Exactly This

 Josh Marshall lays out why Diane Feinstein needs to be counseled into retiring today and not at the end of her term. By all accounts, Feinstein is demonstrating signs of dementia. Not the Fox News "Joe Biden has dementia" slur, but she's both absent in DC and not especially helpful when she is there. No one wants to be accused of being "ageist" but she's 89 and has missed over 60 votes. Luckily, she has agreed to step down "temporarily" from the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he absence bottled up judicial confirmations, and it's unlikely that her vote will be needed on actual legislation.

Still, the seat doesn't belong to her. It belongs to the people of California and she is currently not able to do her job and - given her age - this is unlikely to change. 

This Is A Weird Take

 The Times writes a story about Germany expanding economic ties with China, but frames them as being prompted by America seeking to "isolate" China. At no point is there evidence that America is trying to isolate China, it's simply taken as a given that recent efforts by the Biden Administration to strengthen American manufacturing is an effort to "isolate" America leading trade partner.

For me, I keep coming to a phrase that I (rightly or wrongly) attribute to economist Dani Rodrik: naïve globalization. Rodrik's argument is that the Bretton Woods framework of reduced tariffs and an easing of trade restrictions gave way to a naïve belief that if a little globalization was good, then more would be better. This led to GATT being replaced by the WTO, and the basic idea that any form of economic nationalism is bad.

One byproduct of the last eight years has been to question that assumption, and those questions have come both from Trumpist populists and Biden-style old schoolers. The combination of Covid supply chain issues and Russian militarism has made the Biden Administration focus on bringing certain critical industries home. It's fine for China (or Vietnam or India) to make our t-shirts, but it's an economic and military vulnerability for our supply of microchips to be dependent on global trade networks.

For a certain segment of the business community - and I'm guessing the business press by extension - any retreat from full throttle globalism is therefore isolationist? That doesn't make sense. The CHIPs Act is not isolating China, it's strengthening American supply chains and bringing jobs home. Trump's insight about globalization and its impact on American blue collar workers isn't bad, just because Trump had it. If Democrats don't take measures to help blue collar workers, then we will continue to see grievance politics dominate our country and warp our policies.

Great Job, Republicans

 The move to expel the "Tennessee Three/Two" generated more coverage of the GOP's anti-democratic practices, reaffirmed their basic latent racism and further reinforced their message that their solution to gun violence is to kick out people who want to do something about.

And for what? Justin Jones was just returned to his seat, and you have to think Justin Pearson is right behind him.

Deeply Weird People

 Part one of the Clarence Thomas Taking A Bunch Of Gifts story was about how Supreme Court justices have no hard and fast ethics rules and how Thomas is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of Harlan Crow. It was the five hundredth iteration of why Clarence Thomas should never have been a Supreme Court justice, as he is - fundamentally - an immoral person, whether it's his obseiance to great wealth or his sexual harassment of Anita Hill.

Part two of the story...whooo Nelly. Basically, Harlan Crow is one of those weird-ass rich people who does weird-ass shit. He has paintings by Hitler and a signed copy of Mein Kampf and a statue garden of some of the worst dictators of the 20th century. What's striking is how just about every conservative commentator has rushed to Crow's defense, because who doesn't have a bunch of Hitler memorabilia in their home?

The defense, to me, take two forms. The first is pretty straightforward. All these people have taken money and trips and sinecures from Harlan Crow. The Conservative Ecosystem is hermetically sealed and Crow pumps in the atmosphere. This is why conservatives around the country all harp about CRT at the same time. There is no diversity of thought. When the wealthy donor says jump, you say how high.

The second part is that conservativism is - by its very nature - is hierarchical, and wealthy weirdos like Crow sit at the top of those hierarchies. Not as high as the even weirder Donald Trump, but he's been there longer. Odious shitbag Marc Thiessen points out that Crow has a statue of Stalin. Thiessen argues that this proves that Crow doesn't love Hitler, because Stalin is a communist. (This contradicts decades of conservative nonsense about how Hitler is a leftist because it was called the National Socialist Party, but consistency isn't his strong suit.)

OK, so Crow has statues of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, because...he hates them? I know he's got boatloads of money, but why build a garden full of statues of people that you hate? That's just profoundly perverse. 

However, if we go back to the fact that conservatism is basically about hierarchies and deference to power...suddenly Stalin, Hitler and Mao have something in common. 

