BIDEN GAVE TRUMP AN OPENING LONG BEFORE HE STARTED HIS REELECTION CAMPAIGN

In The Atlantic, Franklin Foer repeats the conventional wisdom:

... As clearly as any recent president, Biden proposed the standard for judging his performance. From the time he began running for office, he presented himself as democracy’s defender at the republic’s moment of greatest peril....

By stubbornly setting off on his reelection campaign, by strapping his party to his shuffling frame, he doomed the nation to realizing the nightmare scenario that he’d promised to prevent. He created the ideal conditions for Trump’s return, and for his own spectacular failure....

The way that events unfolded—his catastrophic debate performance, the stark clarity with which the nation came to understand his geriatric state–-beggars belief. Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier? Why didn’t his aides stop him from running?

... The evidence that Biden wasn’t fit for a second term was abundantly clear in his public appearances—and in the public appearances that he studiously avoided. Advisers knew that Biden’s instinct was always to invest faith in his own capacities, but they never made a concerted effort to talk him back from his decision to run, until it was far too late. Donald Trump is their legacy too.

I agree that it was a mistake for Biden to run again -- but I think the damage was done before he began to run. If Biden "created the ideal conditions for Trump’s return," it was by giving up on the effort to communicate with the American people as president.

Biden struggles to speak, so he mostly gave up trying, and he also chose not to let surrogates -- his vice president, for instance -- be his voice. He governed as if public declarations of his administration's side of things weren't all that important anyway.

Previous Democratic presidents -- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama -- saw their popularity decline in their first terms, as Biden's did. But they could compellingly give their side of the story every day, and at least some of the public was undoubtedly swayed by their arguments on their own behalf. Both Clinton and Obama saw their first-term job-approval numbers drop to the low 40s, as Biden's did, but Biden's kept dropping into the 30s, while Clinton's and Obama's rebounded.

Into the gap left by Biden's poor public messaging came, first, video clips that depicted Biden as a doddering dementia case, then the bluster of Donald Trump. Trump sounds stupid to you and me, but he has an answer for everything. The sheer volume of his verbiage, and the vigor and confidence with which he makes his hateful, fact-challenged proclamations, stood in contrast to Biden's verbal clumsiness. Most Americans don't know enough to call Trump on his bullshit. To many of them, he sounds strong and powerful.

It appears that Biden has belatedly begun to recognize the importance of public communication. Last night, on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, he talked about his decision no to put his name on COVID stimulus checks, as Trump had done in 2020:

... Biden said the thought only crossed his mind because he kept hearing people say back to him they received a check from the president.

"'The president did that. Why aren't you helping me?'" Biden said he heard.

"It did cross my mind," he confessed. "The mistake we made was — I think I made — was not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this. So for example, build a new billion-dollar bridge over a river. Well, call it the 'Democratic bridge' figuratively speaking. Talk about who put it together. Let people know that this is something that Democrats did. That it was done by the party."

Biden then added: "I'm not a very good huckster. That wasn't a stupid thing for [President-elect Donald Trump] to do. It helped him a lot and it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them."

Bad communication wasn't just a problem for Biden on COVID relief or infrastructure. It was a problem for him every day.

*****

But couldn't Biden have made up for this by announcing that he wouldn't run again, thus allowing Democrats to choose a fresh candidate in a series of primaries? Maybe -- but I think the conventional wisdom, that primaries would have been a cure-all for the party's problems, is not borne out by the evidence.

The primary process doesn't magically produce a very electable candidate. Sometimes it gives us Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Other times it gives us Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis (or, on the Republican side, Bob Dole or Mitt Romney).

All of the Democrats' intraparty conflicts -- progressives vs. moderates, Israel backers vs. supporters of the Palestinians, whites vs. people of color -- would have been a factor in these primaries. The party rallied around Kamala Harris when she became the candidate. There might have been some resistance to a primary winner.

And the winner probably would have been Harris in any case. As I've said before, she won every national 2024 Democratic primary poll I found at FiveThirtyEight that asked respondents to pick from a Biden-less field.

Maybe she wouldn't have survived a primary season. Maybe she would have been attacked for being part of an administration that didn't seem successful. That might have been enough to give the win to someone else. On the other hand, she might have won in spite of the attacks, and then the Trump campaign could have deployed clips from the primaries in which fellow Democrats described her as part of a failed presidency.

