The Politics of Surrender

 Yglesias makes sort of a good point, but in his usual polemical style that robs it of its merit. He says Democrats should "surrender" in the trade war with Canada. That's just aggressively stupid rhetoric from a guy who prides himself of his language, but also his edginess. Democrats shouldn't "surrender" on anything. They should END the trade wars, the should END the Iran war - though that gets tricky.

Ending the trade wars is easy, because they are almost all certainly illegal. Trump's bizarre obsession with tariffs is politically unpopular, and - as Yglesias notes - it is unpopular across just about every interest group you could think of. So you just end them. There's no "surrender" involved and using that term would be political malpractice.

This becomes clearer when you look at the Iran situation. The US and Iran are launching shit at each other again. Why? Because Trump cannot extricate himself from this colossal mistake. There is no clean exit and Iran knows it. Iran's victory exists in enduring the sort of pain that is unimaginable in the US, because this is a war of regime survival for them and it's a fucking video game for Hegseth and Trump. 

I don't even know if there IS a solution to this ongoing disaster, unless China and Russia want to jump in and pressure Iran to come to the table. Why would China want to extricate the US from this quagmire? I suppose the economic cost of continued restrictions on oil supply will bite them, too, but again, they might be willing to suffer through that, because the Iran War is just an ongoing disaster for the US. Combine it with the incessant attacking of our allies, and Trump is working overtime to isolate the US from everyone in the world.

However, as we saw in Afghanistan, simply declaring defeat and withdrawing isn't popular either. Americans are not necessarily smart when it comes to foreign policy, and they would prefer a perfect outcome every time. They want to end the war in Iran without using ground troops and without losing. That's more or less impossible. 

The struggle for Democrats is that someone has to pull the plug and it won't be the GOP. They may have to force the US to come to grips with its defeat and that won't be popular.

Tax The Rich

 Krugman's weekend explainers are always pretty good, but today he looks at the decline in tax enforcement under the GOP going back to the 1980s. The story - unsurprisingly - has been that whenever possible, when Republicans have the trifecta, they slash enforcement measures by the IRS. The people most likely to avoid or evade taxes are the very rich. They have both the motive and means to create tax shelters or pass-through corporations or offshore accounts to avoid paying their share of tax. The tax code itself is legally crafted to preference capital over wages, and when you add various legal and illegal measures, the very rich pay a much smaller share of their yearly income or wealth than do people who earn most of their money through wages and salary.

When you hear various left wing populists talk about Medicare for All or expanding program X, they typically don't talk too much about where the money will come from, as they have learned from Republicans not to care about the national debt. However, we really are starting to get to a place where government borrowing to finance the debt is crowding out private borrowing, which is one reason why interest rates remain high. 

Closing the tax avoidance gap will by itself will not fund the progressive wish list. Particularly Medicare for All will require broad-based taxes to fund a broad-based program. You also likely need some version of a wealth tax to target the multi-billionaires, but again, this likely won't fund everything you want to do.

The thing is the billionaires have largely chosen their side. They are lining up behind Trump, because his own lawlessness and disregard for the public weal mirrors their own. Google just changed Lake Ontario to Lake America on Google Maps, which strikes me as a terribly short-sighted decision on the part of a company that is ripe for anti-trust prosecution under a Democratic administration. You could squint and see an argument that Democrats should go too hard after billionaires to prevent them from giving all their money to the GOP - most corporations balance their campaign contributions to preserve access to both sides. The billionaires have chosen their side, and like Trump himself, they aren't likely to be challenged on this by the murmuring minions who surround them.

Writing tax enforcement into law will help a lot. I would think you should also craft a treaty with the EU to standardize tax enforcement, because there will absolutely be efforts to hide wealth offshore. The Panama Papers were proof of that. Creating a universal enforcement regime and a universal suite of consequences would go a long way to stopping the descent into oligarchy. If Sergei Brin decides to avoid paying his taxes, and Google pays the price along side him, would he still avoid taxes?