It was always weird to me how many little kids like Darth Vader or the Hulk. Vader is the bad guy and the Hulk is chaos. However, if you understand their attraction to Vader and the Hulk as an attraction to power, then you can see how that connects to Superman or Captain America (and, yes, it's mostly boys). Power is attractive. Men like Crow and all of his defenders are soaking in it. They love the trappings of power. It's why they can so easily let themselves be captured by the essence of Trumpism.

A six year old loves Darth Vader, because the world is scary and big and Vader is powerful and strong. Harlan Crow loves Hitler and Stalin because they were imminently powerful. Their complete power over life and death is like an intoxicating whisper from the past. Their order was built on fear and death, but it was their order, and that is at the root of conservatism: order that binds others and frees "me".

Is Harlan Crow a Nazi? An anti-Semite? Maybe not, I don't know. 

But it's pretty clear he's enraptured by power in ways that should disturb people living in a democracy. Especially given how he has been able to accrue power without democratic accountability.

Complicated

 This story about El Salvador's anti-crime program illustrates a fundamental problem that I'm not sure most developed world liberals really grok. Civil liberties are being run over in an effort to rescue the population from endemic and pervasive gang violence. And most Salvadorans are cool with that. 

Fundamental to the role of the state - like the absolute bear minimum - is the preservation of public order. That's been degraded in many Latin American states by gang violence. Sure, it's because of American demand for drugs. That's horrible and entirely our fault.

But quite a few Central American states were teetering on state failure. El Salvador is not any more.

The real question is: What will El Salvador look like in a few years? Will they be able to revive their commitment to civil liberties? 

Having cured themselves with bitter medicines, can they stop taking them?

Delusional

 This piece by Frank Luntz is pure lunacy. Luntz is the GOP pollster of record and represents to a certain degree the GOP establishment. So, when he puts forth a "plan" for wresting control of the GOP from Trump, it comes with a certain imprimatur of GOP respectability. Like so many anti-anti-Trump Republicans, Luntz wants to harness whatever the hell Trump harnessed in drawing to an inside straight in 2016 without committing to the spasmodic and criminal impulses of Mango Mussolini himself. 

This is the warmed over bullshit that suggested that Ron DeSantis was the savior of the Republican Party. It was DeSantis that was going to provide Trump's populist appeal without his erratic and self-serving kleptocracy and chaos. Except he won't. DeSantis comically patterned his hand gestures and posture on Trump. He picked fights with Disney (that he's currently losing and will probably lose in the future). 

The thing that Luntz and others miss is that Trump IS the GOP for millions of voters. Unlike Dubya Bush who was term limited into the memory hole or McCain or Romney who were losing losers who lost, Trump is a "winner." Because he's such a shameless narcissist, he can embrace a fanciful version of himself and sell that again and again to the eager boobs who think he somehow represents a religious savior and champion of the little guy. It's...bizarre. Trump is the least religious president in our lifetimes and he could not give a fart in a hurricane about anyone but himself.

Meanwhile, Luntz is over here suggesting a messaging strategy to replace him? Bissh please. 

All you really need to know about today's GOP is this: Trump's current and future indictments make it MORE LIKELY that he will be the party's nominee in 2024. In a normal world that people like Frank Luntz thinks still exists, Trump's manifest guilt and legal jeopardy on multiple fronts would be the end of him. 

Normal rules don't apply to Trump because normal people aren't part of Trump's base.

They are the perpetually aggrieved - a miserable collection of people who are defined by what they hate. These are the people destroying Bud Light because they have a trans spokesperson. Who the f*** does that? I'm not going to buy a MyPillow and destroy it on TikTok, I'm just not going to buy one. There's a takeout place near our house that I won't patronize because they had a Trump sticker near the register. But I'm not going to picket or launch a boycott...I just don't go there.

Trump will continue to defy the normal rules of politics. This will continue to flummox Frank Luntz. For that matter, it will continue to flummox the vast majority of journalists. The whole "Alvin Bragg's case isn't THAT big a deal so we shouldn't indict a former president" presumes that Trump is a normal ex-president. Sure, if Bush had a similar campaign finance violation, I wouldn't suggest an obvious prosecution, because Bush has no political future. Trump ain't that. For everyone saying it's stupid that Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion, they forget that the important thing is that Al Capone went to jail.

Pine away for a Glenn Youngkin or Nikki Haley or even a Ron DeSantis, but the GOP will remain in Trump's febrile little hands until he's dead or in prison. Period.

The Dog That Caught The Car

 The continued disintegration of Republican electoral prospects in the post-Dobbs world continues apace. They can try and claim it's a messaging problem, the way Defund the Police was a messaging problem, but that won't work any better than it worked for the ACAB crowd.

