DEMOCRATS: THE BATTERED-SPOUSE PARTY

Donald Trump and his thugs continue to ride roughshod over America and the rule of law, and far too many Democrats seem angrier at Congressman Al Green, who stood up to Trump during Tuesday night's presidential speech, than they are at Trump. Either that or they're angry at their leaders for not preventing Green's outburst.

Punchbowl reports:

Multiple House Democrats complained to us that their leadership isn’t providing sufficient guidance on key issues. This situation reared its head on Tuesday, when moderate Democrats were surprised – and dismayed – at the tone and scale of their colleagues’ protests....

“The bottom line is a lot of people are upset, and they expressed they’re being upset,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who won back a swing Long Island district for Democrats last year:

“But as a strategic matter, it was a bad idea. Instead of talking about things we disagreed with in the president’s speech, everybody’s talking about how the Democrats conducted themselves. And I think it was a big mistake.”

Omigod! Everyone's talking about how the Democrats conducted themselves! And so what? The implication is that Green's outburst might cost Democrats the midterms twenty months from now (assuming we even have midterms).

But let me remind you what happened after the outburst that began the modern era of heckling at presidential speeches. Surely you remember:

A Republican congressman is under fire for shouting "You lie" during Barack Obama's speech to Congress on healthcare reform.

In an extraordinary breach of political protocol, Joe Wilson, a Republican representative for South Carolina, shouted at Obama as the president told the joint sitting that his plan for a universal healthcare system would not cover illegal immigrants.

Obama looked in the direction of the shout, said "It's not true" and went on with his speech. But the outburst stunned both Democrats and Republicans and drew condemnation from the public. Republicans froze, with several looking in Wilson's direction.

That was in September 2009 -- fourteen months before the midterms. Did it spell doom for Republicans in 2010?

Hardly:

Republicans gained seven seats in the Senate (including a special election held in January 2010).... In the House of Representatives, Republicans won a net gain of 63 seats, the largest shift in seats since the 1948 elections. In state elections, Republicans won a net gain of six gubernatorial seats and flipped control of twenty state legislative chambers, giving them a substantial advantage in the redistricting that occurred following the 2010 United States census. The election was widely characterized as a "Republican wave" election.

Brian Beutler writes:

Even after Tuesday’s spectacle, many in the liberal elite and the Democratic leadership still believe studied submissiveness is the best form of resistance. A “dignified presence,” as Hakeem Jeffries put it.

They theorize that defeating Trump requires capturing the center, which abhors showy antics and partisan rancor.

The center "abhors showy antics and partisan rancor" -- and yet four months ago the center voted for Donald Trump in sufficient numbers to give him both a popular-vote win and an Electoral College win. How do scared Democrats explain that?

"Showy antics and partisan rancor" alienate the center? Do Democrats remember what Republicans did nine days before the 2024 election?

Donald Trump hosted a rally featuring crude and racist insults at New York’s Madison Square Garden....

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Tony Hinchcliffe, a stand-up comic whose set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people....

Trump’s childhood friend David Rem referred to Harris as “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” Businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris ”and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”

Can we all agree that this rally was a tad worse than Al Green shaking a cane at the president? Yet it didn't hurt Trump and Republicans at all.

But perhaps Democrats believe that gestures of resistance are pointless and all that matters is what you do in Congress as legislators. In that case, surely they're going to take advatage of their one point of leverage -- the need for sixty votes in the Senate to pass a continuing resolution in order to prevent a government shutdown. Right? Leveraging that is their plan, isn't it?

Nahhh. Axios reports:

Senate Democrats are indicating they won't tank a short-term government funding package....

A truly clean funding bill will make life easier for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer....

Schumer has been clear that he wants to avoid a shutdown. Even talking about wanting one is a big no-no.

If the GOP can get a clean continuing resolution (CR) through the House, and avoid multiple GOP defectors in the Senate, it should be doable to get enough Dems on board to reach 60 votes, multiple sources tell Axios.

What are Democrats afraid of? They think they'll be blamed for the shutdown. They're probably right. But so what?

Does anyone remember 2013? Republicans shut down the government for seventeen days. So what happened in the next election cycle?

This is what happened:

Elections were held in the United States on November 4, 2014....

Republicans won a net gain of nine Senate seats, the largest Senate gain for either party since the 1980 United States elections. In the House, Republicans won a net gain of thirteen seats, giving them their largest majority since the 1928 elections. In state elections, Republicans won a net gain of two gubernatorial seats and flipped control of ten legislative chambers.

D.C. Democrats believe that boldness and aggression will doom them, even though boldness and aggression never doom Republicans. They believe overt partisanship -- merely taking their own side in an argument, rather than incessantly saying, "We want to work with Republicans in areas where we agree" -- alienates voters in the middle, even though Republicans and the right-wing media have railed against the alleged evils of "the Democrat Party" every single day for decades, and not only hasn't it alienated middle-of-the-road Democrats, it's helped make states such as Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Florida red where they were once purple.

