Word

Jon Chait makes the case that Trump's presidency has already failed.  It is tough to argue against any of the particulars.  Trump should not be president.  Increasingly, he has earned the opprobrium or defiance of increasing parts of "his party" and the government at large.

We are not terribly far from a scenario where Trump seeks to launch an attack on North Korea and his military balks, creating a potential crisis within the institution of the military.

If this does play out in some form, if the GOP manages to discover their spine and sense of national duty, if Trump gets bounced from office somehow, it is absolutely imperative that Democrats make sure that EVERYONE knows that Trump was a creature of the Republican party at large.  Trump IS the modern GOP base.

We have them to thank for this shitshow.

Small

I'm not sure what to make of this.  It's a nice piece of writing, sure, as it describes a dying Texas town and the bonds of community.

How are these place supposed to exist?  How is a town so small it has 9 members of the Senior class supposed to run a school?  What jobs exist?

The vast empty Red State is increasingly America's problem.  Yes, there are issues of race, but the cities are mostly functioning fine.  Drug wars continue to kill people in certain cities, like Chicago, but it's not the cities that have struggled to adapt to the 21st century.

At the end of the 19th century, a clergyman asked, "What are we to do with our great cities?"  This was in response to the horrific poverty and crime of the slums.  Despite the news, that's not the big story.

The big story comes from little places.  Places too small to notice, but whose combined weight is dragging its people down.

Wha...?

Some Dude at WaPo says we shouldn't count out Trump when his poll numbers are around 37%.  His argument is that Trump might be approaching his floor, since hardcore Republicans still support him.

This is flawed for two reasons.

First, if you're the Democrats, you shouldn't give two shits how Trump does among Republicans.  In the coming years, look at how many Republicans there are.  What I anticipate with Trump is more and more old school centrist Republicans becoming independents.  Some of those will cross party lines in 2018 and 2020 to muzzle Mango Mussolini.  As many have noted, Trump isn't an anomaly in the Republican party; he's an anomaly among Republican elites, but he is their base distilled, tinted orange and with a wig slapped on top.

Second, any president at the end of six months in office who is this far underwater with a relatively robust economy is in deep, deep trouble.  Trump drew two inside straights to become president.  This is what everyone seems to forget.  He needed to eek out marginal victories in either Wisconsin/Michigan or Pennsylvania.  He wound with both, but that was largely because he held the same sort of appeal to same sort of voters.  That appeal will largely dissipate with time.

Trump is guaranteed a strong primary challenger that the Establishment lines up behind.  Win or lose the primary, the GOP will be riven.  There is no greater predictor for an incumbent president losing an election than a strong primary challenge.  Ask Taft, Carter, or Bush 41.  LBJ went so far as to quit the race.

Yes, we are likely stuck with Trump for at least another year and a half or more, so in that sense, the article is right.

But that has nothing to do with the polls.

Massaging the Message

My friend, David Greenberg, has a piece in the WaPo about how better spin and communication strategy isn't Trump's problem; Trump's problem is that he is not a good president.  He uses historical examples of president's who were considered media wizards until they weren't.  And they weren't because reality will ultimately overwhelm the spin.

The converse in some ways is true.  Since both 2010 and 2016, Democrats have fretted endlessly about how to either activate more core voters or flip WWC voters.  The assumption is that messaging will make a huge difference.  As David points out, reality overwhelms spin.  Democrats didn't win in 2006 and 2008 because their messaging improved, no matter how much you love the will.i.am Obama videos.  If Obama was a great messenger - and he is - why did Democrats lose control of the House in 2010?

They lost because the economy was still quite bad and people were suspicious of Obamacare.  In other words, they won because they had the negative message on their side.  In effect, the same thing happened in 2016, the negative message sort of won out over the policy message.  Some of this is because Republican voters are more in tune with negative messaging - "government is bad," "blacks are bad," "Mexican Muslims are scary" - but it's also true for Democrats.

Being in opposition means being in opposition.  Yes, Democrats should have a platform to run on, but before 2020, they won't have a predominant spokesman to deliver it.  Instead, it absolutely makes sense to harp on Trump and the Republican's many shortcomings.  It works.

#winning

Hugh Hewitt, stenographer for the Right, has noticed something important: everything Trump touches gets turned to shit.  Not policy, of which there is none.  Rather the direction of the West that Brexit and Trump seemed to foreshadow has turned in quite the opposite direction.

Of course, it's probably a long, long time until we can get rid of this Mango Mussolini, and he can screw things up in the short run.  However, perhaps he can cement the important values of this country simply by standing in opposition to them.

I Need A Shower And A Cigarette

Paul Waldman is not holding back.

