HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Thank you for being here as we slogged through this year. I'll be away until after Christmas, but please drop by while I'm away -- I expect entertaining and edifying posts from our regulars. Thank you, Tom and Yas, for all your great work this year. See you all on December 29.

DID TRUMP WANT TO BE THE NICE GUY JUST WHEN MUSK WANTED TO BE THE BAD GUY?

Yesterday was ... interesting.

Wielding the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, Mr. Musk detonated a rhetorical nuclear bomb in the middle of government shutdown negotiations on Capitol Hill.

In more than 150 separate posts on X, Mr. Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson....

By the end of the day, Mr. Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”

The story I'm quoting, from The New York Times, goes on to say:

But left unclear was whether Mr. Musk is a loose cannon pursuing his own agenda or the tool that Mr. Trump envisioned to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy....

Would this have happened without Musk? He seemed to be driving the bus yesterday, until Trump remembered that he's supposed to be the alpha dog, at which point he and J.D. Vance suddenly demanded an increase in the debt ceiling now, on President Biden's watch, so a fight over the debt ceiling doesn't interfere with Trump's plans once he's inaugurated.

Trump has two modes: nasty and glad-handing. When he's in glad-handing mode, he acts as if he wants everyone to be happy. Obviously, "everyone" doesn't mean everyone -- when he was just a blowhard real estate guy, people of color weren't included in "everyone," so he and his father discriminated against black would-be tenants, and Trump later demanded the death penalty for the Central Park Five. Later, once Trump became a Fox News addict, "everyone" began to exclude Democrats and most groups associated with Democrats. Trump was mostly in nasty mode during the campaign, but since the election he's occasionally tried to sound conciliatory -- maybe not to ABC or the Des Moines Register, but to some ordinary citizens who might mistrust him for obvious reasons. Notice two excerpts from Time's recent Trump interview, which were flagged by Noah Berlatsky. First, on abortion:

Then on trans people:

Trump is almost being humane here. Don't worry, I'm not giving him credit for human decency -- he just seems to be shifting into salesman mode. He wants everyone to be happy! He's going to give us the greatest presidency ever and eveyone should love it!

Musk also has happy-huckster mode, especially when he's selling his vaporware -- colonizing Mars, full self-driving, Neuralink. But lately he's tended to be in this mode:

There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies.

I do not wish to add to it, but will if given no choice.

Those who pick fights with me do so at their own peril, but maybe this is their lucky day …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2023

His transformation of Twitter to X, for both workers and normie tweeters, has been an ongoing story of "The beatings will continue until morale improves." And now this:

YES https://t.co/sOnGmxlHMK

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

Right now, I think Trump is dreaming of a glorious inaugural, followed by a presidency that makes "everyone" happy (obviously not including the undocumented or quite a few other groups). Musk, by contrast, wants to start burning everything to the ground. He wants to be feared, not loved -- or he thinks being feared is why he'll be loved.

Trump and Musk both have dual natures. At any given moment, I assume that whichever one is being more of an asshole will dominate.

DEAR DEMOCRATS: YOU KNOW THAT WHAT YOU DID AFTER TRUMP'S FIRST VICTORY WORKED, RIGHT?

Jamelle Bouie is right:

The Democratic Party lacks the energy of a determined opposition — it is adrift, listless in the wake of defeat. Too many elected Democrats seem ready to concede that Trump is some kind of an avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people. They’ve accepted his proposed nominees as legitimate and entertained surrender under the guise of political reconciliation.

To which Democrats reply: Yup, that's right. ABC reports:

Democrats have a plan to take back power in Washington back from Republicans in two years: work with them now.

Democrats, who are already planning their comeback after being swept out of power in Washington last month, have said they'll oppose President-elect Donald Trump and his allies when their values collide but are open to cooperation on a range of issues, including immigration, federal spending and entitlements.

The strategy marks a turnaround from 2017, when "resistance" to Trump was Democrats' rallying cry.

Democrats have decided that the last thing they want to do is replicate their actions after the 2016 election. They're treating resistance as a spectacular failure, even though we all know that resistance worked.

