuse include Nazi style aesthetics; sexual assault; pig ignorance. Platner should have run as a Republican.
- Platner should have dropped out after the Nazi tattoo and the early raft of sexually predatory allegations. I'm guessing he didn't, because he literally cannot understand why his behavior - "Hey, I was drunk" - constitutes sexual assault. 
- I hope that every leftist podcaster, every online Bernie Bro, every cosplay edge lord who had anything to do with this guy is perma-shunned from Democratic politics. 

In the end, I'm glad his political career seems to be over. (Again, would it shock me if he became a Republican, a la Tulsi Gabbard, another Bernie protege? No, it would not.) Hopefully, there is some Maine Democrat who can bring the energy and independence to beat Collins in what should be a wave year.

The Post-US World

 Richardson does her usual brilliant round up of the day's atrocities, which is usually most damning when it just quotes Trump verbatim. In this case, there is the embarrassing performance of Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara.

Krugman provides a bit more analysis. Trump went in and started doing his usual blustering bullshit, including resurrecting his Greenland nonsense. What was significant is that it seems that NATO heads of government mostly just ignored the senile old fool. As Krugman argues, this is because what Trump has done is expose every possible weakness in America's place in the world.

We are measurably weaker than we were on January 19th, 2025.

His tariffs have not worked to do anything but weaken our economy by driving up prices. Europe is de-Americanizing its economy, working to decouple from their crazy cousins in Washington. The debacle in Iran - now starting up again - has demonstrated his fecklessness and the failure of defense planners to recognize the new contours of 21st century warfare. He has abandoned the commitment to defend democracy in Ukraine. His constant antagonism has led countries to begin to move away from a dependence on US financial institutions. 

Richardson points to a quote from Robert Kagan:

In January, Robert Kagan warned that Trump’s destruction of the order that has underpinned global security for the past 80 years was creating the most dangerous world since World War II. With the end of open access to global resources, markets, and strategic bases and without reliable friends or allies, the U.S. will need more military spending than ever.

“Americans are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future,” Kagan warned. They are accustomed to the “basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world” and have come to think it is “the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely. They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.”

Everything will be up for grabs, Kagan wrote, with myriad “flash points for potential conflict.” “If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive,” Kagan wrote, “wait until they start paying for what comes next.”

"There is a lot of ruin in a nation." We will find out just how much.

Talking Past Each Other

 Yglesias takes issue with Josh Marshall's take on why leftists are winning primaries in safely blue districts. On the one hand, he does make the solid point that Democrats need to run moderates in swing districts. I don't think Marshall would argue any differently. Marshall - and I actually exchanged emails with him on this - is talking more about system vs anti-system politics. 

Two things I would disagree with Yglesias on is first of all the true "pundit's fallacy." He coined that term to describe the fallacy that pundits engage in when they assume that if a candidate just takes their favored policy positions, then they will win. I think the true pundit's fallacy is that voters - especially persuadable voters - really make sophisticated judgments based on policy at all. The American people were so upset about nominal higher prices that they elected a guy whose signature policy - tariffs - was going to be inflationary. 

The second thing I think is false is that the winning of safe blue seats is somehow draining resources to fight Trump. Sure, at the margins, every dollar spent in a primary battle is a dollar that could have been spent in the general election. I don't think that means that holding THOSE seats is going to be a problem, and I doubt that the person giving to Brad Lander was going to give to Mary Peltola anyway.

Where I agree with him is that I think the Left has largely abandoned reason in its politics. Yesterday I briefly engaged in a Twitter exchange (that I finally wised up and walked away from) where I responded to someone saying the Gaza was a litmus test for candidates. My question was "Why, in 2026, is Gaza not just important, but some people's whole personalities?" I can understand being upset by Israel's conduct in Gaza, deeply upset. I can't understand why this has become someone's entire personality, both politically and even socially.

I think we should cut off military aid to Israel. I think we should stop protecting their bad behavior with our veto power in the UN. I think Biden was slow to arrive at the realization that Israel had gone off the rails, but I also think Biden did a lot more to rein in Israel than Trump ever did. I've also noticed that once you go offline, the campus protests and sit-ins have all pretty much ended now that Trump - who is WAY closer to Netanyahu than any Democrat - is president. Weird.

What I don't believe is that Israeli policy in Gaza is a first order issue in the 2026 midterms. One of the crazier - but I think very emblematic - assertions in the Twitter thread was someone saying that the US was directly responsible for the depredations visited upon Gaza. We did that. We bombed them. Not even, we sold weapons that Israel used, but that we were the ones ultimately responsible for the IDF's actions in Gaza. 

Yeah, no. 

Israel is a wholly sovereign country with a very powerful military. They are perfectly capable of setting their own policy and conducting their own operations. To assume that the US is responsible for that is a form of egocentrism bordering on narcissism. It asserts that there are no other actors in the world but us. That means that MY vote for city council is entirely going to determine what Netanyahu does in Gaza.

Attacking Israel has become part of anti-systems politics. We've been overtly allied with Israel since the 1960s at least. To stand against that is stand against the status quo, which is what seems to be motivating a lot of primary voters - in both parties. Trump is anti-systems politics, too. 