Trapped

It is unclear at this point whether John McCain actually "mavericked" last night because of his objections to the "skinny repeal" plan or because he felt the process violated the traditions of the Senate that he defended in his speech on the Motion to Proceed.  In many ways it doesn't matter.

For seven years, the Republicans have been running around promising the moon and the stars.  This was distilled into Trump's promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better, but that was basically what the GOP had been saying.  They have a way to give people what they want with less cost - both financial and "freeeeedumb!" - than those stupid Democrats.

Last night should prove (but probably won't) that they have no idea how to fulfill the vague promises they've been making.  Last night should prove (but probably won't) that they have no way to craft policy on complicated matter.  Who knew?

Skinny repeal was an cynical an exercise in legislating as I can imagine.  It was a poorly crafted bill, written on the back of a napkin behind closed doors and then rushed to a hurried vote without so much as a glance by the CBO, with the promise that it would be "fixed" in conference.  It was a bad bill and a worse process.

And it was completely unsurprising that it failed.

(I will say it was surprising HOW it failed.  I thought Capito or Heller would be the 51st vote against, and then many others would join them.  Now we have most of the Senate and most of the House with measurable votes that would strip health care from their constituents.  No wonder McCain didn't trust GOP leadership to "fix" it in conference.)

McConnell and Ryan aren't done trying to immiserate their constituents, we can be sure of that.  They will continue to flog the dead horse until the whip disintegrates in their hands.  But it's harder and harder to see how they get to 51 votes.  If I am Heller or Capito (or Portman and others) I'm trying to figure out how I can trust leadership not to leave me vulnerable with extended votes.

The GOP - especially Trumpelthinskin - will commence to making the exchanges falter and fail by depriving them of needed support.  That will make people angry, and will likely not end well for GOP officeholders, but then again, the modern Republican party is more or less an extended tantrum against the 21st century anyway.

Meanwhile, I have a mental picture of Joe Biden waking up, checking his news feed and then picking up the picture of Obama he keeps by his bedside and whispering, "This is a big fucking deal, Barack."

It's Getting Worse

One of the things you heard in those countless "What do Trump voters think now?" pieces that have flooded the intertubes since November is that "Of course Trump is shaking things up.  That's what we wanted."

Less ignorant observers of the norms and standards of governance shook their heads at this sort of thinking, like the Presidency is a floundering reality show that needs a more flamboyant lead actor to juice its ratings.  Other Trump voters would follow this up with, "He's new to government; give him a chance."

Well, at this point, all Trump has demonstrated is that he remains manifestly unfit to be president.  What's more, his behavior is getting worse, not better.  The half-baked Twitterendum on transgender service members is a great example.  Whatever support he might have garnered by relying on cover from the Pentagon and building coalitions in Congress was squandered by the fact that Trump is getting hammered and wants to throw red meat to his base and the Talibangelicals that constitute that base wanted their hate rewarded.

His hiring of Scaramucci - a parody of a Long Island stock market dudebro, what someone called the personification of a double-parked BMW - represents a doubling-down on his aggressive, dominance fueled political style.  The same can be said of his hazing of Jeff Sessions, in that it demonstrates his basic lack of human decency and his need for soothing pledges of personal loyalty, as opposed to respecting the norms of his office.

Everything we are seeing suggests the following:

- Trump remains as out of his depth as he did on January 20th.
- He is incapable of growing into the office.
- The scandals around him are real and growing tighter around him.
- As those scandals grow, he will lash out impulsively at any target that is handy.
- This will cause him to lose allies, one by one, until he is more paranoid and isolated than Nixon was.
- He has access to the nuclear codes.

Thanks a fucking ton, Republicans...

Not Sure Of The Landscape Here

Trump's announcement to ban transgender people from serving in the military was a typical pander to his Deplorables.  I was worried that Democrats would make this a rallying cry, because I just don't see making a priority of an issue that effects a few thousand people.  There is some merit to the criticism that Clinton got hung up on too many niche issues appealing to niche groups.

But then I look around and Joni Ernst is criticizing the ban, along with Richard Shelby, John McCain and Orrin Freaking Hatch.  Ernst is reasonably young, but a stout evangelical.  Shelby, McCain and Hatch are antediluvian relics with no political reason to oppose the ban.  I don't think Alabamans or Utahans are clamoring for transgender rights and McCain is unlikely to run again.

Does this represent a surrender by many GOP leaders on certain culture war issues?

Honestly, I'm kind of stunned by all sides of this.  Except Trump.  Him being a dick is hardly a surprise.

State By State With The Trumpsterfire

Gallup has a poll, which is nice for them, that has Trump's approval ratings in every state.

The bad news first.

Trump's overall approval rating hovers between 35-40%.  He's outperforming 40% in the following battleground states: NH, NC, FL, PA, OH, MI, WI, IA and NV.

