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. 

The Party of Bill Clinton

 The Big Dog has taken some reputational hits in the past decade. The #MeToo movement was not kind to his serial infidelity and the unequal nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Balancing the budget - an extraordinary achievement in many ways - was largely derided in left wing economic circles amid the lunacy of Modern Monetary Theory. The wreckage of 2008 argued, correctly, for Keynesian deficit spending. If you want to see what the wrong thing to do in 2008-2010 was, look at Britain's austerity program.

All of which brings me to the debate about what Democrats should do if they win in 2028 (which they almost certainly will if we have free and fair elections). The problem is that, much like Clinton, this hypothetical Democratic president and Congress will face fiscal realities arguably more dire than Clinton faced.

This includes Social Security.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have an ideological schism in everyone to the left of Mitt Romney. Right now you have a vague sort of Bernie Bro, DSA type of leftist and they have been countered by a technocratic prioritizing of "abundance." The argument is fiscal policy, which is taxing and spending. There is a broad acknowledgement that we need to tax the rich more, but when it comes to Social Security, something like Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" might not work. To shore up Social Security, you need to increase the steady stream of revenue. 

Some of that might come from moving from a payroll tax to more of an income tax. As Krugman notes, the explosion of the wealth gap comes not from a divergence in salary, but in equities. A CEO might have a large salary, sure, but he also has a ton of stock options that are taxed differently than salaried income. 

Capturing that will piss off a lot of people, though doing it subtly - a scalpel rather than a battle axe - might ease some problems.

By the time Trump is finally forced off the national stage, America will be facing multiple crises of his and the Republican's making: a galloping climate crisis, America's diminished standing in the world, poisonous divisions within the body politic, an AI movement largely unfettered from public accountability, a degraded military from numerous misadventures, a need to re-attract immigrants to a place that doesn't feel as safe as it once did, widespread public corruption...the list goes on.

The fiscal crisis will not be a "Trumpist" crisis; it's a Republican crisis. It's the old "starve the beast" form of governance that will require the next government of adults (ie Democrats) have to clean up the mess. 

American politics really went off the rails after the 2000 election. Some of that was 9/11, but if Nader doesn't run and Gore actually wins, the track of American history might not include 9/11. It certainly wouldn't include Iraq. It wouldn't include Bush's wasteful tax cuts. Gore was as exciting as a Saltine cracker, but his governance could have built on Clinton's and created a financially solvent country that felt no need to elect the charlatan from the tabloids and reality TV.

If Democrats swarm back into power in 2028, they will have to make actual hard governing decisions on boring shit like how to shore up Social Security, how to reduce the deficit. When Clinton did it, interest rates fell, businesses expanded and the economy boomed - and not just at the top. 

The question is: Would an angry Democratic primary electorate vote for this candidate?

Vandalism

 Buried in Richardson's "documentation of the atrocities" is this nugget:

Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep-ocean observation system along the Pacific Coast that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments, and the ocean currents that affect climate change. Eric Niiler of the New York Times reported that the U.S. began operating the system in 2016 and expected it to continue for 25 years.

The system is in place. It is not a budgetary drain, and I would guess tearing it out will cost money. As we enter a "Super El Nino" cycle, monitoring these ocean currents is really important to understand what the weather will be for the next two years.

There are countless other examples of this rampant vandalism, of which the destruction of the East Wing of White House and turning the reflecting pool on the National Mall into an aboveground pool are only the most obvious physical examples.

We are building our retirement home, and as we have a decent sized pile of money to pay for the build, we wanted to place solar panels on the roof to reduce our monthly bills, once we become fixed income retirees. There had been in place a sizable tax credit for installing solar, and because we want to have as robust a solar array as possible, we could really have benefitted from that. Without getting into details, the difference in cost between what these panels would have cost us last year versus this year is enough to buy a small car.

The only reason to do this is from an ideological obsession with hurting the plans of anyone to operate independently of large utilities and petrochemical companies. It hurts Americans who just want to control their (spiking) energy costs. 

