It's The Corruption - An Ongoing Series

 It is a daunting task to try and create a singular line of attack on Donald Trump and MAGA. There is just so much that they do that is transgressive, incompetent, cruel and self-defeating that finding a single tack to take - a central narrative - can be really hard. You can focus on ICE's murderous behavior...but here comes Epstein. Focusing on Epstein? Here comes some racism!

I've argued that corruption needs to be a powerful unifying thread in attacks on Trump. First, because he's easily - and I mean by far - the most corrupt president in the history of the Republic. Harding, Grant, Nixon...they didn't really personally enrich themselves. Trump is making money for himself and his crime family. 

As Krugman points out, there are very, very extensive ties between Trump and the petrostates of the Persian Gulf. There has been a lot written about whether Israel forced us into war, with a lot of that discussion veering quickly into antisemitism. However, the role that Saudi Arabia played has been less focused upon. 

"We went to war for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the result is that oil companies and oil producing states are going to reap a massive windfall" is a decent line of attack. The "forever wars" rhetoric could founder on the fact that at some point Trump will simply declare victory and go home. I don't think Iran is a "forever war"; it's the expenditure of tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars to make oil producers rich - just like his ban on renewable energy is to make oil producers rich.

Anger at rising gas prices will translate into anger at Exxon and Shell and Gulf. Link that to Trump via the corrupt self-dealing that is exemplified in everything that orange fucker does.

This Is (No Longer) CNN

 The news that Netflix is dropping its bid for Warner Brothers Discovery paving the way for odious oligarchs in the Ellison family to acquire the parent company of CNN has real implications for the future of media independence. It's another example of the dynamic whereby Bezos bought the Washington Post, ran it competently for a spell and then burned its reputation to ashes and peed on those ashes. Except this looks like it will be more like the lightning fast collapse of CBS. 

Yes, this is how guys like Orban consolidated power. However, Krugman is right that authoritarianism often derives its legitimacy from addressing economic (or other) crises. Hell, my students are writing an essay on that very topic as I type this. 

I'm skeptical that Trump and Ellison can stamp out all media criticism. We can see what they are doing at CBS, but we also have to note that this is destroying CBS' ratings.

My gut tells me that these efforts to create a "state media" will only succeed in part and in the short run. People are sadly uncurious about the world. If they are curious, they might actually inform themselves and they can still do that. Hell, the Wall Street Journal is still out there committing journalism.

My wife watches CNN in the evening when she cooks. I cannot stomach it now, and I once considered Jake Tapper a friend. It's just insipid pablum. Making it Fox Lite isn't going to improve the quality.

Finally, Trump and Trumpism is not forever. Going back to the previous post, Democrats need to play hardball with whatever levers they can pull. States should file anti-trust suits against this particular merger. Slow it down, gum it up. Fight back.

While losing won't be great, as long as pro-democracy forces can find a way to maintain some news independence, it won't necessarily be fatal. 

However, once Democrats do have control of the government again, there must be a thorough attack on oligarchic control of the media.

Corruption Again

 The unraveling of Liberation Day has been replaced by blanket tariffs. These likely expire in 150 days. There is no justification for them beyond we need the revenue, because we refuse to tax actual wealth. A regressive excise tax on imports brings in some money on the backs of consumers - not the Epstein Class.

Meanwhile, we have another example of the corruption at the heart of everything this administration does. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick "handed over" control of his firm Cantor Fitzgerald to his twenty-something son. Cantor Fitzgerald then went around buying the rights to tariff refunds at pennies on the dollar. 

Basically, Firm A is being squeezed by tariffs, but should - I dunno - the Supreme Court rule those tariffs unconstitutional simply because they are, then firms might get refunds of the money that they paid in illegal tariffs. 

Might.

And that's where Cantor Fitzgerald comes. They will buy Firm A's future refund for money NOW versus the potential refund they might get later. In fact, the SCOTUS' decision to let this play out for months after oral argument probably really helped Cantor buy more potential refunds.

(Cantor denies that they are doing this, but lies don't matter anymore.)