I know that many people believe Democrats don't fight because they're actually a wing of America's "uniparty" and secretly want Republicans to win. But nothing prevents them from actually joining the GOP, especially the ones in swing states and districts. If they chose to, they could flee the Democratic Party en masse. They don't.

They fail to fight because, like many battered spouses, they've come to believe that their batterer might be right to abuse them and they're the ones at fault. They think they'll survive if they're meek and conciliatory, or if they praise their abuser on the rare occasion when the abuser is nice to them. (Notice how much praise Kamala Harris lavished on Liz Cheney. Notice the praise for Ronald Reagan in Elissa Slotkin's Democratic rebuttal speech Tuesday night.) Or they hope someone else will save them. (That's the James Carville play dead and wait for Republicans to collapse strategy.)

So their belief that docility and outreach are winning strategies comes from motivated reasoning. They want to believe these things work. They're afraid to reality-test their theory because they've been beaten down and the thought of standing up for themselves scares them, while they've survived thus far being meek and mild.

I don't mean this as a criticism of battered spouses. Abuse is horrible. If you're being abused, it's not your fault if you choose a coping strategy that disempowers yourself. You need to survive. If that seems like a way of surviving, you can't be blamed.

But I do blame Democrats for adopting this strategy. For them, the abuse is figurative, not literal. They could stand up for themselves at any time.

Democrats are alienating their base, in pursuit of swing voters who frequently elude them. They think that's a shrewd strategy -- after all, where else can the base go on Election Day? But as Michael Podhorzer noted a couple of months ago, base voters can just stay home:

... the results [of the 2024 election] are best understood as a vote of no confidence in Democrats, not an embrace of Trump or MAGA....

The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA. Trump was no more popular this year than four years ago, while Harris significantly underperformed Biden 2020....

A key to Biden’s victory was high turnout from less-engaged voters who believed they had something to lose under Trump. In 2024, however, about 15 million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump than in 2020.

Democrats need to give their base something to vote for. The leadership seems to have made a choice not to do that.

One final point: I think many Democrats are conflating passion and progressive ideology. Here are a couple of quotes from that Punchbowl story -- first from an Ohio Democrat:

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) expressed a desire to move on from “all of the grievance crap and the cultural war nonsense — whether it’s screaming and shouting from Republicans or paddle signs from Democrats.”

Then from Ro Khanna of California:

“My view is we push back on Trump by going to voters in red areas, making the case for our vision, and sharing the firings of veterans and cuts in Medicaid that will impact their lives,” Khanna said.

But even if you don't want Democrats to engage in what you consider "culture war nonsense" -- even if you think "Defund the Police" was a bad message, or think that progressive Democrats are further to the left than the American public on immigration, trans rights, or Gaza, you can still be passionate about areas of Democratic agreement. You can get angry about firing veterans and cutting Medicaid. You can be a passionate left-centrist. Progressives will agree with you on these kitchen-table issues, and you can bring middle-of-the-road voters along.

Don't be meek, Democrats. Show some fight. You're not really a battered spouse. Nothing terrible will happen to you.

DONALD TRUMP'S OUTSOURCED EVIL

I keep thinking about something Philip Bump wrote last night as part of a Washington Post liveblog of President Trump's speech:

Trump is the worst person in the world and the most dangerous, but most of the terrible things he's doing, or trying to do, are other people's ideas. The foreign policy mostly derives from Vladimir Putin. The 2017 tax cut and the one likely to be passed in this term are warmed-over Kochism. Trump's chainsaw approach to government staffing is Elon Musk attempting to impose his techno-Nietzschean view of the superfluousness of ordinary people on the government because he got away with massive staff cuts at Twitter. The assault on government workers is the mad plan of the people who concocted Project 2025, because they want government to stop being useful to other people so they and their fellow Dominionists can take command of government, while also seeking control of society's other six "mountains": family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, and business. Trujmp, who used to brag about getting COVID vaccines developed, has completely outsourced his public health approach to Robert Kennedy Jr.

Obviously, many of these ideas overlap with Trump's own beliefs. Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon might have been the ones encouraging Trump to demonize immigrants starting in 2015, but Trump was always racist. The Project 2025ers want the federal government to be staffed exclusively by people loyal to their cause; Trump wants government to be staffed only by people loyal to him, and that amounts to the same thing.