These are policies, and policies are easily changed by future Democratic administrations (providing we have democratic elections), but man, this is going to hurt, ironically because the median voters was upset over nominal prices.

Another Failure

 In some ways, Donald Trump represents what happens if Republicans actually governed on what they say they want to do. "I believe in American manufacturing" becomes ruinous tariffs. "I believe Iran is an outlaw nation" becomes the current fiasco in the Gulf. "I oppose abortion" becomes Dobbs. "I believe in a color blind America" becomes naked white supremacy.

Nowhere is this truer than in Trump most orthodox Republican policy: massive tax cuts for the rich. Reagan famously (or maybe not) raised taxes when the Laffer Curve proved to be laughable. Bush 41 raised taxes in the face of a significant debt crisis. Clinton balanced the budget largely via increasing taxes, and then Bush 43 blew that all to hell.

Trump's tax cuts and overall chaotic stewardship on economic issues is creating a massive debt problem. Roughly half of the entire $39,000,000,000,000 debt was accrued under Donald Trump, a man whose business practice consisted largely of running up debts, then declaring bankruptcy and walked away from the wreckage.

Sadly, we know exactly what is required to solve this issue, and no one is interested in doing the hard work of restraining spending and raising taxes. "Tax the rich" is a nice bumper sticker and we absolutely need to tax capital gains more aggressively. However, you cannot do the things liberals and progressives want to do simply by taxing the rich more aggressively. One reason is that skyrocketing debt crowds out private borrowing and makes interest on the public debt more burdensome. 

Clinton's economy was really good. I know there's a whole whining culture about how nothing is affordable, because they can't DoorDash 7 nights a week. The permanent unhappiness about the economy is both real and also imagined. In a lot of ways, things are pretty good, especially compared to 2008 or 2020. It does FEEL worse, and that's before Trumpflation really digs into our wallets. 

The spiraling debt will make everything - and I mean - everything more expensive, by driving up borrowing costs for everyone. Economic stagnation caused by trade wars and deportations means that we won't be able to grow out of our debt situation very easily, but that's going to be a requirement of the next administration.

I'm sure that the American people are super duper eager to sacrifice to make that happen.

"Affordability"

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

So why are people unhappy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More On That Oncoming Train

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

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

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

Department of War Crimes

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

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

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

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

It's just illegal. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It Still Sucks, But...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unequal To The Moment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not The Obituary I Wanted To Read Today

Dick Cheney had a stranglehold on "Worst Republican Elected Official In My Lifetime" until Donald Trump came along. The fact that he cared enough about the Constitution to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 is like a form of deathbed conversion.  The blood of thousands is on his hands in a war that was disastrously conceived and fought under his leadership. You could argue that without the Iraq war Donald Trump never really gains a foothold among a certain group of Republicans who saw the Grand Old Party betray them by sending their sons and daughter off to fight an elective war. Russia predicated its invasion of Ukraine on the Iraqi precedent. 

We are a worse country today, because Dick Cheney was Vice President under a weak and feckless president and maneuvered us into one of the three worst foreign policy misadventures in the long history of the Republic. Glad he saw through Trump, but it's not like that even helped.

Speedbump On The Road To Fascism

 Central to the Ghouls surrounding Trump and intent on devouring the brains of American democracy is their plan to militarize police functions. Central to this is utilizing or threatening to utilize the Insurrection Act. That might actually have run into a legal problem that even the Scotus Six might notice. The Insurrection Act was always bullshit, but this might give the Republicans on the bench a chance to save democracy, a prospect I'm not willing to completely cede.

As Richardson notes, and others have noted, the GOP is increasingly in an untenable situation with the shutdown. People are going to lose SNAP tomorrow at exactly the time that they are getting letters about their ACA premium increases. People going hungry when the Agriculture Department is sitting in $6B and we are sending at least $20B to Argentina (a direct competitor in agriculture output) is not a great look! Especially with Trump behaving more and more like the Central Asian despot he so clearly aspires to be. The destruction of the White House to put up a gilded ballroom is just...I dunno man, seems pretty easy to understand, even for the dipshittiest of dipshit voters.