Do Democrats remember the 2018 midterms? In the House, Democrats gained 41 seats and wrested control from the GOP. Democratic governors replaced Republicans in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, and Nevada.

In 2020, Democrats dealt Trump his only electoral defeat. In 2022, Democrats beat Trumpist election truthers all over the country and prevented a "red wave" by focusing on the abortion rights Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court justices took away.

Democrats lost this year, but the popular vote margin was less than 1.6, in the midst of economic malaise that hurt incumbent parties globally, and with a candidate who got a late start -- and who also pursued this "Republicans are awesome!" strategy, with no positive effect.

According to the ABC story, the Democrats' make-nice approach

marks a challenge to Republicans for bipartisanship at a time when narrow GOP congressional majorities will likely mandate some level of cooperation.

Why do Democrats believe narrow majorities "will likely mandate some level of cooperation"? Trump plans to do many things through executive orders and sheer brazenness. The Leonard Leo federal courts will almost certainly let him operate that way. And where laws need to be passed, narrow GOP majorities won't be a problem, because Republicans are very good at voting in lockstep.

Democrats think voters will understand if they say nice things about Republicans now and oppose them later. But saying nice things about Trump and the GOP reinforces the widespread belief that Trump is all bark and no bite. We know that some voters with undocumented immigrants in their families don't really believe Trump will come for those family members. We know that many voters believe Trump's authoritarian talk is just bluster -- note the "He is exaggerating" numbers here:

Bouie writes:

If Democrats ... want voters to blame Trump for any price hikes during his administration, they need to do everything they can now, in as dramatic a fashion as they can manage, to make Trump the culprit — to give voters a language with which they can express their anger at the status quo.

If Democrats want voters to blame Trump for any potential foreign policy failures, they must work now to highlight and emphasize the extent to which the president-elect wants a more or less inexperienced set of hacks and dilettantes to lead the nation’s national security establishment. Even something as obvious as the connection between Trump’s billionaire allies and his support for large, upper-income tax cuts has to be dramatized and made apparent to the voting electorate.

Right -- because when you're echoing the GOP's message that Republicans are awesome, and you're implicitly echoing the GOP's other message, which is that Democrats are terrible, you make it easy for Trump and the GOP to blame future tariff-driven price hikes or future foreign policy instability on President Biden.

Why are Democrats acting this way -- acting as if, in Bouie's words, "Trump is some kind of an avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people"? I'm sure it's because no one expected him to win the popular vote (even though he barely won it), and many assumed it was unthinkable that he could win at all. But now they've whipsawed from "Trump can't possibly win" to "The entire country is Republican and we need to convert or die."

That's nuts. Yes, according to Monmouth, 53% of the country is optimistic about the policies Trump will pursue -- but 50% were optimistic at this point in 2016, and Trump's favorability and job approval fell significantly after that. Only 3 in 10 Americans have confidence in Trump's Cabinet picks, according to an AP-NORC poll, while approximately half are "not at all confident"; just before Barack Obama took office in 2009, a Pew survey said that 66% of Americans approved of his Cabinet picks, and only 17% disapproved.

If any non-incumbent president in this century had a mandate upon entering office, it was Obama -- and yet Republicans and their Astroturf Tea Party movement attacked him mercilessly, starting from early in his term. I see no evidence that Democrats will attack Trump with that level of energy even after he's sworn in.

One last point: Many Democrats routinely say that it's pointless for them to do a vigorous job of messaging because the media environment is wired to amplify Republican messages and suppress Democratic messages. Funny thing, though: These same Democrats seem to believe their message will get through if they're saying nice things about Republicans. Maybe that means messages of vigorous opposition could also get through? How would Democrats know when they rarely test the premise?

IF AOC BECOMES THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE'S TOP DEMOCRAT, WHAT DOES PELOSI THINK SHE'LL DO? SAY "LATINX"?

This is bad:

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is fighting to keep Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) out of a senior position on an important committee.

Despite her absence from the Capitol as she recovers from hip replacement surgery in Luxembourg, Pelosi has been whipping votes to kill Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to become the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee....