Some people say Trump has no core beliefs and is merely "transactional." But that's not really correct. While it's true that, to take one example, Trump was somewhat welcoming to LGBTQ people in his first campaign -- he waved a rainbow flag once and said Caitlyn Jenner could use the bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower, while he now demonizes trans people almost as viciously as the Nazis demonized Jews, and last night he propsed a law criminalizing parents who permit a child to undergo gender surgery -- the core principle here is "How do I beat the hated Democrats?" In 2016, he tried to coopt the opposition party, but now he's a demonizer -- an approach he borrowed wholesale from the likes of Christopher Rufo and Libs of TikTok.

Trump is a horrible person, but Bump reminds us that part of what's horrible about Trump is that he's a conduit for the ideas of other horrible people. When we depict Trump as uniquely bad, we overlook the fact that the entire Republican Party and its ideological allies are rotten to the core.

They've been empowered because of decades of Radio Rwanda messaging from the GOP and the right-wing media, which depict Democrats as world-historically evil. Democrats compound the problem by bashing themselves at every opportunity and praising slightly heterodox Republicans like Liz Cheney to the skies. The result is that millions of Americans think the bullyboy beatdowns Trump and his fellow Republicans give to Democrats are beatdowns they deserve, or at least have coming to them.

Trump will continue to let other people tell him what to do. As Bump says, he wanted to escape justice, and we know he also wanted to use the presidency to make money, but apart from that he wanted to "get an unqualified stamp of approval from voters" -- which to him means Republican voters, because, like all Fox viewers, he regards Democrats as subhuman and not even American. Trump will continue to be the worst person in the world, but his awfulness will largely involve saying and doing things he barely understands.

A MIXED DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO TRUMP'S SPEECH COULD BE FINE, ACTUALLY (Update: It Wasn't)

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: In this post, I was wrong. Everything Democratic attendees did fell flat. A boycott would have been more effective.

If Axios is correct, Democrats haven't settled on a shared response to President Trump's speech tonight. I'm okay with that, for reasons I'll explain below.

Democratic lawmakers are discussing a litany of options to protest at President Trump's speech to Congress on Tuesday, including through outright disruption, a half dozen House Democrats told Axios.

... Some of these tactics go beyond their leaders' recommendation that members bring guests hurt by Trump and DOGE. This sets up a potential clash between party traditionalists and its more combative anti-Trump wing.

I think it's always good when rank-and-file Democrats want to go beyond the recommendations of their timid leaders. Here are some of the likely responses:

Some members have told colleagues they may walk out of the chamber when Trump says specific lines they find objectionable, lawmakers told Axios.

* Criticism of transgender kids was brought up as a line in the sand that could trigger members to storm out, according to a House Democrat.

A wide array of props — including noisemakers — has also been floated:

* Signs with anti-Trump or anti-DOGE messages — just as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) held up a sign during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech last year that said "war criminal."

* Eggs or empty egg cartons to highlight how inflation is driving up the price of eggs.

* Pocket constitutions to make the case that Trump has been violating the Constitution by shutting down congressionally authorized agencies.

* Hand clappers, red cards and various other props have also been discussed, multiple sources said.

Also:

Some groups of Democrats plan to mount more traditional protests through the use of color coordination in their wardrobe choices.

* Pink: The Democratic Women's Caucus wants all their members to wear pink in a unified display of defiance to a president many of them despise.

* Black: Female members of the Congressional Black Caucus have separately discussed donning black to more accurately capture the party's somber mood.

* Blue and yellow: Ukraine Caucus co-chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) will distribute ties and scarves with the colors of Ukraine's flag to signal support for President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Not every Democrat will be in attendance. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has announced plans to skip the speech. He'll hold a town hall instead.

Maybe it would be best if every Democrat boycotted the speech, or showed up and then walked out. But I'm not so sure. I think a mixed approach could work well.

As I've said here many times over the years -- most recently last week -- Republicans know how to send multiple messages on the same issue. For instance, on the 2020 election, some Republicans argue that Democrats engaged in baroque vote-rigging conspiracies involving dishonest voting machines and fake ballots. More "responsible" Republicans merely said that changes in voting procedures unfairly favored Democrats (even though Republican voters were also welcome to use additional drop boxes or mail voting), or that media outlets censored stories favorable to Republicans (as if the bias of the email-obsessed mainstream media didn't hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016). The point is that Republicans have messages on this subject for non-conspiratorial voters as well as conspiratorial ones.

Republicans do this generally in their messaging: They send fire-breathers like Jim Jordan to Fox News, while on Sunday mornings they deploy calm, normal-seeming folks like John Cornyn to mainstream-media talk shows. If you're a well-educated right-leaner, you can tell yourself that the Cornyn party is the real Republican Party. If you're a tinfoil-hat-wearing yokel, Jordan's your man. Either way, you feel the GOP speaks for you.