Democratic backsliding and emerging autocracy requires that that the would-be dictator be popular. Trump really isn't, and if anything his policies are less popular than he is. 

Krugman is right when he says that the Republicans were wise to push off many of the worst impacts of their terrible agenda until after the 2026 midterms. What Democrats have done with this shutdown is accelerate the timeline of when the inevitable pain will be felt. All the Very Online Experts who decried the feckless Dem strategy last spring and even this fall ("They will cave, because Schumer sucks.") were wrong. This is really sound strategy that puts the Democrats on their strongest ground.

At some point, too, the House will have to reconvene and Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in, which should prompt the release of House files related to Epstein. Trump's team's preference for "Move Fast, Break Things" is a shitty governance strategy and not much better politics. It works best as a media-dominance ploy, but that dominance isn't always good, when your positions are inherently bad. 

Time Waiteth for No man

 The operating assumption of Trump during the shutdown has been that the longer it goes on, the more people suffer, the more likely Democrats are to cave.

However, SNAP benefits expiring doesn't "hurt" Democrats, in the sense that everyone "knows" that Democrats support SNAP and Republicans don't. 

Now, we have the ACA subsidies expiring and the letters going out informing people of what they are going to have to pay next year. This is happening while Democrats are refusing to vote for a CR until those subsidies are restored. In other words, these two news stories are going to flow into each other. 

Again everyone "knows" that Democrats want you to have health insurance and Republicans want you to earn health insurance. The GOP doesn't understand that both ACA and SNAP help working families. They are so wedded to the idea that all "welfare" is a scam that they are about to face the coming train head first.

I don't think that an up-or-down vote on extending the ACA subsidies would fail in a vacuum. Trump has decided that Democrats can't "win" this showdown, so people are going to suffer rather than have both parties work to solve the issue. All for the whims of the Mad King.

Painful

 In a few days, SNAP benefits will expire. The level of pain this will cause Americans - rural and urban, young and old - is going to be profound. People are going to go hungry. People are going to miss debt payments to pay for food, which will accelerate the usual debt crises among the working poor. 

A "normal" government - even a Republican one - would not want to see Americans suffer. There were competing visions on how to help the poor and the near-poor, with the GOP offering up bullshit "bootstraps" ideas, but at least they cared in the abstract.

Trump is a sadist or at least a narcissist for whom other people's pain is not "understandable." The cuts to USAID have led directly to the deaths of children. We're murdering people in the Caribbean. Those are foreigners. These are Americans, and he's showing the same callous disregard for their well being as he would for people on the other side of the world. Both are bad, but the latter is literally his fucking job. 

The Very Online Doomerism has a point when they look at things like the destruction/desecration of the East Wing of the White House and say that Trump has no intention of leaving office. Democracy is doomed, because he's behaving as if democratic checks on presidential power no longer exist. 

I don't think that's right, because it buys into the same idea that Trump is pushing: that he can create a reality with the stroke of his pen. However, the needless and immediate pain that he is foisting upon the people that he is supposed to be serving (not that he has the slightest idea what "service" means) is pretty strong evidence that he is not planning to have elections ever again.

If he keeps this up, even gerrymandering won't protect him or his acolytes in the House.

The Media Is Culpable

 There are multiple fingerprints on the knife plunged into the heart of American democracy. Some of them belong to the news media. This is one of the greatest failures of the media in my lifetime, and I'm old.

Project 2025 was always going to be the GOP blueprint, because Trump is both the captain and a passenger on this fucking shit-filled cruise liner. Because he's such a stupid, evil bastard, he's empowered other stupid, evil bastards, and stupid, evil bastards wrote Project 2025. That this inveterate liar's claim that he did not know anything about it was swallowed by the press corpse as if it were actually true.