A candidate who seemed like a fresh start might have had a better chance of beating Trump, but as long as there was one picture of the primary winner with Biden, or one video clip of the winner defending Biden, the Trump campaign would have said the candidate was more of the same.

The way to defeat Trump in 2024 was to make a case for the Biden presidency in the preceding four years. Biden would have needed to seem like a strong, steady hand at the controls. He would have had to persuade voters that he felt their pain when they were dissatisfied, and that he had a plan when things seemed to be going wrong. When he couldn't manage any of that, he made it possible for Trump to win.

FOX POLL RESPONDENTS: TRUMP DOESN'T HAVE A MANDATE AND WE DON'T EXPECT HIM TO BE A VERY GOOD PRESIDENT (updated)

The headline for this Fox story is "Fox News Poll: Trump Is the Most Popular He’s Ever Been." But that's not saying much:

As Inauguration Day approaches, President-elect Trump receives his highest favorable rating and half of registered voters approve of his handling of the presidential transition.

When you look at the numbers, you see that the "highest favorable rating" is a mere 50%, with 50% having an unfavorable opinion of him. As for his handling of the transition, he gets 52% approval, with 46% disapproving. But among Fox poll respondents in December 2020, 65% approved Joe Biden's handling of his transition, while only 26% disapproved.

More:

Still, a majority does not view his election win as a mandate, and more think it was a rejection of the outgoing administration rather than an endorsement of Trump.

The latest Fox News Poll, released Wednesday, finds that by a 13-point margin, more voters view Trump’s victory as a referendum on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies and performance (54%) than a validation of Trump’s (41%). That includes 71% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 34% of Republicans saying it was more of a rejection....

While Trump describes his 2024 win as a mandate, a slim 51% majority disagrees. Some 4 in 10 (42%) call it a mandate, including 69% of Trump supporters....

At a time when 99% of Democratic officeholders and officials seem to believe that Trump has a massive mandate, it's instructive to learn that ordinary Americans -- including some Republicans -- disagree.

Trump's agenda isn't popular. Given this choice:

1. Deport all illegal immigrants back to their home country 2. Deport only those illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes but allow those who are law-abiding to remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship 3. Allow all illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. 4. (Don't know)

Only 30% of respondents choose "Deport all," while 59% choose option #2, which includes a path to citizenship for the law-abiding.

Take over the Panama Canal? 53% say no. "Impos[e] large tariffs on Canada and Mexico to get them to change their immigration policies?" Again, 53% say no. Buy Greenland? 57% say no. Investigate Trump's prosecutors? 56% say no. (54% want to extend the 2017 tax cuts, but that's probably because the question doesn't use the word "cuts" -- it refers to "the 2017 tax reform law.")

78% of respondents want Democrats to work with Trump -- and 65% want Trump to work with Democrats, which won't happen.

Do voters think Trump will do a good job? A December Fox poll suggests that they're not expecting much. A few highlights:

"During the next year, do you think the economy will get better, get worse, or stay about the same?" Better 39%, worse 37%, the same 22%

"Under the new Trump administration, do you think... The country will be safer, less safe, or stay about the same?" Safer 42%, less safe 36%, stay the same 20%

"Prices for food and gas will increase, decrease, or stay about the same?" Increase 41%, decrease 39%, stay the same 19%

"Restrictions on abortion will increase, decrease, or stay about the same?" Increase 52%, decrease 13%, stay the same 34%

"American Democracy will get stronger, weaker, or stay about the same?" Stronger 38%, weaker 43%, stay the same 17%

"The national debt will increase, decrease, or stay about the same?" Increase 48%, decrease 31%, stay the same 20%

"Your taxes will go up, down, or stay about the same?" Up 37%, down 30%, stay the same 32%

These aren't great numbers. Trump's only really good number in this series of questions is on "The country’s southern border will be more secure, less secure, or stay about the same?" -- 56% say it will be more secure (14% less, 28% the same).

It's possible that Americans will be tolerant of Trump's inevitable failures because they simply don't expect government to work anymore. I hope his approval ratings plummet when he screws up, but those low expectations might save him, at least for a while.