I think a mixed approach to tonight's speech might function the same way for Democrats. I like some of the ideas listed above better than others. Pocket Constitutions? What viewers even be able to tell what they are? Wearing pink or black? I'm not sure most viewers will get the point. But showing up with fired workers is a good idea. Wearing Ukraine's colors is a good idea. (I'd like some members of Congress to show up dressed like Zelenskyy.) No-shows are good. Walkouts could be good -- I think a widespread walkout would be most effective if it happens when Trump is articulating an extremely unpopular position, but if some legislators from progressive districts want to walk out for trans rights and others want to walk out to protest Medicaid cuts, the walkouts might speak effectively to different parts of the electorate.

In short, I think some voters will appreciate seeing a certain percentage of Democrats expressing their dissatisfaction in a decorous way, and others will want to see walkouts and hear words of outrage. Mixing it up might help Democrats reach a broader portion of the electorate than a unified response would -- as long as they're expressing discontent in some way. And it appears they will be.

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DON'T EVEN PLAN TO SWING AT THAT ONE PITCH, DO THEY?

Over and over again, we've heard House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries use a baseball analogy to describe the party's approach to second-term Donald Trump:

Speaking to reporters ... the Brooklynite invoked Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge to defend his strategy, arguing it is better for Democrats to pick and choose their fights and focus on a clear message.

“One of the reasons that [Judge is] a great hitter is that he does not swing at every pitch. He waits for the right one and then he swings,” he said. “We're not going to swing at every pitch. We're going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people.”

But today Bloomberg reports that Democrats seem reluctant to swing at the one pitch they seemed to be focusing on (free version of the story here):

... a March 14 US funding deadline ... would ordinarily serve as a point of political leverage for the opposition party.

But Democrats are squeamish about a disruptive government shutdown....

Democrats have, for weeks, tried to leverage talks to avert a government shutdown to tie [Elon] Musk’s hands. But while Republicans need their votes to keep the government open, Democrats’ political pragmatism weakens their hand.

“I’m not for shutting the government down,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic spending negotiator in the House.

Others in the party — even those with large numbers of federal workers in their states — expressed similar defeatist sentiments. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said he’d like the spending bill to include language to prevent large government layoffs. “Whether that is practical I don’t know,” he said.

And Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen questioned whether Trump, who has ignored Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, would even abide by any new legislative constraints to his power.

The need for a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open is the one point of leverage Democrats have because it require 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans can pass an actual budget through reconciliation, with 50 votes in the Senate. So the CR is the pitch Democrats should swing at.

But it appears that they won't even try.

Chris Van Hollen is probably right when he suggests that it doesn't matter what constraints are included in the bill, because Trump will ignore them, Republicans in Congress will shrug, and the courts will be slow to rebuff Trump, if they rebuff Trump at all. But if you think Trump will simply do what he pleases no matter what, that leaves you with two choices: You can put up a fight and look as if you're soldiers in an anti-Trump battle that millions of voters want to see fought, while offering an alternate view of how the country should be run to millions of voters in the middle, or you can meekly hide in a corner and appear to be giving assent to everything Trump is doing, while conveying the impression that you think Trump is on the right course because you won't even challenge him. Never mind the possibility that you might stop the juggernaut, or at least slow it down.

Why do Republican voters (and many non-Republican voters) like Donald Trump? They offer a two-word answer: He fights. He lost an election in 2020, he lost court battles in 2023 and 2024, but he always fought. Meanwhile, Democrats think they'll impress voters by not fighting.

The Bloomberg story gives the impression that Democrats would actually like the GOP to get everything it wants in the budget process:

North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said Trump is the most powerful president he has seen on budget matters.

“This is his second time around. He’s got the experience,” Hoeven said, pointing to Trump’s own lobbying push to get the House budget plan passed.

But it also plays into Democrats’ 2026 strategy, banking that cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and other programs would be widely unpopular with voters, giving them an opportunity to take over congressional control. One Democratic political action committee, House Majority Forward PAC, is running ads in swing districts starting Monday on cuts to Medicaid, which insures nearly one-quarter of Americans.

“Today’s ad is just the beginning, and we will make sure every American knows exactly who is responsible,” Mike Smith, the PAC’s president, said in a statement.

Do Democrats want brutal cuts to these programs? Do they want air safety weakened, post offices shuttered, disease-fighting efforts eliminated here and overseas, nuclear-safety resources eliminated? Is that the plan? And if so, doesn't that make them complicit in all the suffering Trump's people are eager to impose on us?

And are they really sure this will work when Trump nearly won the Electoral College in 2020 despite hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths?

And why do Democrats even want to win the 2026 midterms if they don't believe Trump can be constrained legislatively? Do they just want to win elections for the sake of winning them?

Meanwhile, angry anti-Trump voters are doing the job Democratic officeholders won't. Even Rupert Murdoch's New York Post acknowledges that:

A key glimmer of hope for Democrats in Congress has been some of the protests at GOP-run town hall events, mirroring similar clashes that took place before a midterm election wave, as was the case in the 2010 and 2018 election cycles.