Unravelling the corruption of Trumpistan will not be easy, and the Supreme Court will try and stand in the way. However, that has to be a major focus of the next Democratic trifecta. 

Masks Or Rather Hoods Off

 The decision to end TPS status for Haitians is tightly linked to the increasingly obvious racism of the Trump Administration, especially the imagery they are using. Haitians in this country have been offered the protection from danger that they would face at home, because that used to be what America offered the world. 

Of course, that wasn't always true. In the 1920s, the US - really for the first and only time - deeply restricted immigration. They set quotas designed to dramatically decrease the number of immigrants from "undesirable" places like Italy, Greece and Eastern Europe. Under the apartheid-like delineation of race under "scientific racism" those people were considered different races than more Nordic, Northern European races. 

The engine backing this legislation was the "Second Klan" which drew on anti-Catholic, antisemitic and anti-Black prejudices to become briefly very powerful across the nation, not just in the South. Donald Trump's father was arrested at a Second Klan rally in NYC.

The dynamic seems to be this: Trump is losing his juice. He's unpopular across broad swaths of the public. His supporters are upset with him. He has backed himself into a losing war with Iran and a stupid trade war with Canada. The alarm bells are going off among Congressional Republicans, as a Blue Wave seems to be building across America. Democrats are slightly favored to win statewide races in places like Texas, Iowa and Alaska.

In response, all he has left is the racism that exists deep within his DNA (The Central Park Five anyone?) and to unleash the foulest creatures in his administration. Just as the Adults In The Room, who prevented him from disastrous and illegal policies in his first term, are gone, they have been replaced with just the absolute dregs of society: racists, Nazis, and an army of trolls and sycophants.

Look, this November shouldn't be close. Democrats should win in places like Kansas and Kentucky if the American people had a shred of sense and decency about them. Trump isn't telling you who is, he's screaming it. If we don't course correct, that's the end of America as we know it.

Lying Liars

 Richardson's run down today focuses on the rampant lying of the Trump Administration. One of Trump's political insights going back to 2016 is that people have such low opinions of politicians that they will assume the worst about them, so he can behave terribly and more importantly openly terribly and lots of people will just shrug it off.

"All politicians are liars" is a popular trope, that up until Trump was largely untrue. Politicians have always promised things that they would struggle to deliver once in office, though if a politician ran on a specific platform, often they would try to pass that platform. Given the nature of our political system, if you ran on ending legal abortions or universal healthcare, you would not be able to achieve that if you won. That's not exactly lying, but you can see why people return to "All politicians are liars."

Even more so, this is true if "All politicians are corrupt." This builds on the above idea, if Senator Smith runs on slashing the defense budget to pay for better schools, and then is unable to achieve this, the lazy assumption is that Smith was paid off by defense contractors. 

What Trump has done is to take these ideas - which are far more prevalent the further you move down the education pyramid - and supercharge them. In 2016, he famously said, "I alone can fix it." Much of his evangelical support began with the idea that this deeply flawed man was their champion precisely because he was deeply flawed. His own corruption would allow him to fight the corruption in DC.

Obviously, that was some weapons grade bullshit.

It is reasonable to wonder how much longer his naked greed and mendacity will be tolerated by even his supporters. People would rather chew their own foot off than admit they were wrong about something like that, so there's a real good chance that he continues to hold onto a fair amount of the electorate. Still, what is that fair amount? 35%? 27%? Can he go lower than the Crazification Factor?

This doesn't mean that his voters will vote for Democrats. However, if millions of them stay home....

RFK, Jr Can Go Straight To Hell

 I lost my dad to melanoma. I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer.

RFK is trying to destroy incredibly promising research that might have saved or extended their lives.

Also, he's a liar.

Losing Wars

 Trump and Hegseth lost the Iran War, because they don't understand war properly. They think the expensiveness of a weapon's system is what matters. It's like the old Spinal Tap joke ("But this one goes to eleven."), where you can't even see the stupidity of the metrics that you're using. With Hegseth's hard-on for "lethality" he completely missed that wars are inherently political acts and leading a democracy to war requires public suasion first and foremost. Sometimes (Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, 9/11) that suasion is handled by your enemy. Trump/Hegseth never made a case for the war, they just did it, trusting that the disparity in military budgets would carry the day. It has been the political will and the ability to leverage cheap drones that has led to an Iranian victory (and it leading to a Ukrainian one, as well).