UPDATE: Marshall responds.

What Would A Democratic Trump Look Like?

 He would look like Graham Platner.

Like Trump, he would be a child of privilege who pretends to be something he's not. In Trump's case, he inherited millions, lost much of it and pretended to be a savvy businessman, when really he's just the heir to someone else's hard work. In Platner's case, he pretends to be a salt of the earth oyster farmer, when really he's just the kid of two rich parents who support him in adulthood.

Like Trump, he seems to be a rapist.

Like Trump, he projects an aura that certain people get fooled by. Trump's aura of the no-nonsense businessman; Platner's aura of the working class socialist. 

Like Trump, there's an omnivorous narcissism at work. Both men figured that they could run for office and not have all their many flaws exposed to the world. Both men seemed oblivious to their own failings, though hopefully only the Republicans are willing to ignore those failings.

Like Trump, he was protected from the consequences of his actions. Trump was sent to the New York Military Academy because he was a behavioral problem in school (many kids with learning disabilities would act out before we knew what learning disabilities were). Platner was sent off to Hotchkiss where he flamed out. In both cases, the ultimate reckoning, the consequences for fucking up, were smoothed over for them. 

There is a surface appeal to both men. Trump spent his whole life cosplaying as a hardnosed business savant. Platner looks the part of the former grunt who becomes a blue collar success. That appeal does not survive closer examination. In Trump's case, he has sailed through his many, many scandals. Platner seemed to be doing the same.

I hope that he drops out now. Hell, I hope he enters therapy, because he has some serious issues. As things stand, we have lost the Maine Senate seat, because a certain clique of Very Online Democratic Influencers saw the surface appeal of Platner and then overlooked the growing forest of red flags. Much like two years ago, we have a last minute chance to replace a flawed candidate, but that process will not  necessarily sit well with voters. The only chance of finally ousting Collins will be if the Democratic Party can do what the Republican Party didn't and shun this very "problematic" man until he retires from the scene. 

A Shame

 Martin Longman writes about his lifelong love of soccer and how shameful the last 48 hours have been for US Soccer. The first four games of the World Cup were really joyful, as those of us who love the USMNT saw them play with creativity, verve and passion. This was the "Beautiful Game" in a red, white and blue jersey.

The red card for Flo Balogun was a terrible decision. However, as soon as Trump horned in on the issue, it became something different. He is universally reviled around the world and the only president who would embrace the culture of corruption that surrounds FIFA. When he worked to overturn the suspension, that outraged not just Belgium, but the whole football world. America went from a gracious host nation and a wonderful spirited side to the Ugly American bullies who don't play by the same rules as everyone else.

The first half especially of last night's game was an embarrassing display of timidity and nerves. This was not the same team that we had seen in the previous games. To be fair, it was not the same Belgium team that seemed to struggle to start games and waited until the second half to try and put away teams. They came out firing; we came out misfiring. 

In just the same way that the only game the Knicks lost during the NBA Finals was when that bloated narcissist interjected him into the story, so, too, did the USMNT deflate when he squatted his fat ass on their heads. 

They were most likely to lose against Belgium, who are a very good team. It was the WAY they lost that leaves ashes in your mouth, and I have to think that Trump's meddling completely fucked up the vibes. 

Everything He Touches...

 Donald Trump ruined the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He insisted on making the whole damned thing about himself and his fragile ego, so he created that tacky, partisan laughably inept spectacle on the Mall. He hijacked the normal, bipartisan group created to celebrate the event and made it an ode to his corruption and narcissism.

And he wasn't done.

He apparently made a mafioso type phone call to fellow mobster Gianni Infantino to get FIFA to overturn the red card suspension of Flo Balogun, the US' leading goal scorer in the World Cup. This World Cup has been a miracle of goodwill and unbelievable games. Last night's England-Mexico match was mind blowing, but maybe not as mind blowing as the Cabo Verde- Argentina match. And then Norway beats Brazil. It's just been awesome. 

Martin Longman argues that Mauricio Pochettino should bench Balogun to honor the spirit of fair play. I understand the sentiment, though it seems a little odd at this level, as opposed to youth or scholastic sports. What's more, FIFA is corrupt as hell, so this is hardly out of the ordinary for them. 

Here's a few OTHER aspects of FIFA not exactly standing with moral clarity and fair play:

- Morocco's captain will stand trial for rape soon. He's still playing and Morocco are possible finalists.
- Ghana has a player facing rape charges, too. He's played until they were knocked out.
- FIFA has suspended other red cards during the World Cup, including one for Christiano Ronaldo. 

If I were Pochettino, I might not start Balogun but leave open the possibility of bringing him on in the second half if needed. On the other hand, Pochettino, Balogun and the USMNT have not done anything wrong. 

Trump and Infantino did. Maybe. 

This Cup finals has been glorious. Rights as it reached a crescendo of wonder and awe - Cape Verde, Norway, England at Azteca - Trump sticks his porcine snout in and tarnishes it.