Yes -- we fight, even if congressional Democrats don't. America sees us fighting. It's starting to make a difference. We're getting under Republicans' skin.



The change that comes from protest is usually slow and partial. But the change that comes from doing nothing is usually nonexistent. Hakeen Jeffries doesn't understand that, but ordinary angry Americans do.

DO DEMOCRATS NEED A PROJECT 2029? MAYBE, BUT NOT THIS ONE.

In The New York Times, Joseph Heath writes:

The Democrats Need a Project 2029. Here’s a Start.

Who is Joseph Heath?

Joseph Heath teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is the author of, most recently, “Ethics for Capitalists: A Systematic Approach to Business Ethics, Competition, and Market Failure” and “The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State” as well as the newsletter In Due Course.

Heath is Canadian. His bio cites two little-known books, one of them self-published. His Substack newsletter has a readership of only around 5,000. Why did the Times choose to publish his piece on America's Democratic Party?

The answer is obvious: The glide path to getting your op-ed published by a major mainstream outlet in America is to say that Democrats are screwing up, or that current events are bad news for the party.

In his first sentence, Heath gets right down to business:

President Trump’s outright war on the administrative state has put Democrats in a difficult position, since their core brand is that they are the pro-government party.

Trump's gutting of government programs that Americans need and want is a problem for Democrats? It should be just the opposite. Programs Americans have taken for granted are now boeing cut or threatened. That should remind Americans what Republican rule will cost them. It's starting to happen already -- parkgoers are protesting cuts to the National Park Service, farmers are despairing as food they sell to USAID programs rots on the docks, and so on.

But no, it's a problem for Democrats, according to Heath:

Faced with the challenge of blocking a tsunami of bad ideas for government reform, Democrats are naturally tempted to hunker down and defend the status quo. This makes them sound like they are comfortable with the existing system. But the system is a mess, desperately in need of reform.

This is a false binary. Saying we were better off before Elon Musk began unilaterally destroying government agencies and programs does not require you to say that everything was perfect before January 20. Musk is burning the house down. Is this the time to say that the kitchen really should have been repainted a couple of years ago?

Heath writes:

The only way for Democrats to break out of this trap is to take a page from the Trump administration, whose attack plan was laid out well in advance in the form of Project 2025. Where is the liberal equivalent?

What Democrats need is a Project 2029. Such a project should be just as ambitious, just as radical and iconoclastic, as Project 2025, yet grounded in a genuine desire to fix the problems of American governance.

We seem to be forgetting that Trump didn't actually run on Project 2025. He ran away from it, claiming it wasn't his plan. He said that Project 2025's architects would be unwelcome in his second administration. We need to remember this when we suggest that having an ambitious government overhaul plan was how Trump won.

A good place to start would be where government is currently under assault: public administration. It’s not enough just to defend the administrative state — it must be strengthened. Right now, liberals and progressives consistently articulate lofty ideals that could improve the lives of millions of Americans — a comprehensive system of public health insurance or a transition to green energy. Yet they are trying to achieve these outcomes with a state apparatus that takes decades to accomplish even simple administrative tasks, like abolishing the penny.

That's a very weird example. We haven't abolished the penny because no one thinks penny abolition should be a government priority. Americans can't agree on much, but I think the vast majority of us, across the politcal spectrum, agree that this is a very unimportant reform. It's not high on any reasonable person's priority list.

And I don't understand this:

Many progressives in America today admire European welfare states, especially of the Scandinavian variety, for their low levels of economic inequality and comprehensive social safety nets. And yet if one were to take a look at the actual powers exercised by state officials in these countries — the powers that allow them to achieve these objectives — most Americans, no matter how liberal, would recoil.

If you are on welfare in Sweden and you encounter a large, unexpected expense, you can apply to your case worker for a supplemental payment. The case worker will then decide whether to give you the money, based on whether the expenditure seems reasonable or not. That’s it. No rules, just judgment.

In America, welfare case workers are limited to ticking boxes on forms. No judgment, just rules.

If the U.S. government increased welfare payments when recipients had unusual expenses, would Americans "recoil" at the intrusiveness of that? They might argue that those bums on welfare don't deserve any more money (or any money at all), but would they say it was because the bureaucrats are too powerful?

Heath sums up his argument:

Too many of the interactions people have with state officials — with border officials, public schoolteachers, post office workers, I.R.S. agents and so on — leave them angry and frustrated. Most people’s attitudes toward government are determined not by abstract political ideology but rather by these interactions — and frustration with them helps drive support for Republican radicalism.

But Americans actually like most government agencies, including the post office, which gets extremely high marks. Here are some numbers from a 2024 Pew poll:

And while Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of schools in America overall, they regularly express satisfaction with their own children's schools.