Part of the problem is that the GOP project of thwarting democracy by packing the Courts with lifetime appointments is that you get unhinged lunatics like Matthew Kacsmaryk's deciding to pull the morning after pill off the market in an act of incomprehensible judicial overreach. But why should he care? He will never have to answer to voters. He's simply an arrogant ideologue foisting his Opus Dei shit on the American public.

Luckily - I think - a different judge in Washington state issued an almost immediate contravention of that decision. So, now the FDA has two rulings that are completely contradictory. This will have to go to the Supreme Court. Kacsmaryk's decision is so unhinged that it's not out of the question that even the Assembly of Religious Experts will overrule him. There's no way Roberts goes along with it, as he has to see the damage Dobbs has done. The assumption is that Kavanaugh won't either, by assuming his opinion in Dobbs actually means what it means. 

Kacsmaryk has issued what is quite literally a lawless opinion, in that it is backed by no precedent or case law. It should be laughed out of the Fifth Circuit...but it won't.  It should be laughed out of the Supreme Court...but who knows.

Combined with the expulsion of the Tennessee legislators, this is a banner week for the GOP's utter and complete contempt for American democracy.

UPDATE:  Ooof.  This is...a gut punch.

The Biggest Threat To American Democracy Is the GOP

 Whether in Tennessee or Montana or any other place, the GOP is no longer committed to the idea that the candidate with the most support should represent the people.

UPDATE: Paul Campos has an interesting post on roughly this issue. If we could find a way make it so that minority factions of the GOP can no longer win elections - mostly by vigorous enforcement of voting rights and no gerrymandering - would they actually moderate? The current example of Michigan isn't encouraging, but it usually takes multiple ass whoopings to change behavior.

What's The Worst State In The Union?

 And why is it Tennessee? 

What's so baffling about Tennessee's descent into race-based, Christianist authoritarianism, is that - unlike, say, Arkansas - it has a sizeable Black population, two urban centers known for their cultural impact and Dolly Parton.

Nashville and Memphis are citadels of American music, so I would hope more artists than Jason Isbell will step up and challenge the Christo-fascism in the heart of American music.

I Don't Really Get It

 There have been numerous Left of Center commentators who are coalescing around the idea that the charges against Trump are kind of lame. The argument that Jon Chait puts forward is that these charges would not have been brought against anyone other than Trump. The inevitable comparison is to Al Capone going to jail for tax evasion.

Except Capone DID evade his taxes, mainly because of all the underlying criminality. Tax evasion is a crime. Yes, Capone should've seen jail time for the murders and the bootlegging and so on, but he did evade his taxes.

This is hardly the worst thing Trump has done. He, too, has tax evasion that stretches back decades. The Georgia case is the biggest and seemingly most air tight. The DOJ investigations cover a host of crimes. I get that campaign finance stuff and falsifying business documents isn't January 6th, but Nixon and Watergate were fundamentally about covering up another, different crime. The DC axiom "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up" is traced back to Nixon, who - up until Trump - was the pinnacle of lawlessness in the Oval Office.

Finally, what's the point, precisely, of quibbling with the scope of the charges? What journalistic service is being done here? Is it the deep rooted impulse to bothsides every question? The faux objectivity that poisons so much journalism? 

If Trump is guilty of the crimes, hopefully the jury will hold him accountable. That's it. That's the story. Piss off about the rest.

UPDATE: As Paul Campos points out, Trump will not go to trial in any of the existing or potential criminal cases before the 2024 election. Even if Georgia indicts tomorrow, there will be pretrial hearings and appeals. New York takes forever to go to trial. 

The point, then, is that Trump will be the GOP nominee absent his death or health related incapacity, and he will be running under multiple indictments. Which - one would hope - would make him unelectable.

Really Important Story Yesterday

 No. Not that one. That's barely a "story" at this point. Trump was arraigned. We knew that. He's upset. Dog bites man. It's not a story.

The big story was in Wisconsin. Wisconsin does a dumb thing: it elects its Supreme Court judges. But, that's the rule so that's the rule. The election became a referendum on Dobbs and the overwhelmingly gerrymandered electoral maps in that state. Wisconsin is a true swing state with a large population of old white country folk and Milwaukee and Madison. Trump won it in 2016 and Biden won it in 2020. They have a Democratic governor. 

Their legislature has an almost super majority of Republicans because of how gerrymandered their maps are. It has been pointless to challenge those maps because the Supreme Court of the US is corrupt and partisan as hell and because the Wisconsin court wouldn't rule in their favor. Now, they can expect a fair hearing and perhaps see those maps overturned. Additionally, challenges to abortion bans will now likely fail.