Much of this, by the way, is legal. The degree to which Cantor Fitzgerald might have had access to inside information is unknown. Still, you have Trump's insane presser yesterday talking about how essential tariffs are, and Lutnick was right beside him, potentially raking in millions by betting against them.

Hunh...

I guess in some places, if the president tries to overthrow democracy, they can toss him in jail. 

I guess in some places, if a well connected insider cavorts with Jeffrey Epstein, they can arrest him.

Well done Britain.

The Corruption Is The Point

 If you want to get a really compelling vision of how Trump 2.0 has led to a web of shady dealings, kickbacks and grifts, The New York Times did a great job with this story.

Stephen Miller Almost Has A Point

Stephen Miller

@StephenM

What if I told you our national debt is the tab for the mass looting of the American economy and the mass theft of the American dream?

This was Nosferatu Cosplay enthusiast Stephen Miller's tweet this morning. It's a... bold claim. Yes, the National Debt is exploding, and that is beginning to have a negative effect on our economy. We are returning to something like the early '90s when government borrowing was driving up interest rates. In 1990, a 30 year mortgage carried around 10% interest. By 2000, it had dropped to 8% and the budget was balanced. At the beginning of the Great Recession, it had fallen to 6%. 

One of the real problems with the economy right now is a frozen housing market, despite the 30 year rate being around 6.5%. In 2016, as Obama left office, the national debt was $19.6 trillion. In 2020, as Trump left office, the debt had swelled to $26.9 trillion. After the pandemic and by the time Biden left office, it was up to $34T. In one year, Trump has added another $2T to the debt, despite not facing any significant headwinds, like a pandemic or recession. 

All of this means that we are headed for a debt crunch, and Miller seems to have gotten that message.

The problem is that we know what has driven the spike in debt: government spending exceeds revenues. As we are seeing and will continue to see, the reason why this happens is that we refuse to tax the very rich at levels that we see in other advanced economies. We still fund a massive national defense and a welfare state that - however patchy and insufficient - still provides a lot of benefits to millions of people.

Yes, we have a debt crisis looming, but it's not because of immigrants. It's because of Republicans.

The Billionaire Economy

 Yglesias makes a bullshit defense of billionaires - or more accurately, he erects some strawmen to knock down regarding anti-billionaire politics. It's true that many leftists and socialists have some nutty ideas about economics, and it you just go by the online posting of some of them, there are strawmen aplenty to attack.

The problem isn't exclusively billionaires and many billionaires are not exclusively evil people. The problem is that we have a system that tilts away from equality and towards plutocracy. The problem is that Republicans have stripped away campaign finance laws so that there is no way to regulate the millions that a billionaire can leverage to warp an election. This is fundamentally corrosive to democracy.

As Krugman points out, Republican policies purport to be "business friendly" but they are far more likely to hurt small business owners - many of whom vote Republican. The most obvious example is GOP hostility to the ACA, which many small business owners rely on. Tariffs are a new wrinkle created by Trump, but they are another policy that hurts small business owners.

I'd go further and note that rising inequality reduces consumer spending, which is an overall drag on the economy. How much of the recent GDP growth was simply building AI data centers and how much was consumer spending? One of the fundamental causes of the Great Depression was weak and narrow consumer spending. Demand fell, because whole segments of the economy had no disposable income. 

This seems to be the supply side argument of the so-called "Abundance" movement in the Democratic Party. Housing is a real problem and supply is part of it. (A sizable part of that supply issue is higher interest rates that freeze housing stock, but building more housing would be a net positive.) Reduce prices by increasing supply is not a crazy idea. There is the inevitable leftist pushback that Abundance doesn't solve everything, so what good is it really? 

Permitting reform is a good thing and not something that necessarily gores the oxen of Democratic constituencies. However, if you really want to increase housing stock, you very well need to fund it. If you want to help small businesses, you need to fund the ACA. If you want to develop a poorer region, you will need development funds.

That comes from taxes. I think we've reached a point where we need a far more aggressive and progressive capital gains tax regimen. We also need a wealth tax. 