In his conversation with Jonathan Cohn over the coming health care crisis, Krugman and Cohn agree that what seems to have happened is that the worst, most ideological Republican acolytes were allowed to make health care policy without anyone who knows anything about health care policy being able to weigh in. Schumer's statement that Trump had no idea about the coming evisceration of subsidies is probably true. The little bubble that Trump lives in admits no defeat or bad news.

This was always readily apparent to those with eyes to see, but our fucking legacy media was blind to it.

Not Friends

 Josh Marshall makes an important point about how the GOP has been acting like thugs but now expect Democrats to "come to the table" as adults. Yes, Democrats are overly reliant on "norms" and worry about how they will look to Very Serious People, and that makes them predisposed to treat this very aberrant moment as just the usual shit.

Trump posted a racist AI video of Jeffries standing next to Schumer that includes Schumer using vulgarities and Jeffries has a sombrero and mustache in a crude caricature of a Mexican. This is supposed to be the GOP talking point that the Dems are shutting down the government to give health care to illegal aliens. (I don't think that's going to work, especially if ACA subsidies DO collapse, which will impact Americans directly.)

If that's where we are - Trump posting juvenile videos of the minority leaders in Congress - then I don't think we have to expect Dems to "come to the table" with a compromise.

The Very Online, by the way, are lambasting Schumer and Jeffries for using the typical language of the minority party. "We hope Republicans do the right thing." "We are hopeful we can find common ground and compromise for the American people." I get that people are hungry for performative combat like we see from Newsom's communications team. When you say "We hope that Republicans do the right thing" you are not expecting that they will. You are making sure that the sundry ignoramuses that make up both the electorate and the media will see your side as wanting to make government work and the other side as petulant toddlers.

Schumer and Jeffries do not have illusions about who Trump is or what the GOP has become. They are, however, trying to win over the mushy middle. That doesn't require them to behave like assholes and trolls. In fact, the more serious and normal they look, the more Trump and his childish minions look like the assholes they are.

Muscle Memory

 There has been some sniping (and by sniping I mean a full scale artillery barrage) directed at Democrats for their shutdown strategy. Because this is arguably the only leverage point that they have until and unless they get back control of one branch of the government, people want them to try and undo all aspects of Trumpism. 

That's not going to happen.

At least it appears that Democratic leadership is prepared to fight this time. The capitulation this spring was dispiriting, but this time people will be complaining about HOW they are fighting, as opposed to WHETHER they are fighting, which...progress, I guess.

The terrain that the Democrats have chosen is the expiring ACA subsidies. Krugman lays out how devastating the expiration of ACA subsidies will be. This graph shows what will happen in Ohio:

That's bad!

Note who gets really screwed: families and people nearing retirement. Now, the people in the exchanges are people who don't get insurance through work - independent shop owners, contractors, farmers, you know...Republicans.

I get my insurance through work, but I can expect the sky rocketing costs to shrink the number of insured people, which will lead back to the dynamic of using people who DO have insurance to help cover the costs of those who don't. 

Meanwhile, the Sundowner In Chief was posting AI slop videos about a QAnon conspiracy about "medbeds." Laser focused, Donny Boy.

There is an argument that Democrats win this war whether or not they lose this battle over keeping the government open. Health care is an issue people trust them on and the reduced salience of that issue has likely helped Republicans peel off Democratic votes. Arguing about insurance is a good way to remind people about the OBBB - which they hate. If Democrats win, they have "exerted dominance" over Trump. If they lose, people will be pissed about health care costs and know that Republicans are to blame.

Fighting this fight is the Democrats relying on muscle memory to get them out of a slump. 

Who Would A Shutdown Help?

 Yglesias makes the argument that the actual point of a shutdown could be to get Republicans to eliminate the filibuster - a rule that typically makes it hard to impossible for Democrats to govern. Ultimately, I doubt Republicans do that for just that reason. The other issue is how much Republicans are counting on Democrats to save them from the consequences of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Do they want the fig leaf of Democratic opposition to help them escape the draconian cuts to health care? Maybe. Would they cross Trump to do this? Doubtful. Does Trump want to eviscerate ACA and health care? Unclear.