*****

UPDATE: Some people are not reading the room.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said Wednesday he’s open to Donald Trump’s idea that the U.S. acquire Greenland, telling reporters that it’s “strategically a smart thing.”

[image or embed]

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 8:57 PM

It's understandable that some Democrats might want to move closer to Trump's positions on an issue or two. I don't like the headlong rush to embrace right-wing views on immigration, but I understand -- it's an issue on which the public seems to have moved to the right. But Greenland? Why? Buying Greenland is opposed by 76% of Democrats, 63% of independents, and even 37% of Republicans. What voters does Fetterman think he's winning over with this very unpopular idea?

DO REPUBLICANS BELIEVE HEGSETH'S TOXICITY IS A BUG OR A FEATURE?

Benjamin Wittes tells us that Trumpism is a "cult of unqualified authenticity," embodied in Donald Trump himself, but also in Pete Hegseth:

You can see in it so many of the central tenets of Trump’s approach to governance: the contempt for expertise and traditional qualifications; the insistence that the only real qualification is authenticity—and that authenticity is somehow wrapped up in performative masculinity; the belief that sounding tough and being tough are the same thing; and the conviction that complexity necessarily reduces to weakness.

It’s all right there in the nomination of a proudly unqualified individual who frames his lack of qualifications as qualification of a different, more authentic, variety.... And this idea has the apparently silent assent of all of the Republican members of the [Senate Armed Services] committee and a few, at least, enthusiastic takers.

I'm not sure there's a consistent worldview in the GOP. Marco Rubio's hearing is taking place as I type this, and he'll sail through his confirmation process because he is seen as traditionally qualified. Every Republican in the Senate will vote for both of them. But Republicans aren't shy about using one argument in a given situation and exactly the opposite argument in another situation.

Wittes can imagine circumstances under which Hegseth won't be confirmed:

In exchanges with Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Hegseth denied as “anonymous smears” any suggestion that he had shown up drunk for work or engaged in sexual misconduct....

Unless some evidence emerges that Hegseth’s denials are false, he will—I suspect—certainly be confirmed....

All bets are off, however, if Democrats produce the goods and show that not merely are the allegations true but that Hegseth was less than candid in his testimony.

No, Hegseth would survive that. I mean, sure -- if you had him on video unambiguously committing a violent act against a woman, maybe that would be enough to take him down. (I don't believe that even clear video evidence of day drinking in the past would matter, because Hegseth's narrative is that he's a changed man now, thanks to his current wife and Jesus.)

If Wittes means that testimony by a woman Hegseth has hurt could change the outcome, he should talk to Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, and E. Jean Carroll. Even credible testimony of sexual misconduct, if it's from a woman and isn't accompanied by video, means nothing to most of the American public. Hegseth could easily survive that.

The Bulwark's Jonathan Last thinks Republicans are embracing vice as a virtue:

My theory is this:

Republicans embrace vice not because they believe that the accused Republican figures are innocent, but because they believe they are guilty. And so these voters exist in the hope that their champion will go on to hurt their enemies on their behalf.

After all: If a guy is willing to rape a woman, surely he can be counted on to visit destruction on Democrats, or woke generals, or whoever.

I don’t know. Maybe you have a better theory.

That may be true for some of them. For others, I think what's happened is that the GOP under Trump has become The Firm in John Grisham's novel -- you join, realize that its real purpose organized crime, and then you can't leave because no one who tries ever leaves alive. (In the case of the GOP, what's inevitable is political death. For instance, Senator Joni Ernst, who's up for re-election in two years, correctly fears the Elon Musk-funded primary challenge she would have faced if she hadn't agreed to support Hegseth.)

I'm sure most Senate Republicans would be happier with qualified nominees whose closets aren't full of skeletons. Republicans aren't strutting around boasting about Hegseth's toxic masculinity -- notice that they refused Democrats' request for a hearing of the customary length.

Republicans refused to allow for a second round of questions for Pete Hegseth. The entire hearing for the position of Secretary of Defense lasted just 4 hours and 15 minutes.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) January 14, 2025 at 1:50 PM

Which is why Democrats should have been pounding the table about Hegseth for weeks. They did a fine job in yesterday's hearings. But they missed the opportunity to define Hegseth.