Of course, the Iran War isn't Trump's only ongoing war. His trade war with Canada is now accelerating. Like the previous example, Trump's fundamental stupidity means that he doesn't understand the basic dynamics of the situation. The US and Canadian economies are mixed together; trade wars make zero sense. Like with Iran, it's a question of political will. Canada is united, the US is not. What's more this will have its biggest impact in states close to Canada. Are their important elections in Maine, Michigan, Alaska and Wisconsin, I wonder? Are farmers' votes important in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas?

I know I've beaten this dead horse to a bloody pulp, but Trump doesn't understand the process of creating a policy, because he spent his entire adult life running a company of about 10 people, bullying other people and then going bankrupt. He never had to do real horse trading or compromising; in fact, he finds those things contemptibly weak. 

When Trump looks at the smoldering mess he's making, he blames it on Biden. This isn't just his malignant narcissism. This is his entire way of doing business over the past 50 years. Nothing his fault; attack, attack, attack; deflect, deflect, deflect; never admit weakness. Character really is destiny. Ignorance really isn't bliss.

If Democrats and independents wind up sweeping through elections in the Great Plains and along the Canadian border, it will be because Donald Trump has dragged us into wars that we did not have to fight, with goals that were unrealistic in the most optimistic projections and have been waged with a fecklessness that would shame a toddler.

The Wrong 80 Year Old

 Dolly Parton's death rather unexpectedly floored me. I was not a huge fan of her music, but enjoyed it. Rather I was a massive fan of Parton the human being. As many have noted, Parton was perhaps the last universally loved American. She was authentic and authentically kind. Her charity work is legendary and her sense of humor sublime. She was the best of us.

That obviously stands in rank contrast with the man who is trying to tear down the country in, as Krugman suggests, a rage against a people that have moved against him. Trump's depredations are increasing precisely because he can read the polls. His threat to tear down the Kennedy Center, because the Courts won't let him put his name on it is a prime example of his narcissistic rage in action.

This is also the "logic" of a domestic abuser: if he can't have you, no one can. He would destroy the country rather than let it pass into someone's hands. Trump's tidal wave of bullshit swept him back into the Oval Office, but he never had a plan or even really a motivation to actually improve people's lives. He never has. He ran for president to stay out of jail and millions of Americans were stupid enough to believe him over the legion of people who told them - straight out - who he was. 

There are two big, huge, massive differences between Hitler and Trump. The first, obviously, is age. Hitler's death was...sudden. Trump, however, is old and looking older every day. The second difference is that Hitler was popular. His early actions and even his actions in the first half of the war were designed to shield the German people from his worst policies. He pulled Germany out of an economic spiral - he did not start one. Right now, Trump is manifestly unpopular with the American people and becoming more so. He's lost the Iran war, which people didn't want him to fight in the first place. 

He's not Hitler, he's Mussolini but with a more powerful country at his feet. 

We are a lesser country and a lesser world with Dolly Parton gone. Her goodness and decency, her ability to laugh at herself, her grace and even her tackiness were all so wonderful and the world is dimmer without her around. Do better next time, Reaper.

Go, Canada

 Trump has launched a trade war against arguably our closest ally, Canada. We have multiple trade agreements with Canada, but Trump's lawlessness and Congress's complete submission have rendered those laws moot. These trade wars make zero sense from any rational perspective. They have to be viewed through the ongoing psychodrama of Trump 2.0.

During the first maladministration, there was a lot of talk about the "adults in the room." Given the dysfunction of Trump 1.0, those assertions seemed absurd. We are now seeing that they were largely correct. There is no one to rein in Trump's erratic "policies." Of course, they aren't really policy, but rather the extension of his NY real estate tactics. You open a negotiation, seem close to a deal, then you fuck it all up to get more leverage. You "assert dominance" in a way to get the other side to submit to your demands. His routine stiffing of contractors was a prime example of that. They thought they had a contract, but he sued and blustered and reneged on agreements to exhaust the other side.