As we are seeing with the fallout from the raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia, the right hand doesn't know what the far right hand is doing most of the time. So, maybe Trump would be OK with restoring ACA subsidies.

Yglesias kind of waves away the idea that Democratic voters are desperate for some signs of fight from their party. I think that's wrong, and most Democratic rank and file voters are craving some spine from Washington. Right now, governors are the only ones fighting back, mostly because they are the only ones who can on a day to day basis. The budget is the ONE leverage point Democrats have in the minority and they show every sign of blowing it. 

If I were coming up with a list of demands, it would start with outlawing recissions (again). There is zero point in negotiating on a budget if Trump is just going to ignore it and do what he wants with the money.

Any discussion of ACA subsidies cannot under any circumstances be a patch. They have to be made permanent. Pushing the pain off until after the midterm is just idiotic. If it's going to hurt, make it hurt sooner rather than later. 

Demand Congressional approval for National Guard deployments against local wishes.

Then, if you wanted to throw a few "cosmetic" victories like demanding Hegseth or RFK be fired, go for it.

The idea that Democrats would be blamed for shutting down the government when Republicans control all three branches seems a stretch. Yes, Republicans will blame them, but who cares. They are blaming them for Charlie Kirk without a shred of evidence. If you're argument is that we can't do anything because Republicans might say something mean about us, you've lost.

Democrats need to fight in this moment. This is not normal.

He Can't Hide

 Trump may have fired the BLS head, but the bad news is still the bad news.

There is certainly the "vibes out there" of a poor labor market, especially for young college graduates. I've written ad nauseum about the demand constraints that Trump is imposing on the economy. If you A) put tariffs on lots of goods B) reduce the labor force via deportations C) introduce massive uncertainty in the economy D) hammer tourism as a sector by being an absolute prick to the rest of the world E) prioritize the rich over the working classes with your fiscal policy F) fire large numbers of public sector workers..

...then you should probably not be surprised by slackening overall demand leading to less hiring. 

Krugman noted something called Dornbusch's Law: The crisis takes longer to happen than you can possibly imagine, then happens quicker than you can possibly imagine."

Just saying.

Lethal Stupidity

 IRL friends or long time readers may know that I had a very serious case of Covid during the Delta wave. I was hospitalized, then went home, then re-hospitalized, then airlifted to Mass General, then nearly sent to the ICU before I spent three days laying prone to avoid being intubated. For whatever reason, when I got the Pfizer vaccine I did not have the typical reaction of feeling like shit for a few days as my immune system adapted. Since then, I've had a few cases that have responded well to Paxlovid, but today I got my booster because Covid sucks and because it has a serious impact on my colleagues when I'm out of work for a week.

When I went in, I had to have an "existing medical condition" in order to qualify, since I'm not 65. I guess luckily I have borderline high cholesterol, so they gave me the shot.

As we know, Florida has ended required vaccines for school children; RFK has crippled the CDC and attacked the idea of vaccines in general. All of this was, of course, predictable. RFK is a vaccine skeptic who lied to the Senate in his confirmation hearing and then did exactly what he always wanted to do: eviscerate arguably the most successful health measure in human history - rivalled only by antibiotics. 

(Let's pour one out for irony, as Florida is saying that people shouldn't have vaccine mandates because "their body, their choice" as they strip abortion rights away from people.)

This extends beyond Covid. Childhood vaccines - a literal health care miracle - will be reduced in uptake in red states like Florida. This will lead to a return in measles and many older people have declining immunity from their own childhood vaccines, so they will be vulnerable. Measles, mumps, rubella will all spread from Florida to other states as herd immunity declines. It would be just if this was simply a case of FAFO, but people who can't take vaccines or people with compromised immunity or people with reduced immunity because it's been decades since they were vaccinated are all at risk.

I'd like to believe that there will be consequences for people like RFK but the best I can hope for is that he dies of a treatable disease, because he won't face consequences in our corrupted court system.