An NPR/PBS/Marist poll conducted before the hearing suggests that Hegseth isn't widely known. Overall, he has a 19% favorable rating and a 26% unfavorable rating; 55% of respondents are unsure or have never heard of him.

Even among Republicans, his approval rating is only 37%, with 54% unsure. According to this survey, Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. poll in the 60s among Republicans, and at 37% and 40% overall, respectively.

It's possible that this poll has a liberal lean, but still: Hegseth appears not to have gone into his hearing as a MAGA superstar. He's been a Fox host, but not in prime time. He was vulnerable. But now he's almost certain to be confirmed.

TRUMP WON AFTER JANUARY 6 BECAUSE MUCH OF THE COUNTRY THINKS THE GOVERNMENT IS BRIAN THOMPSON

Donald Trump is the president-elect, and Donald Trump committed crimes:

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of illegally seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial, had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue....

In his report, Mr. Smith took Mr. Trump to task not only for his efforts to reverse the results of a free and fair election, but also for consistently encouraging “violence against his perceived opponents” throughout the chaotic weeks between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, injuring more than 140 police officers.

Mr. Smith laid the attack on the Capitol squarely at Mr. Trump’s feet, quoting from the evidence in several criminal cases of people charged with taking part in the riot who made clear that they believed they were acting on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

It happened. We all saw it. And four years later, Trump was elected president again. Why didn't January 6 matter?

I think it's because it was an attack on the government, and the feelings many Americans have about the government are similar to the feelings they have about murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Americans want a government that makes their lives better, one that works for them and not the rich and powerful. That's also how they feel about health insurance -- they want it to ease the financial burden of healthcare, not to make CEOs and stockholders rich.

From the response to Brian Thompson's murder, we know that millions of Americans believe health insurance in America is a scam. They're sick of having claims rejected and paying huge out-of-pocket costs. Many of them know that the murder of Thompson was wrong, but they don't think it was very wrong.

I think millions of Americans feel that way about the attack on the Capitol. I'm not talking about Republican voters, who mostly believe that any Democratic electoral victory is illegitimate. I'm talking about the swing voters and occasional voters who chose Trump or stayed home in November despite knowing that the January 6 insurrectionists were criminals and Trump was the instigator of their attack. I think most of them believe January 6 was wrong, but they don't think it was very wrong.

Americans have felt that the country is on the wrong track more or less nonstop since the 2008 financial crisis:

On January 6, 2021, 62.3% of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track, according to the Real Clear Politics average. Only 28.6% thought it was on the right track.

A newly released USA Today/Suffolk poll says:

By 54% to 32%, those surveyed said the country was on the wrong track, not headed in the right direction.

So they're not terribly upset at an attack on institutions of government that they feel have failed them, under Republicans and under Democrats, for as long as they can remember.

I'm not endorsing this view. I'm just telling you what I think is going on. The January 6 insurrectionists attacked the government, and much of Ametrica shrugged, because the government isn't a sympathetic victim.

A TERRIBLE EX-JOURNALIST SHOWS US WHY WE GOT TRUMP AGAIN

You might have seen this a few days ago:

A Gallup poll suggests that President Joe Biden will be viewed as the worst commander in chief since Richard Nixon....

Respondents were asked how they thought presidents would go down in history—"as an outstanding president, above average, average, below average, or poor?"

The poll found that among U.S. adults Biden received a net score of -35—the percentage Outstanding/Above Average minus the percentage Below Average/Poor.

The only president to receive a lower score was Nixon, with -42.

Biden has made his share of mistakes, and I suspect that a period of high inflation piled on top of forty years of increasing economic inequality left a lot of Americans with deep credit-card debt at high interest rates. Based on that record alone, his unpopularity was probably inevitable. But is he the worst president since Nixon? Why?

You probably know my thinking on this: Voters believe Biden is a terrible president because he's the worst public communicator in the modern history of the presidency. His public speaking deficits and physical presence prevent him from being a reassuring voice at moments of uncertainty. He's done a fine job on many fronts, but he doesn't seem competent.

Is that what people want from leaders? Do they really believe that seeming like a leader is what's most important? Amy Chozick certainly feels that way, by her own admission.

You might remember Amy Chozick. She was a terrible Wall Street Journal political reporter who in 2008 wrote a story suggesting that Barack Obama might not win the presidential election because he wasn't fat enough.