That doesn't work with sovereign countries with their own power dynamics. 

This recent falling out with Canada seems hard to divorce from Trump's other impotent crises. The failure in Iran, the cratering approval ratings, even the defeat of his endorsed candidates in primaries...all of these are expressions of weakness for a man who cannot ever, ever admit weakness. (see the above about NY real estate.)

So, he lashes out in febrile, unpredictable ways. Picking this fight with Canada is just fundamentally stupid. What's more, this is a lifeline to Democratic hopes in Maine, Michigan and other states that do a lot of business with Canada. For someone like El Sayed, this offers an opportunity to change the subject from his association with odious troll Hasan Piker. 

It's also worth noting that Trump is ALSO cutting tariffs to import more grounded beef to reduce prices. Trump has lied (shocker!) about the role that tariffs play in inflating prices, but his own plan to lower prices is to...lower tariffs. Basically he's driving prices up with one policy and trying to reduce it in focused ways to help him in November. All he's accomplishing is to piss off farmers, drive home the inflationary nature of his tariffs and probably import tainted beef. Anyone want to gamble on the rigor of the FDA's inspections these days? I guess people still eat at Taco Bell, so maybe they are.

The "adults in the room" really did turn out to be important. 

You Take The Meeting

 The Online Mob was out for Hakeem Jeffries yesterday, when a story came out that he met with Jared Kushner. Jeffries statement was:

In a statement, Mr. Jeffries did not acknowledge the meeting, but suggested that the only way Democrats would cut deals with the administration would be if Republicans were willing to come their way on cost-of-living issues, his party’s top priority.

“Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people,” he said.

He added: “In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax, and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”

The anger was that Jeffries met with Kushner at all, because...well, I was never really given a compelling reason why. There was one weird argument that Kushner wasn't really part of the administration, which is a prima facie absurdity. Kushner is Trump's Son in Law, married to the only kid he really cares about. Kushner runs around as a shadow Secretary of State. He may not have an official government title, but as someone noted, DOGE wasn't "real" either and they've still killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Maybe it was just meeting with Kushner, because Jeffries should be "fighting" more. So, I posted the picture of Trump meeting with Mayor Mamdani - not to dunk on Mamdani, but because you take the meeting.

This was met with real anger and name calling from accounts that I've had positive interactions with previously. I was called a "dumbfuck" and the like, because I really don't think this is a big deal. 

What's more, as I thought about for more than one hot second, this is a really bad story...for Jared Kushner. This is a member of Trump's inner circle looking for the lifeboats. Kushner is a little weasel, but he isn't a complete moron, and understands that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. He wasn't meeting with Mike Johnson to stop it; he's trying to get ahead of the coming Blue Wave.

There has been a lot of doomer-casting about the coming midterms. "Trump will cancel the elections." 
"Johnson won't certify the election." That sort of stuff. And after January 6th, nothing should be considered off the table. Still, the Republicans in the room seem to accept that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. That's pretty remarkable.

The seething anger against Trump, though, was transmogrified online to be directed at Jeffries. 

The anger is the problem. I hate Donald Trump more than I've hated anything in my life. However, if I were being asked what to DO about Donald Trump, I would take my anger and my hatred and put it in a box. You cannot make your best decisions when you are enraged. You cannot strategize if all you feel is hate. You have to separate the two.

Of course, the algorithm rewards anger, it rewards hate, it rewards impulse. The Very Online people are being mad just to be mad, because that is what the internet is for. 

Politicians meet with people they disagree with or don't like all the time. Mamdani doesn't agree with Trump, but he met with him. People tried to be upset that it was a meeting two months before the midterms, but again, that just shows that Trump's inner circle knows they are about to take a beating. 