One of Yglesias' arguments is that Elon Musk got rich by building something people need. The problem is that Musk is the richest man in the world not because Tesla makes the best or more affordable electric cars. They don't. He's the richest man in the world, because Tesla stock is ridiculously overvalued. Tesla makes money of its batteries, which are excellent, but Tesla is not a great automaker. Still, people think he's the future and are investing in Tesla stock accordingly. That seems, for lack of a better word, fake. 

What's more, that stock price - being inflated - absolutely should be taxed, especially if that tax money then turns around and funds the ACA or Medicaid or infrastructure or housing or whatever a society needs.

Do We Believe This?

 The Commerce Department released economic growth numbers that seem superheated at 4.3%. As Krugman noted before the numbers came out, we have a "K-shaped" economy now, with disproportionate wealth being funneled upwards. We had a brief compression under Biden, as wages grew more robustly at the bottom of the wage scale, due to labor market constraints. Right now, we have a frozen job market, as employers aren't hiring, so people aren't leaving for a better job elsewhere. There aren't mass layoffs, but the hiring freeze - which really hits recently college and high school grads the hardest - suggests that businesses are wary of the underlying economic conditions. Wary in ways that would be hard to square with 4.3% growth.

One economist in the Times piece suggests that growth was being driven by consumption in higher income households. The problem is that there aren't enough high income households to sustain the economy. A healthy economy distributes consumption throughout the population. The economy isn't driven (pardon the pun) by the corporate lawyer buying a Lexus or the hedge fund guy buying a Maclaren. It's driven by fifteen middle class people buying Toyotas or Kias. 

The Times piece also mentions defense spending as driving growth, but that would be a legacy of Biden sending military aid to Ukraine. It's difficult to see where the new defense spending is coming from. Another source of growth might have been ICE prison construction, but that seems unlikely to have started, given the appropriations were done in the spring. Consumer spending is up - 3.9% from last year's holiday - but some of the increased spending would have to be increased prices. 

What's worrisome is that lower income households are taking on debt in order to maintain their living standards. If that's a fixed rate loan then that's just bad, but if it's variable interest rate then there is likely to be a consumer debt crisis. The national debt is exploding at a time when it should not be. That will drive up borrowing costs, and if people are putting Christmas on credit cards, that could be catastrophic in the long run.

I'd highlight this 'graph:

Lower-income families are wrestling with slowing wage growth and rising costs of various household goods, like beef, coffee and furniture. Still, even as some major corporations have announced work force reductions, the limited extent of overall layoffs is still buttressing activity. And much of consumption growth has come from spending by affluent and upper-middle-class Americans, who have continued paying for travel, recreation, restaurants and other discretionary purchases.

That's the K-shape. I confess that we have not restrained our spending. In fact, because of the sale of an inherited property, we are building our retirement home, and because the property we sold was quite valuable, we aren't having to borrow (yet). If we did not have that pile of cash, we would not be able to engage in the build. What's more, if we were relying solely on our wages - which aren't bad, but aren't high - I don't know how we could buy a retirement home. (We live in campus housing at the moment.) Left solely to our wages, we would be in trouble.

Finally, there's AI.

Spending related to A.I. contributed to almost half of “year-over-year growth in G.D.P.” in the first half of the year, according to estimates by Principal Asset Management. Most analysts expect that these investments are likely to persist. But the data from the third quarter shows that the trend may be lumpier than some have projected, as intellectual property investments declined, as well as investments in structures, compared with previous months. Other newly released numbers also showed orders for durable goods also fell in October, even as an expansive build-out in data centers marches on.

This is a distorted picture of economic health. Josh Marshall has a note about his new iPhone, which has an unwanted AI feature. Basically, it's a supercharged autocorrect/text suggestion. He says the following:

The iPhone texting overhaul is of a piece with almost everything (not everything but almost) about AI at this moment, which is overwhelmingly a supply- rather than a demand-driven revolution.