"I won't vote for any beanpole guy," [a] Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.

The story strongly implied that this was a spontaneous outpouring of contempt, but it was later determined that Chozick had started a Yahoo thread with the express purpose of eliciting this opinion, and that exactly one commenter said what she wanted to hear. The Journal later issued a clarification. Undaunted, Chozick went on to a job at The New York Times, wrote a bestselling book about her time covering the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, and is now a writer and producer in Hollywood.

The Times just published an op-ed in which Chozick laments the fact that none of the politicians dealing with California's wildfires seem like leaders she admired in the past -- many of whom were incompetent:

I can’t keep up with Rudy Giuliani’s criminal indictments, but after Sept. 11, America’s mayor stood at Ground Zero and assured a broken city that the terrorist attacks would only make us stronger. Will someone — anyone? — stand in the detritus of the Pacific Palisades or Pasadena and say the same about Los Angeles?

In 2005, after widespread criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré took charge in New Orleans. Then-Mayor C. Ray Nagin called Honoré, “a John Wayne dude,” who “came off the doggone chopper and started cussing and people started moving.”

In those dark early Covid months, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York didn’t deliver niceties. (I’m not sure he’d know how.) But his daily briefings became essential. That is, before Mr. Cuomo resigned, amid allegations he downplayed Covid deaths at nursing homes and engaged in sexual misconduct, which he denied.

Chozick knows Cuomo resigned in disgrace, and knows he didn't really do a good job during COVID. She's aware that Giuliani has disgraced himself, though she may not recall that he stupidly ordered New York City's emergency command center to be placed in the World Trade Center after it was bombed in 1993, and hadn't replaced the radios that had failed first responders in 1993 by the time of the 2001 attack. Also, she seems to recall the response to Katrina as a success because one of the key figures had swagger.

Maybe Chozick isn't quite the living embodiment of that famous Bill Clinton remark:

"When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right."

Donald Trump isn't doing it for her.

President-elect Donald Trump, meanwhile, instigated a schoolyard squabble, calling the California governor “Gavin Newscum” and blaming the devastation in Los Angeles on Democratic policies.

But, of course, neither is President Biden, as far as she's concerned, despite the guarantee of federal assistance that Biden has provided (and Trump threatens to withhold):

Our city is being reduced to ash and we’re being governed by puerile social media posts and presumably by President Biden, but honestly, who knows?

She doesn't care if everything that can possibly be done is being done in a situation of unprecedented awfulness -- she wants to be told it's being done right:

We’re willing to make sacrifices and overlook mistakes as long as we feel like someone is giving it to us straight. But we are getting neither poetry nor prose....

I’ve watched all of this enraged, but also beside myself. Why is it that the town that gave us Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Will Smith (OK, there was The Slap but he still saved the world) cannot find a lead character to try to save us from this catastrophe? This state loves a charismatic action hero so much that it birthed The Terminator’s political career.

You know all those actors were playing fictional characters, don't you, Amy?

Chozick wants stirring words and manly bearing. I think that's what millions of Americans wanted from Joe Biden the last four years, and they never got it. That's why he's one of the most despised presidents of our time. After a while, it didn't matter what he did or didn't do. All that mattered is how he seemed.

Mayor Karen Bass certainly isn't doing it for Chozick, and Chozick is sure many people agree with her:

On Sunday, a petition to recall Ms. Bass “due to her failure to lead during this unprecedented crisis” had over 100,000 signatures.

Of course, anyone in the world can sign a Change.org petition -- I signed it from here in New York using a fake email address and the fake name "Dick Hertz."

But I think what Chozick from politicians is what a lot of Americans want. Some of them think they're getting stirring words and manly bearing from Donald Trump, and that's why he won. Very few Americans think they can get these things from Joe Biden, and that's why Democrats lost.

"BABY CRIES, MAMA BUYS"

I found this picture today:

It was taken in Boston in 2016. Here's a close-up shot of a slogan that appears on the truck's body:

I remember seeing this slogan on an ice cream truck in Boston forty years earlier, though I'm sure it wasn't the same vehicle.

Because American political life has been dominated for the past decade by an infantile whiner named Donald Trump, I think about this slogan a lot. The implication is that resistance is futile: when Baby cries, Mama doesn't have a choice -- she has to buy or Baby simply won't shut up. That's certainly how Trump operates.