I can take my anger and hatred out of that box without losing the ability to put it back in when needed. Maybe that's what allows me not to be mad at Jeffries, since Jeffries isn't the enemy. Unless enemies is what keeps your blood flowing, in which case, assemble the circular firing squad. 

UPDATE: At the end of this piece on the Canadian trade war, Josh Marshall notes the same dynamic when discussing the issue with Canadians. It's simply impossible to have a reasoned discussion with an enraged person.

The Post-Reality Party

 A lot of pondering has gone on about whether Trump is a symptom or a cause of the decline of the GOP into a cult of idiocy. We know Trump is - by the standards of the Oval Office - a very stupid man. Josh Marshall relates how Trump made his money not through skill but through legal bullying. Trump is also incredibly unversed in the basic contours of liberal democracy as a concept. So, yeah, Trump is dumb; Trump is the center of a cult of personality; that cult of personality is super dumb. 

However, this cult of unreason does very much precede Trump. Reagan wasn't nearly as stupid, but he was also not some genius. That largely goes for both Bushes. They were...fine...in terms of intelligence compared to the average, but they also had long experience in government - unlike Trump. They were, in essence, trained in civic government. Trump is not, which is why he's an authoritarian goon.

The cult of unreason, though, can be seen in Reagan and Dubya, as Krugman points out with regards to budget math. Reagan bent a little to the reality that cutting taxes would not create so much growth as to pay for themselves. Bush 41 was even more responsible in that regards. Bush 43, however, was the same sort of spender that Trump has been. If a few hundred votes in South Florida had been counted differently in 2000, the fiscal situation in the US would be sterling. Gore would not have had a Democratic Congress, so spending would have remained low. There's a 50-50 chance that the Gore national security team stops 9/11, the way they did the Millennium bomb plot. Even so, they likely would not invade Iraq with that catastrophe hopefully avoided.

Maybe Obama and Obamacare doesn't happen in that world. Or maybe healthcare becomes such an issue it gets addressed without the collapse of support for Bush 43 from 2005-2008. 

The fiscal situation of the United States would be immeasurably better, and that really can't be debated.

A bunch of dumb ass voters, though, would continue to insist that Republicans are better for the economy, because...ugh.

Debt

 Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein have a long discussion about the exploding national debt. Basically, the important thing is the ratio of debt to GDP and Trump's massive explosion of the debt has knocked us into an unhealthy place economically. The absolute number - $40 trillion - is eye-grabbing, but it's the ratio that's key and that is bad. Because economic growth is stagnating and possibly the start of stagflation that means the debt is growing up while much of the economy is a bit moribund. Take data centers out of the equation and things get really grim, really fast.

The obvious question then is: What is to be done? Both Bernstein and Krugman are pretty liberal, so neither one wants to embrace Austrian austerity. Ideally there are ways to get more revenue by taxing the rich and increasing enforcement of existing tax laws. There are likely a lot more ways to tax capital gains progressively, too.

However, one thing I've never seen anyone mention about trying - in 2029 - to increase social programs AND reduce the debt is the role that health care plays in everything. It's considered politically toxic to raise taxes on the bulk of the middle class, because they are struggling. Taxing them would work counter to the affordability issue that many see as Democrat's best lever. (I still think that corruption is lever number one, but affordability is right behind it.)

However, if we offered a public option in Medicare/Medicaid. that both individuals and corporations could access, we could shift what we currently spend on private insurance to the public programs without raising "taxes." People buying the public option would be replacing their Aetna premiums with Medicaid premiums. Most likely this system would be a hybrid, with most basic care being administered through tiered Medicaid/Medicare but then private insurers would allow for more boutique care and things like vision and dental. This is pretty common in countries with "universal" coverage. The same could be true here.

Ideally, the public option could raise revenue for the single most expensive part of the budget - healthcare - without being a "tax." 

Unless I'm missing something, which I wouldn't know, because I'm missing something.

Harping On It

 I felt Jon Ossoff was a strong 2028 contender before last week: swing state, popular, mediagenic, handsome, can wield a soundbite. He's also a Jew who takes a dim view of Netanyahu, which could help him escape that particular problem.