The party’s steering committee selected Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who had the backing of Pelosi, over Ocasio-Cortez during its meeting Monday evening, and the New Democrat Coalition, a center-left group of House Democrats, endorsed Connolly on Friday. Pelosi has been making calls and campaigning on behalf of Connolly, according to Punchbowl News and Axios.

This happened despite the fact that Connolly is 74 years old and has esophageal cancer.

Oliver Willis is right:

In the steering committee vote, Connolly got 34 votes and Ocasio-Cortez got 27, according to NBC. She's hoping to win the final vote. It's possible, but Democrats haven't rejected a steering committee choice in a decade.

I'm sure there's more here than just Pelosi's continuing resentment of AOC, who defeated a top Pelosi lieutenant in 2018. Mainstream Democrats inexplicably see this year's narrow Republican victory as a landslide. They think there's a widespread rejection of their policies and their perceived radicalism, which they think AOC represents.

Meanwhile, Republicans, in victory or defeat, place radicals in charge whenever they please. They don't worry about alienating middle-of-the-road voters when, for instance, they pick Jim Jordan to head the Judiciary Committee -- or James Comer to head this committee. Comer, you'll recall, used the committee to give us a long, failed investigation of the "Biden crime family." Did that hurt Republicans at the polls in 2024? They didn't win big, but they won a trifecta. Mainstream Democrats are terrified when a progressive Democrat makes the news (Be quiet! Centrist voters might hear you!) -- but somehow, the radicalism of congressional Republicans never does the tremendous damage to the GOP that middle-of-the-road Democrats think progressives like AOC will do to their party.

I'm sure AOC's opponents also worry that having her as the top Democrat on the committee, or even the committee chair in the future, will threaten the interests of their rich donors. That may be. But aren't some of these same centrists coming around to the opinion that Democrats need to start rejecting neoliberalism? Well, here's their chance. Picking AOC as the top Democrat on this committee would be a nice f-you to neoliberalism. But they won't do it, will they?

Call your member of Congress if you think they can be swayed. I did.

*****

UPDATE: It's over. Connolly won the final vote, 131-84.

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS IS A HELLUVA DRUG

It's appalling that people still need to be persuaded of this:

Trump’s popular-vote margin has shrunk to about 1.5 percent—one of the tightest in the past half century—and because some votes went to third-party and independent candidates, he’ll fall just short of winning a majority of the vote nationwide. Compared with incumbent governments elsewhere in the world, Democrats’ losses were modest. And in the House, they gained a seat, leaving the GOP with the second-smallest majority in history.

This is good news, but we've known it for weeks! The Cook Political Report's popular vote tally had Trump below 50%, and his margin of victory below 2%, a month ago.

As votes continue to be counted, Trump has fallen below 50%. More Americans voted against him than for him for the 3rd election in a row. #NoMajorityNoMandate

[image or embed]

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 10:09 AM

Why hasn't this penetrated Democrats' consciousness?

Sure, things looked bad shortly after Election Day:

Five days after last month’s election, Senator Chris Murphy rendered a damning verdict on his party’s performance. “That was a cataclysm,” the Connecticut Democrat wrote on X. “Electoral map wipeout.” Donald Trump had won both the popular vote and the biggest Electoral College victory—312 to 226—for any Republican since 1988; Democrats had lost their Senate majority and appeared unlikely to retake the House. The Democratic Party had lost touch with far too many American voters, Murphy concluded: “We are beyond small fixes.”

But we have updated numbers and Murphy is still talking this way (as are many other Democrats), telling The Atlantic,

“There becomes a real dishonesty and inauthenticity within our party if we look at this last election as too close to call or good spots and bad spots.”

And Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris, tells Semafor,

“You don’t get a national eight-point shift to the right without losing hold of culture.”

We have no idea what's about to happen, and we can't be at all certain that there'll be contested elections in the future. But if there are, remember: There was a 26-point shift to the Democrats in 1964: after what was effectively a tie in 1960, Lyndon Johnson won in 1964 by a 61.1%-38.5% margin. Had Republicans "lost hold of the culture"? Maybe Goldwater Republicans had (although they'd seize the zeitgeist sixteen years later). But the GOP gained 3 Senate seats and 47 House seats in 1966, then won the presidency back in 1968, then won a 1964-size landslide in 1972.