The critical long term issue is the gerrymandering of those maps, but the proximate cause of Janet Protasiewicz's victory was Dobbs. Dobbs will continue to reshape electoral politics no matter what that recently indicted bloated meat sack does.

The Junkies Get Their Dope

 The cable nets have collapsed onto the rotting couch of the shooting gallery where they have injected pure Trumpiods into their blown out veins. Having seen their ratings collapse with the Chaos Agent's expulsion from the White House, they can now "safely" show his white Ford Bronco moment without being accused of raising his platform.

Trump has been a disaster for the Republic but a godsend for news networks, and the coming shitshow will be like going back on heroin after being clean for years. Trump is guaranteed to turn this trial into a circus. He will likely threaten the life or safety of Alvin Bragg, I mean, you know he will. He could have injunctions and contempt of court rulings against him. He will violate them. It will be the lunatic chaos that Trump excels at.

All which likely guarantees the following:

- Trump will win the GOP nomination running against Alvin Bragg (and Fani Willis and Jack Smith).

- The wall to wall chaos will turn off the voters he needs to return to office.

Gun Sick

 DeathSantis signed a bill allowing concealed carry without permitting or training. We know that - while assault weapons like the AR-15 and its imitators are responsible for the shocking mass killings that punctuate our news - it's handguns that reap the most souls in the Land of the Free.

In the second piece, Yglesias does his usual bullshit about what is and isn't possible, but I would wager that most Americans would be behind rigorous licensing and permitting. Absent that, it's long past time to revoke the exemption that gun makers have from civil suits. As we are seeing in the Dominion suit against Fox News, discovery and the threat of damages can be pretty powerful.

As for DeSantis's red meat/red state posturing, I hope there's a mass shooting at some NASCAR event when a car backfires and everyone draws their shootin' irons and starts blasting away. 

Fuckers.

Trump Decoder

 There have been a number of very insightful analyses written about Trump over the years, but this one - written during the 2020 campaign - is very good.

I think this is a nice bit:

Trump has lived his life inside a curdled and childish belief that he can do and take and keep whatever he wants, without consequence, forever. As a sort of tabloid cartoon of a rich person, an adult Richie Rich that had somehow figured out how to use a smartphone and commit adultery, this delusion has served him decently well; the realities of his wealth and the structural forces that the country has built to protect people of similar fecklessness and similar means conspired to sustain it for decades. The version of this impunity that Trump sells to his audience is a cheaper reproduction, not sold in any store and available exclusively through this limited-time television offer, in which they can feel as invulnerable and unaccountable as him, and be just as lazy and just as cruel, without actually being anywhere near as well-insulated from the consequences of their actions. "I play to people's fantasies," Trump "writes" in the ghostwritten Art Of The Deal. "People may not always think big themselves. but they can get very excited by those who do."

Trump is not a remotely complicated person.

Exhausting

 You would exhaust yourself pretty quickly if you tried to engage every bullshit argument the GOP advanced on pretty much any subject. Some - guns, maybe - are so important you have to, but their political arguments are usually tendentious crap that you should just ignore.

However, I will take a moment to point out that "Only Banana Republics indict their political enemies" is really ridiculous. The Times runs down active political figures who ran for office under indictment. Eugene V. Debs ran for president from a prison cell. As I mentioned yesterday, many countries have indicted former heads of government and heads of state, including France, Britain, Italy and South Korea. 

What the GOP is actually arguing is that if you're a former president - or at least a Republican former president - then you should be exempt from the laws of the United States. Or that if you announce that you are running for President, you should be exempt from prosecution during the campaign. Basically, they are taking Trump's "I could shoot someone in the face in Fifth Avenue and not lose support" line and turning it into a constitutional principle.

They will engage in the usual handwaving about Hunter Biden's laptop...whatever. There is also some dimwitted AG in Idaho or West Virginia who is preparing to indict Biden for not enforcing the southern border. Now, there is a very good reason why the Courts have historically prevented the latter type of case. The presidency would be tied down in endless prosecutions that would render the office powerless. I'm not sure I would want this iteration of the Supreme Court to defend Biden from frivolous prosecution, however.

Tuesday will be interesting - not because of the media circus Trump will create - because we will finally see the sealed indictment. It will be interesting to see what Bragg has. 

It will also be hilarious if Trump has every GOP politician go to the mattresses and then he cuts a plea deal.