His actually rather tepid attack on Trump's relationship with Natalie Harp was a wink-wink, nudge-nudge line in a broader attack on corruption (which has to be message number one for the next two years). He did not imply a sexual relation, and many observers doubt that there is one - though it's Trump and we shouldn't rule anything out. 

What is making this story have legs is not Ossoff's single phrase but the White House's response to it. What started, perhaps, as a throw away line to a friendly crowd has become a central news story, because the White House has made it a central news story. Harp herself is not universally loved in the West Wing (far from it, apparently) and the leaks of her bizarre stalkerish behavior are dribbling out. News outlets that might not have touched her devotional scribblings to Trump now almost have to cover it. That's the story of the moment.

A few broader notes. First, did Ossoff know this would happen? Trump is incredibly predictable, and Ossoff's team did share the clip on social media. Was this a set-up? Make a sly remark and get Trump to freak out? Harp is a central part of Trump's social media team, so she would be central to the response. Her craven sycophancy is exactly what appeals to Trump, so the idea that they would let this slide seems remote. Still, that would constitute Game of Thrones level sophistication in plotting.

Second, the media have come to assume that Trump is a genius at social media and communications. How else can the scandal laden oaf continually weather gaffe after gaffe, setback after setback? Trump really is bulletproof for millions of Americans. However, some of this really is just a byproduct of Trump's pre-presidential public persona. He was a celebrity and once that image is burned into people's minds, fact can be hard pressed to counter that narrative. "Of course he's a business savant. I saw it on NBC." 

At some point it really feels like either Trump will finally truly come crashing down into 27% crazification factor or the American Republic will crease to exist. We cannot continue as an electoral democracy if someone like Trump can transfer his malevolent mendacity to an heir. Yet, his constant attacking has worked. Maybe Harp is the moment that tactic backfires.

The New Gilded Age

 Look, if you're not reading/listening to Heather Cox Richardson, I don't know what to say. 

Today, she makes explicit the resurrection of Gilded Age ideas about wealth and health care, two things we should understand as being intrinsically linked. No need to summarize it; read it yourself.

Graham Crack

 I believed that the South Carolina Senate seat was low-key in play before Lindsay Graham's death. Graham was so associated with bellicose foreign policy, that I thought the Iran War might finally sink him. 

His sister being elevated to the seat at Trump's request has now put her in line to defend the seat in November: if she can get past Ralph Norman. Her debate performance the other night was not auspicious.

I think her complete ignorance on one of the five most important geopolitical hotspots is disqualifying. However, it remains to be seen whether being pig-ignorant is disqualifying within the GOP primary electorate. Democrats have a "fight" problem, an anti-establishment problem. If you're tainted by being someone who has been in Washington a long time, that's not considered a plus today. On either side.

This is the downstream risk of populism. "Common sense" solutions are usually wrong, because actual issues are complicated and require expertise and wisdom to solve. Darline Graham may very well be a lovely person; she may be of above average intelligence. She is not, however, qualified for a Senate seat because her last name is Graham. She certainly isn't qualified because Trump liked her. 

Technocratic government is boring. It's not "sexy." Technocratic government keeps food poisoning at a minimum; it doesn't launch wars in complex geopolitical environs; it doesn't gut the civil service, then realize it has to rehire them because everything is going to shit.

Make America Competent Again.

Signal And Noise

 The primary elections continue apace. The Hot Takes follow hard behind.

The latest iteration of the Left-Center tussle within the Democratic Party will be the storyline, because everyone expected Vindman to win the nomination for Florida Senate. Instead, Angie Nixon - of whose existence I was unaware before last night - upset Vindman despite having no cash on hand.

Florida has been a tough lift for Democrats for a quarter century. It's ostensibly purple, but a deep red purple. I really do believe Texas Senate is in play, but as Blexas becomes a potential reality, Florida looks t be retreating. Nominating a DSA-aligned candidate in Florida seems electorally suicidal. Democrats will have to flip a LOT of Trump-Hispanic voters, and in Florida, those are Cubans and Venezuelans. Their experience with "socialism" is unlikely to make them sympathetic to an argument over what specific flavor of "socialism" Nixon supports.