I think this is key. A lot of people don't really like AI, but they are using it because they are kind of being forced to use it. You no longer do a "Google search" but a "Gemini search." Some of that IS great. AI search engines are a real advance. Still, the primary use for ChatGPT seems to be cheating. It seems inevitable that it will lead to job loss. We are being given something we aren't asking for and it is coming at great cost. We are building this sector of the economy that we don't really seem to be asking for.

Yglesias has a piece comparing what we assumed about magazine reading versus what we know about reading online. Magazines were supposed to be a leisure time activity, yet we can see in the data that people read online content at work. The computer revolution has not really led to an explosion in productivity, because while people do work faster, they then spend their time fucking about online. 

What will happen with AI, which seems able to further speed up work? At what point does THIS become the hiring freeze? At what point do employers simply replace NEW workers with AI?

The Times piece concludes about AI:

The boom, which several skeptical financial analysts fear may transform into a bubble, has helped buoy broad-based gains in the stock market. The benchmark S&P 500 index has risen by about 17 percent year-to-date and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index has performed even better, with gains of over 20 percent.

The bubble theory is that we are building out AI at a breakneck pace providing a service that - in many ways - people aren't asking for and that might degrade the job market even further. The gains are going to the investor class, which constitutes maybe one on eleven Americans (if we define it as households that have more than $50,000 in stocks), then there is the broad swath of Americans who aren't benefitting from this boom in the stock market.

Finally, we have to consider that the likelihood of the Commerce Department juicing the numbers is pretty high. The economy isn't cratering. It feels unsound, but it's not cratering. 

One shock, though, and it could get very dicey very fast. 

There Is A Club

 And you aren't a member.

Jeffrey Epstein was. (These types of stories is why the NY Times, for all its faults is invaluable.)

Monopoly Money

 There are two ways to look at the proposed merger of Netflix and Warner merger. One is to look at purely as a business exercise of the relative merits of media consolidation, as Yglesias does. When you do that, it becomes purely an issue of market share and relative competition. Interestingly, it the the economist Paul Krugman who looks at the political angle, which is the increased consolidation of news sources under the control of tech broligarchs. 

There is, I suppose, some utility in allowing Netflix to take over Warner and HBO, in that you are reducing the number of streaming services that you can reasonably sign up for. This landscape is changing so fast, that I can't keep track. We moved to YouTubeTV which also gives us access to HBOMax, but I think we might also have a separate account with HBOMax. Then there is however many accounts we have with Disney/Hulu/ESPN...it's a mess.

The problem is that Warner owns CNN. Now, CNN ain't what it used to be and it used be pretty flawed. It's greatest utility is for breaking news, yet most breaking news is wrong. We are seeing this in real time with the fluid situation with both the Brown shooting and the murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner. CNN isn't expanding our understanding of the news, merely the access to it. 

If a broligarch gets his hands on that, it's objectively bad for the country. In fact, as Krugman notes, we can look at Jeff Bezos' takeover of the Washington Post as a model for all that can go wrong here. Bezos came in as a White Knight to save the ailing paper and restore it as a voice of independent reporting. Trump comes along, puts the squeeze on him and he folds like a lawn chair. Really, in terms of true reporting, the only real independent outlets among papers are the New York Times and, seemingly, the Wall Street Journal (yes, their editorial page is terrible). 

We have seen the impact of letting broligarchs take over the media, too, with the CBS disaster. What was once the premier news network - Murrow, Cronkite, 60 Minutes - is now hosting a second rate right wing podcast of Bari Weiss tongue-bathing Erika Kirk.

Jefferson once said he would prefer a country with newspaper but no government to a country with government but no newspapers. Jefferson could be a bit of an idiot. Still, a free press is essential to a free government, and the media consolidation under the control of tech lords is as big a long term problem for liberal democracy as the lawless Supreme Court.

Converging Narrative

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump is the leading figure of the Epstein Class.

Interesting Parallel

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

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

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

Elite Impunity

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

But why did they make that initial decision?

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

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

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

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

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

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

More From AI Dysfunction

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

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

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

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

WTF Was That?

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

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

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

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

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

Has It Started?