Did stuff happen between 1964 and 1972 to change the political landscape? Of course -- it was the Sixties (and early Seventies). Lots of stuff happened! Do Murphy and Flaherty think nothing consequential will happen in the next four years? Under Donald Trump? Do they think the 2028 election, if we have one, will be conducted in the same political climate we have now? Why would that happen when Trump intends to change nearly everything about how government functions, in an extreme and corrupt way?

Many Democrats appear to want 2024 to have been "a cataclysm." If it was a cataclysm, then there's no point in making small but insistent gestures of resistance like, y'know, saying it's a bad idea to have a vaccine denialist in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, or a Russian fellow traveler as our intelligence chief. You'd imagine that "cataclysm" thinking would inspire Democrats to be fighting Trump harder right now, but it seems to be inspiring the opposite: the thought that there's no use even trying right now -- everyone hates Democrats. If you say that the party needs a total overhaul, you're saying that the actually existing party shouldn't bother to act as opposition. For a party that often shrinks from a fight, that's awfully convenient.

This is learned helplessness, plain and simple. If you think the party needs a major overhaul before it can get back into the game, and you know not everyone believes that process needs to begin right now, you have a perfect excuse to do nothing. And that's the real problem Democrats have, not a small decline in cultural relevance.

TRUMP WILL MISS HAVING A FREE PRESS WHEN THE LAST REMNANTS ARE GONE

You know about this, of course:

ABC News is set to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Donald J. Trump....

Mr. Trump sued ABC and Mr. Stephanopoulos in March, after the anchor asked Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, why she had continued to support Mr. Trump after he was found “liable for rape” in a 2023 civil case in Manhattan.

In that case, a federal jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, but it did not find him liable for rape. Still, the judge who oversaw the proceeding later clarified that because of New York’s narrow legal definition of rape, the jury’s verdict did not mean that Ms. Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, clearly felt it had a lot to lose by pursuing this case. Last year, Disney floated the idea of selling off ABC, the local TV stations it owns, and other "linear" TV networks. Disney announced that it had decided not to sell late last year, but maybe the company has been assuming that it can sell the assets now because the a new administration is less focused on antitrust issues. Trump, being a Republican, certainly doesn't care about industry consolidation, but he could have prevented a sale out of sheer spite, and he would have. And who knows what else he might have done to Disney and its key players?

Many important media figures are genuflecting before Trump -- the owners of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times blocked publication of Kamala Harris endorsements, the L.A. Times plans to deploy a "bias meter" on its stories, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski kissed the ring, Mark Zuckerberg publicly accused the Biden administration of censorship while suppressing political posts on his social media sites, then donated a million dollars for the inaugural.... You know all the stories. Trump will continue intimidating these people until there's no opposition media left.

But will he like the new information order he seems to be creating, in which, in the future, he'll stop scoring victories against the media because they'll simply stop trying to hold him accountable for his actions?

Look at the benefit he's derived from forcing ABC to kneel. He seems like the powerful alpha male to his base. He sends a (false) message to his traditionalist supporters that he's not a sex criminal -- while also reminding other supporters that he has his way with women whether they like it or not (an idea I'm sure many of them like, although some won't admit it). What happens when there are no media outlets left for Trump to sue because they're all self-censoring? Who'll be left for him to crush if they're all courtiers and sycophants?

Trump thrives on combat. So while it will be terrible for America if the press is afraid to hold Trump to account, it will also leave Trump without one of his most important foils. The Republican base needs enemies to hate, and Trump might be in the process of depriving the base of one of its favorite enemies.

Twenty years ago, in a somewhat less authoritarian time, George W. Bush's Republican Party achievewd unquestioned dominance of American politics. But under those circumstances, who could be the scapegoat when things went wrong? Who had power, apart from the Republicans? When things went wrong in Iraq, Bush and company couldn't blame Dan Rather or the Dixie Chicks.