In fact, in Florida, Ashley Moody, the GOP incumbent, won more votes alone than Vindman and Nixon combined. Over 400,000 more votes were cast in the GOP primary than the Democratic one. 

So a sneaky pickup opportunity seems lost.

OTOH, Darlene Graham might actually put South Carolina in play. That would likely require some schisms on the right, but I'd feel more comfortable betting on South Carolina or Kansas flipping than Florida. Still, waves are waves.

Another big story is the casualties among Trump endorsed Super MAGA. In FL-7, accused domestic abuser Cory Mills lost his primary, following in the wake of Andy Ogles loss in Tennessee. Rancid racist James Fishback finished a distant third in the FL-Gov primary. In FL-6, MAGA Troll Randy Fine held off even worse MAGA Troll Dan Bilzerian. 

My worry is that the GOP will send a few of their worst offenders packing - literal crazy woman Nancy Mace's career seems over - which will allow the media to portray a new, post-MAGA GOP that consists of a lot of people like Bill Cassidy or Susan Collins who throw a few moderate rhetorical notes into a career that has enabled Trump and his Legion of Dumb to destroy competent governance in America. 

Ideally, Democrats hold 52-53 Senate seats come January, but that's going to require a Blue Tsunami if they keep nominating longshots like Nixon.

Two Republicans

 The Atlantic has a first person account of a CIA briefer to the White House. She's transgender, and yet she agreed to be Mike Pence's briefer during the first Trump Administration. Obviously, Pence represents the evangelical beliefs of the party, even if Trump seems perversely to be the one who the evangelicals love.

There is this passage:

When my tour finally ended, Pence invited my family to the White House. In his office, he took my mother’s hand and smiled: “You must be very proud of your daughter.”
Years before, my mother had told me that in her grief, she’d felt that—­somehow—I’d killed her son. Now I’d done the impossible: lived both dreams, becoming an intelligence officer and a woman. Now the vice president was holding my mother’s hand.
No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence. On my last day, I gave him a letter. I wrote: “I’m a trans­gender CIA officer, a wife and mother—­and I served the Vice President. Anything is possible in America.” I told him many people at the CIA hadn’t believed that a trans officer like me could serve someone like him.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad I passed the test.”
In that moment, it felt like the battle had been won.

Now, Mike Pence believes some appalling things. Mike Pence worked to put some appalling things into policy. Mike Pence is not, I believe, a terribly smart guy.

Mike Pence, however, is someone who really does try to be a good person. A good person accepts the people who come into their lives as people, and recognizes their innate dignity as human beings. Yes, his retrograde beliefs are bad for America in the broadest of senses, but he seems like someone who "gets" that certain things are bigger than him and his beliefs. That was proven most on January 6th.

The second Republican is, of course, Donald Trump. A man of no known convictions - besides the felony convictions - beyond "What is good for me is what is good." 

There's a big kerfuffle because Jon Ossoff implied in a stump speech that Donald Trump is having an affair with Natalie Karp - the latest in a string of blonde aides who look eerily like his daughter Ivanka. Of course, we know that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. We know he had sex with Stormy Daniels while Melania was at home with newborn Barron. Melania herself is his third wife. 

It's odd to me that Republicans are freaking out about this - perhaps they understand that Ossoff is a real threat to win the White House in 2028 and want to damage him. We KNOW Trump is a sexual degenerate, and that's even without the Epstein stuff. 

I do think that in 2028, character might just matter again. After the orgy of corruption we are seeing right now, personal probity might just matter again. That's mostly what Biden offered in 2020: he's just a fundamentally decent guy. 

Hopefully that matters again. Hopefully, Republicans who embrace the nastiness of Donald Trump go down like dry grass in a brushfire this November and we go back to disagreeing on policy, rather than fundamental morality.

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.