Their interactions with public school teachers would seem to be going very well.

Heath goes on to chide Democrats for not doing something they actually did:

Anyone who has tried calling the I.R.S. in recent years can tell you that the organization needs to have more agents, not fewer. Firing thousands of I.R.S. agents, as the Trump administration is doing, will produce an outcome demonstrably worse than the status quo.

This is why Democrats need to step up. A positive program for reform should start with public administration.

But Joe Biden and congressional Democrats addressed that. The Inflation Reduction Act included money for new IRS customer service reps as well as for upgraded technology and improved efforts tro fight tax evasion by the wealthy. Republicans howled in anguish, and began clawing some of the money back even before Donald Trump became president again. But Democrats did what Heath says they failed to do.

I agree with Heath that Democrats need to do a better job of making government work. They need to find ways to get public works projects built faster. They need to do a better job of getting housing built. And, sure, they can improve the delivery of the public services Heath mentions.

But this is not the time for Democratic breast-beating and self-blame. This is when Democrats should be talking about the destructiveness of what Republicans are doing.

That's why I question whether Democrats should focus on developing a Project 2029, even one that's less self-critical:

Wanna make America great? Project 2029 is the way!

[image or embed]

— Brian Manning (@boxdonkey17.bsky.social) February 12, 2025 at 11:38 AM

Apart from the fact that this is wildly ambitious and would be extremely difficult to enact, it takes the focus off the sheer destructiveness of what Republicans are doing now. Republicans are burning America to the ground. We have to focus on making certain that every American sees them pouring gasoline on the foundations and lighting a match. When it's impossible to get help with Social Security problems, when people in the Plains states stop getting tornado warnings, when vaccines aren't available for newly rampant diseases, Democrats need to point out who's to blame. Pre-January 20 government might not have been perfect, but Democrats need to say that it was a hell of a lot better than the DOGEified government we have now.

TRUMP THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IS "ME ME ME" (ALSO: ANDREW TATE HEARTS PUTIN)

When I began reading David Sanger's analysis of yesterday's horrifying events in the Oval Office, I thought it gave the bullying simpleton who led the assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy too much credit for sophisticated thought. But now I think Sanger is on to something:

After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America’s traditional sources of power — its alliances among like-minded democracies — and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?

The remarkable showdown that played out in front of the cameras early Friday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer....

Mr. Trump makes no secret of his view that the post-World War II system, created by Washington, ate away at American power.

Above all else, that system prized relationships with allies committed to democratic capitalism, even maintaining those alliances that came with a cost to American consumers. It was a system that sought to avoid power grabs by making the observance of international law, and respect for established international boundaries, a goal unto itself.

To Mr. Trump, such a system gave smaller and less powerful countries leverage over the United States, leaving Americans to pick up far too much of the tab for defending allies and promoting their prosperity.

While his predecessors — both Democrats and Republicans — insisted that alliances in Europe and Asia were America’s greatest force multiplier, keeping the peace and allowing trade to flourish, Mr. Trump viewed them as a bleeding wound. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly asked why America should defend countries running trade surpluses with the United States.

Trump doesn't really have a theory of international relations. He's read nothing and knows nothing. He's driven by his experience in New York real estate, and by his own ego and grandiosity.

Trump doesn't want to pursue "raw great-power negotiations," bypassing alliances with less powerful allies, because he believes, after much study and reflection, that that's the best way to run the world. He wants to do that because he wants to be one of the biggest of the big boys, the equal of the powerful people he admires. Trump has schoolboy crushes on powerful people. That's why he hasn't cut Elon Musk loose, and that's the core reason he loves Putin.

To Trump, America's European allies are like the workers and contractors he hired to get buildings built -- they're Untermenschen, lesser people, and he's certain they're always ripping him off (a belief that's pure projection -- Trump regularly stiffed contractors and workers).

Sanger writes:

It took decades to assemble the post-World War II rules of global engagement, and for all its faults, the system succeeded at its primary objectives: avoiding great power war and encouraging economic interdependence.

Mr. Trump has never articulated at any length what he would replace those rules with, other than that he would use America’s military and economic power to strike deals....

There is little precedent to suggest that approach alone works, especially in dealing with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, who take a long view in dealing with democracies that they view as lacking the sustained will necessary to achieve difficult objectives.

But judging by Friday’s display in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump seems convinced that as long as he is at the helm, the world will order itself as he commands.