The good news: He's under 50% in all of those states.

The better news: He's under 50% in TX, AZ, MI, MO and IN.  Right now, he's above water in the Hillbilly belt (WV, KY, TN, AR), the Confederacy (AL, SC, LA), the Great Plains (OK, KN, NE, SD, ND) and the Mountain West (MT, WY, UT, ID)...oh, and Alaska.

If Trump failed to reach 50% in a two person race, he could be faced with this outcome:a 439-99 Electoral College shellacking.

What Fresh Hell Is This...

Jon Chait is right.  The American Shitburger Act is the worst designed major policy in history.

It does not make sense as a policy; it accomplishes very little by way of improving anyone's lives beyond the few who will receive a major tax cut.  It makes the American healthcare system demonstrably more unfair and less efficient.

And it still could pass.  As Chait notes, McConnell seems to be running roughshod over the Senate Parliamentarian in crafting his legislation.  I have no idea what that even means.  If the Parliamentarian says that you need 60 votes for the bill and McConnell says 50....what happens, exactly?  I would think the courts would decide and that means it comes down to John Roberts and whether he meant what he said in that nice graduation speech he gave.

It does seem that Collins is a hard no. In fact, I could see her pulling a Jeffords at some point and becoming an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.  That would be more impactful if she could get Murkowski to join her.  That is if Blake Farenholdt doesn't shoot them first.

After that, they are talking about dragging John McCain back from his sick bed to make sure other people don't have the chance to survive cancer, too.  A lot of nice things have been said about McCain, and as someone who lost his father to cancer in the last week, I want to say, "If John McCain hauls himself back to DC to strip other people's healthcare away from them, Fuck John McCain."

We've accustomed to seeing the Republican Party as master strategists who can bend DC to their will.  Really, they are magic at making government not work.  I doubt they can get this through, but if they do....?

I don't see how Democrats don't recapture the House.

Dunkirk

We saw it on IMAX, and I recommend that version.  It's spare on dialogue, but the imagery and the concussive effect of those sound effects was powerful.  I read a review that described it as a monster movie where the monster was war, and that was very apt.

Don't wait to see it at home.  I don't care how awesome your HDTV is.

Pardon Me

I've been saying for a few weeks that eventually - once Mueller gets too close - Trump will simply start issuing pardons to people like Flynn, Kushner, Donny, Jr., and Manafort.  He will eliminate the ability of Mueller to flip these people against him.  Then, after closing down many avenues of investigation, he will fire Mueller (and likely Sessions and Rosenstein).

And there might very well be nothing we can do about it until 2018.  Even then, while Democrats might win back the House, they will not get anywhere close to winning enough seats in the Senate to remove him from office.

Once again, we are going to have to rely on Republican politicians to do the right thing by their country rather than by their party.  In other words, we are screwed.

As Chait and others note, this is an assault on the rule of law.  That idea - that the powerful are not above the law, that the law is the expression of the popular will - is the critical idea that makes democracy possible.  Without it, democracy collapses.

That's not hyperbole.

Press Fallacy

This kind of pisses me off.

There are two problems with Milbank's analysis.

First, as Linda Sanchez notes, Democrats have had an agenda.  OK, it's a fair criticism that Democrats either offer too many programs as opposed to a bumper sticker.  But the Republicans have been running on bumper stickers for years.  Guess what?  You can't govern from a bumper sticker.  Repeal and replace is easily understandable.  Get rid of the parts you hate and keep the parts you like is easy to understand, but it's not an agenda.

Democrats have both a philosophy and an agenda.  Hillary Clinton had a YUUUUGE agenda.  And every speech she made on the minimum wage or college tuition was swamped in her "goddamned emails."  Policy is booooooooring.  Horse races are fun!  Scandal is fun!  Do Democrats have an agenda?  A philosophy?  Yes, Dana Milbank.  They do.  Report on it.

Second, the negative appeal of the Republican message is that government doesn't work.  Have you ever had a government service fail you?  How many people equate the DMV with the federal government?

Democrats have the burden not only of "having an agenda" but also convincing a cynical public that the government will actually ACHIEVE that agenda.  As we've discovered, one of the flaws in the ACA is that it doesn't work WELL ENOUGH, not that publicly supported health insurance is the death of freedom.

You can promise whatever you want, but a large section of the public believes - wrongly - that all politicians lie in their promises.  That Trump lied to them doesn't bother them, because they expect to be lied to.  Democrats promising universal community college is just an empty lie, even if it's not.

The Mad King

Trump's biggest enemy might be his own weeping piehole.  Every interview turns into a piece of evidence against him.

Of course, I can't tell if it's for a criminal case or a commitment hearing.

Thanks Republicans!