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

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

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

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

A Democratic Populism

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tone Deaf

 Yesterday, SNAP benefits were shut off despite there being $6B in emergency funds that courts have ruled the administration has to spend to preserve food security. Around the same time, the rate increases to ACA insurance came out, highlighting the massive explosion in premiums. The House has not met in a month and a half. 

Meanwhile, Trump is posting pictures of the renovation desecration of the Lincoln bathroom. He's squeezing other plutocrats to build a ball room desecrate the East Wing of the White House. He's going golfing again. He's holding a Gatsby themed party at Mar a Lardo. 

The most baffling aspect of Trumpism is how working and middle class people convinced themselves that this scion of wealth, this tabloid plutocrat was their champion. As I've mentioned, we have a Republican Party in our town that has dominated the town for decades. They have recently screwed the pooch on a water dispute that is going to cost the town $36,000,000. They adhere to the politics of personal destruction. 

And they look like they might lose on Tuesday. If they do, it will be because some of the Trumpier households in town are displaying Independent Party signs. That screams to me that lots of support for Trump was because he wasn't a "normal politician" and he was going to "shake things up." I heard the same from my friend in Argentina about Milei. Normal politics wasn't helping them so let's vote for the chaos agent. 

I don't know if these stories of Trump's Gilded Age excesses will break through the conservative stranglehold on the media, but if they somehow do, what is the breaking point? At what point do these voters realize that they have been played? And even if they do have this epiphany, what's the best outcome? Do they switch parties? I doubt it. That's why the Independent Party is a great alternative for voters in our particular town. That's why I'd love to see a Great Plains Farm-Labor Party.

Or maybe they just stay home. In our close electoral landscape, not voting is as important as voting. 

Trump is doing everything that he possibly can to rip the scales from people's eyes. He's doing everything he can to govern poorly. 

Will it matter?

The Red White And Blue Revolution

 The No Kings Protests were remarkably successful (far more successful than the relatively much smaller Tea Party protests of 2009-10). The next question though is: So what? A bunch of middle aged and retired Old White People showed up to rallies.

The team at TPM draws attention to a loose "3.5% Rule." This was postulated by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan by looking at protest movements from 1900-2006. 

The first rule was that non-violent protests were more successful than violent protests. When protests use violence they unleash the far greater violent capacity of the state. This is why Trump kept harping about the No Kings movement being full of Antifa or terrorists or whatever. It's also why it's so important that it was, in fact, a bunch of Old White People.

Once a nonviolent protest movement was able to mobilize 3.5% of the population, it almost always leads to a collapse in the regime. A lot of these recently have been the so-called Color Revolutions that swept through former Soviet Republics and several Middle Eastern countries. There are 340 million Americans. Let's say that the larger estimates of the rallies was right at 8 million. That's about 2.3% of the population. To get to the magic number, you'd need about 12 million protestors.

The economy is soft as hell, but has not yet collapsed. If that in fact happens, Trump's unpopularity will explode, especially since he's currently building himself a ballroom, bailing out Argentina and extorting his own Justice Department for more money. 

Could America be headed to its own color revolution?

Cohesiveness

 One of the aspects of Trump's presidencies is the scattershot nature of them. There are a few policies that create the appearance of a throughline, but because there were still adults in the room, his first administration was incoherent. The second one, sadly, is far more coherent.

Still, who exactly is the constituency for pardoning George Santos? 

The constituency for going to war with Venezuela is Florida Republicans - Cuban and Venezuelan - who hate communism and Maduro. It's a bad idea and we shouldn't do it, but I can at least see the point from an ideological and political point of view.

But Santos? As Josh Marshall has noted, the peace deal - whatever it's actually worth in the long run - was possible, because Trump is the same sort of corrupt oligarch as the Gulf monarchies. They just occupy the same wave length.

I guess the reason to pardon Santos is to let all Republicans know that their corruption and lawlessness will be pardoned. Do whatever you like, Trump will pardon you, as long as you're loyal to him.

That's the overriding point of Trump 2.0. The policy cohesiveness from tariffs to Gaza to selective prosecutions is loyalty to Hair Furor.