I don't think Trump cares if it "works," at least as we understand the term, any more than he and Musk care whether the U.S. government "works" after they finish taking a meat ax to the government. These men are grandiose narcissists. They think the world is running well if they're happy -- who cares what happens to all the inferior people? They'd rather rule over a smoldering ruin than be somewhat less powerful in a world that works well. They genuinely don't believe that making a ruin of America (Musk) and the world (Trump) will ever harm them. The leopards won't eat their faces. And maybe they seek destruction for its own sake, because it weakens the Untermenschen -- American citizens (Musk) and global allies (Trump) -- which makes them, the Übermenschen, more powerful.

I don't know how to describe their approach. Are they fascist leaders? Are they cult leaders? Are they like mafiosi or leaders of a drug cartel who enrich themselves by preying on poor people? Choose whichever analogy you like. Just remember that they're not doing this because they believe it will create a glorious world for the rest of us. They're doing it for themselves, and, in Trump's case, for one fellow Übermensch in particular.

*****

I saw this at Bluesky:

It’s insane to think that the Trump administration was more welcoming this week to the Tate brothers than to the President of Ukraine.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 5:08 AM

For the record, Andrew Tate is an admirer of Vladimir Putin who see an alliance between Russia and America as key to a battle with ... well, let him speak for himself:

Europe is still ruled by The Matrix.

USA has been liberated.

Men are back in charge.

Russia is ruled by competent patriarchy.

Two great powers ally, energetically starve the EU into submission and restore the rights of all great European men to defend their homeland. https://t.co/sKq1y7aEy8

— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) February 17, 2025

Tate also posted this a couple of years ago:

Russian advertisement depicts Putin as Santa Claus, using magic to save a child from having gay dads, wearing pink and LGBT indoctrination.

Russia believes the proxy war against NATO is necessary to preserve Christian values and fight satanism which controls the West. pic.twitter.com/BdoZDQqtrx

— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) December 27, 2022

(The video is distasteful but suitable for work.)

The Daily Mail reported on the video at the time:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been portrayed as Santa in an anti-Western propaganda video released on the country's social media.

The film - made by a production company called Signal - depicts 'Santa Putin' swapping a photograph of a child's same-sex parents for one of a mother and father, and gifting the boy being raised as a girl a football, toy cars and a drum kit.

The video feeds into Russian prejudices about Europe and the United States which have been fuelled by pro-Kremlin propagandists during the war in Ukraine to frame the conflict as a clash of values between Russia and Ukraine's western allies.

Tate's worldview, needless to say, is also Übermenschen vs. Untermenschen. In his view, the inferior people are women and anyone else who's not a toxic heterosexual male. Elon Musk has his own taxonomy of the worthy and unworthy, which overlaps with Tate's in some ways and not in others:

Interesting observation https://t.co/xHD5VeS1IC

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2024

Trump's Übermenschen are dictators, billionaires, and roid-rage lunkheads like Pete Hegseth and Dan Bongino, although he also likes non-macho lawyers and operatives (Roy Cohn, Stephen Miller) who can help him get what he wants.

I'm not saying that there's a connection between Andrew Tate and Trump's foreign policy. I'm saying that Trump, Musk, and Tate all believe that only some people are worthy of a good life, and it's fine (or actually delightful) when the rest suffer. We should never imagine that Trump and Musk have even a misguided plan to make our lives better. They're in it for themselves and the people they believe are in their superior caste.

SUPPORT FOR ANDREW TATE IS REPUBLICAN NICHE POLITICS

It's hard to overstate the loathsomeness of Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, who just flew to Florida from Romania, where they're accused of human trafficking and money laundering. Michelle Goldberg writes:

The Tate brothers, British-American dual citizens, have been accused of luring women to Romania and then forcing them to work as pornographic webcam performers. They are also being investigated for rape and human trafficking in Britain and were to be extradited there when the Romanian cases concluded.

Though they maintain their innocence, Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and the more famous of the two, has regularly boasted about abusing and pimping women. His method, he’s often said, was to seduce women and then pressure them into the sex trade. He offered to teach his technique to other men in online courses where students could earn “pimping hoes degrees.” Women who live in his compound, he said in one video, aren’t allowed to go out without him. Some are tattooed “owned by Tate.” He left a voice note for a British woman who accused him of rape saying, “The more you didn’t like it, the more I enjoyed it.”

Goldberg doesn't mention the fact that Andrew Tate is probably the most admired person in the world among young males between the ages of 12 and 30. She does cite Tate's admiration for Donald Trump. If young men around the world really are becoming more politically right-wing, the brutal misogyny of Tate and his imitators is one of the main reasons.

When I learned that the Tates were on their way to America, I assumed they'd be warmly welcomed by the Republican Party as a whole. But there's been a mixed reaction:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Andrew Tate is not welcome in the state, shortly before the Internet personality and his brother touched down in Fort Lauderdale Thursday....

DeSantis said his government had "no involvement" in the Tates' travel to the U.S. and that decisions to "rebuff" their entry were under the federal government's discretion.