I'd obviously prefer to have a strong and genuinely independent press (as well as a Democratic Party that's willing to fight back). But if Trump neutralizes all opposition, it will eventually be clear that bad things going on in America are his fault. That won't matter if democracy has been thoroughly gutted. But if it's salvageable, it might make life harder for him.

POLIO? MAYBE IT'S OKAY FOR DEMOCRATS TO SAY POLIO IS BAD?

A story in The New York Times yesterday has the potential to do some damage to Robert Kennedy Jr.'s chances of becoming health and human services secretary:

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.

Mitch McConnell, a survivor of childhood polio, responded:

Without naming Mr. Kennedy, Mr. McConnell suggested that the petition could jeopardize his confirmation to be health secretary in the incoming Trump administration.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” said Mr. McConnell, who is stepping down as his party’s Senate leader next month but could remain a pivotal vote in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

This doesn't mean McConnell will be a no vote. We know that McConnell denounced the January 6 insurrection both privately and publicly, but he voted to acquit Donald Trump in the Senate trial following Trump's impeachment on January 6 charges. It's possible that McConnell hopes other Republicans will turn against Kennedy so he'll withdraw. McConnell doesn't have the spine to oppose Kennedy now, and he won't have the spine to vote no if his no vote could be decisive.

But at least he said something. Where are the Democrats?

I had a conversation with friends last night who are worried about the second Trump presidency but don't believe it makes sense for Democrats to publicly oppose Trump's nominees now. Echoing a widespread belief among Democrats, they think the party should "keep its powder dry" and not get worked up about "everything." (That reference to "everything" might sound familiar. You may recall Democratic senator Brian Schatz telling CNN a week or so ago that “there is a sense that if you are freaking out about everything, it becomes really hard for people to sort out what is worth worrying about.")

But this isn't "everything." We're talking about a preventable disease that can lead to death or devastating physical impairments. Is it controversial to support an extraordinarily successful vaccine that has proven its effectiveness and safety for more than half a century?

Democrats have internalized a massive amount of self-hate if they think ordinary Americans will suddenly become pro-Kennedy and pro-polio if Democrats say they're anti-polio. Sure, Republicans might. But Donald Trump didn't win this election because his base voted for him. He won this election because his base was joined by people who aren't hardcore supporters but swung over to him because they thought he might lower prices or end wars. These people are persuadable, and Democrats aren't even trying to persuade them. On polio!

And maybe one reason voters think Democrats only talk about pronouns and words like "Latinx" is that they don't send strong, common-sense messages about GOP extremism at moments like this. They don't speak up even when they'd probably have the support of the vast majority of Americans.

I know, I know: Democrats don't have their own partisan media. Their messages have a hard time being heard. But this is now an excuse for not even trying. Some Democrats are on TV. Some Democrats are interviewed by newspapers and magazines. Some appear on podcasts. If you're a Democrat and there's a microphone in front of you, say polio is bad and polio vaccines are amazing! Who knows? Someone might hear you!

Meanwhile, Republicans do attack Democrats on "everything." Have you seen this innocuous Christmas video posted by Tim Walz?

Remember to share holiday traditions like decorating the tree with your kids even if they’re out of town. pic.twitter.com/SXn9Wh4b8l

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) December 12, 2024

Pretty harmless, right? But on Fox, it's evil and the work of "communists," according to Sean Hannity and his two guests, one of whom is the wife of Trump's choice to head the Department of Transportation:

... Hannity saw it as an opportunity to recycle the GOP’s overblown response to Tim Walz’s support of a bill mandating that Minnesota schools provide free menstrual products to students in grades four through 12.

“I wonder if they put any feminine hygiene products on the tree?” Hannity asked. Moments later he was back at it again. “But I do wonder, I mean, what did they decorate that tree with? I mean, if they believe so much in feminine hygiene products in boys bathrooms in school, why wouldn’t they put it on their Christmas tree?”

There's no mention of tampons in the video, and in any case, Walz is no longer a national political figure. Yet no one on the right worries that attacks like this might seem alienating and mean-spirited. Attacks like this do alienate Democrats, but Republicans don't care. They get their message out, they attack Democrats on "everything," and there doesn't seem to be any downside for them.