"But the reality is, is no, Florida is not a place where you're welcome with that type of conduct," DeSantis said at a press conference.

One Republican group invited the Tate brothers to speak, while other Republicans denounced him:

The Tampa Bay Young Republicans tweeted an invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to come speak to their group, drawing swift criticism....

“You’ve lost your way boys,” was podcaster Megyn Kelly’s take....

Rachel Streve, the former chair of the Houston Young Republicans, tweeted that she understood the draw because “controversy’s a cheap thrill,” but this was “rolling out the red carpet for a pair of self-styled pimps and predators,” making her ponder “what broke in your heads to greenlight this.” ...

The TBYR tweet was denounced by Florida Young Republicans Chair Brandon Ludwig....

The Florida YRs followed up with a tweet stating “We rebuke and condemn” the TBYR invite for the Tate brothers “in the strongest possible terms,” adding that TBYR “has a long history of controversy and we believe this most recent action is worthy of its charter being revoked.”

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis tweeted:

No. Their entire brand is repugnant and should not be welcomed.

Free speech absolutism isn’t mutually exclusive with discernment!

— Jenna Ellis 🐊 (@realJennaEllis) February 28, 2025

Does this mean that the GOP is fully distancing itself from the Tates? Of course not. It means that the Tates are now a niche recruiting tool.

Over the years, I've told you how Republicans practice niche politics. Extreme, irrational, dangerous ideas are allowed to flourish on the right. "Mainstream" Republicans might reject these ideas, but they show up in communications channels that abut or overlap with "mainstream" GOP communications channels. The really extreme stuff leads gullible people to the GOP, while mainstream Republicans can reassure more sophisticated voters that the party isn't really like that. It's win-win for Republicans.

Remember when some Republicans couldn't stop talking about their certainty that Barack Obama had a fake birth certificate and was actually born in Kenya? That was birtherism. Many Republicans, including Donald Trump, eagerly adopted it in 2011 and 2012. Other Republicans, including 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, rejected it. And then there were GOP responses that could be sorted into other categories, as Adam Serwer noted at the time:

Ironic Post-birtherism: Making humorous or ironic references to the idea that the president was not born in the United States as an attempt to signal solidarity with or otherwise placate those who genuinely believe the president was not born in the United States. Examples: Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Raul Labrador.

Pseudo-birtherism: An umbrella term that encompasses all the various modes of belief that involve embracing fictional elements of the president's background, from the belief that he is a secret Muslim to the idea that he was raised in Kenya. Includes highbrow forms of birtherism like the "Kenyan anti-colonialism" thesis and theories that his name was legally changed to "Barry Soetero," as well as the idea that Obama's "real father" was one of the handful of random black celebrities you can name off the top of your head. Examples: Newt Gingrich, Andrew C. McCarthy.

This allowed voters to pick any response to birtherism that seemed correct to them, in the belief that that response represented the real Republican Party. Conspiracy-minded voters could embrace undiluted birtherism. Romney Republicans could tell themselves that the party rejected crackpottery. And people in the middle could tell themselves that Obama might not be lying about his place of birth, but he sure acts like a left-winger from the less developed world, doesn't he? Please note that all of the responses led to support for the Republican Party.

Trump's 2020 election lie worked the same way. Some people believed crazy theories about fake ballots made from Chinese bamboo and electronic vote rigging by means of satellites directed from the U.S. embassy in Rome (or the Vatican). Others said that the baroque conspiracy theories were a bit much, but the Deep State sure did suppress that Hunter Biden story in 2020, wouldn't you say?

The GOP welcomes QAnon fans while "responsible" Republicans distance themselves from QAnon. It welcomes Alex Jones fans while most Republicans distance themselves from Jones. It welcomes overt white supremacists while some in the party -- although fewer and fewer in the age of Trump -- decry them.

Inevitably, there's extremism creep. When COVID vaccines were first approved, then-president Trump boasted about them, and every governor in America, Republican as well as Democrat, embraced them -- yes, even Ron DeSantis. But the party became increasingly anti-vaccine, the way it became increasingly birtherist and conspiratorial about the 2020 election.

That's probably what will happen in the case of the Tates -- they'll continue to be denounced by some Republicans, while others embrace them. Maybe Trump will dine with them at Mar-a-Lago or invite them to the Oval Office, or maybe they'll just be seen hunting with Don Junior and hanging out with Elon Musk (who's a fan). Tate-averse Republicans will feel represented by the Tate denouncers in the party, while Tate's fans will conclude that the GOP is the Party of Tate. After a while, unless there's a serious backlash, Tateism will become mainstream in the GOP. But "mainstream" Republicans won't leave in disgust, because the embrace of Tate will seem to them like a phenomenon happening only in the fever swamps. They'll tell themselves that the party isn't really like that. It will be a comforting lie.