And this seems to be happening in California now:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has invited President-elect Donald Trump to visit the Golden State to see the devastation of the Los Angeles fires firsthand.

Trump has been critical of Newsom’s handling of the wildfires, and of California’s overall wildfire prevention efforts, calling on the governor to resign and blaming the natural disaster on him. Newsom ... sent a letter to Trump inviting him to visit the state as he returns to the White House....

“In this spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines. Hundreds of thousands of Americans — displaced from their homes and fearful for the future — deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild,” he added.

Maybe Trump won't take Newsom up on the invitation. I think he will, and he'll be reasonably polite while he's in California -- and then immediately resume sniping at Newsom as soon as he leaves, now pretending to be an expert with firsthand knowledge. Newsom will have given him what he wants: attention and credibility. Maybe he'll concede some point to Trump, on water usage or forestry, in an attempt at cooperation. Trump will pocket that win and continue attacking Newsom.

Danes and Greenlanders are doing it too:

Denmark sent private messages in recent days to President-elect Trump's team expressing willingness to discuss boosting security in Greenland or increasing the U.S. military presence on the island, two sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios....

The Danish government wants to convince Trump, including through the messages passed to his advisers this week, that his security concerns can be addressed without claiming Greenland for the U.S.

In a way, you can't blame Trump fans for seeing this as a good approach to governing, a real-life "art of the deal." Trump picks an enemy and goes on the attack. He makes a lot of noise. The enemy tries to mollify him by giving him part of what he wants. Everyone in MAGA: Trump wins! Baby cries, mama buys.

But on the other hand, what does the MAGA base get out of all this? We were told that Trump won the election because voters were upset about the price of eggs. Right-wing voters were upset about immigration. Ads attacking trans people reportedly had a major impact.

How does strong-arming Gavin Newsom until he agrees that maybe California should clear more underbrush address any of those issues? How does a thuggish attitude toward Greenland and Denmark strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border or lower grocery bills?

The truth is that Trump's base might be concerned about certain policy goals, but they'll be very happy if Trump just beats up someone they hate. Fox News, talk radio, and Republican politicians trained the GOP base to despise California long before Trump entered politics -- and the same is true for the godless socialists of Denmark and other Western European countries.

The conventional wisdom is that these fights are attempts to distract us from the real Trump agenda: cutting taxes and regulations on the rich and big companies, pursuing a full-blown Heritage Foundation culture war. Maybe there's some truth in that, but I think the fights might be efforts to distract us from Trump's inevitable policy failures. He's admitted that it's "hard" to lower grocery prices. His Department of Government Efficiency concedes that it won't find $2 trillion in budget cuts. His border czar is lowering expectations on the scope of the immigrant crackdown.

Trump is picking gratuitous fights to reassure voters that he still has the right stuff -- and I think he's also doing it to reassure himself. He has a desperate need to believe he's the greatest president ever, even though he knows deep down that he can't solve the problems he faces. But hey, he can beat up Greenland!

YES, IT WOULD BE TERRIBLE IF DEMOCRATS DID THAT THING THEY DID EIGHT YEARS AGO THAT ... UM, WORKED

We're being told again that it would be bad for Democrats to oppose "everything" Donald Trump is doing. In a Rolling Stone story about Democrats' supine response to Trump this time around, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng quote a Democratic operative:

“I think it’s important to distinguish between capitulation to Trump in a way that betrays Democratic values, versus constructive pragmatism,” says Jesse Lehrich, a former 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman. “Because I actually worry about both ends of the spectrum — weak-kneed Dems letting Trump steamroll them on one end, and the party just reflexively opposing anything Trump supports (i.e., 2017-style ‘resistance’) on the other.”

This echoes a December quote I've posted here several times, from Senator Brian Schatz:

“The mood is slightly different than the last time and 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,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, told CNN.

I question whether Democrats were "just reflexively opposing anything Trump supports" and "freaking out about everything" in 2017. Fifteen members of the Democratic Senate caucus voted for a majority of Trump's 22 initial Cabinet appointees, while nine more voted for at least ten of them and every senator, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, voted for at least three. And have we all forgotten how eager Democrats were to work with Trump on infrastructure? From December 2016:

But let's accept the premise that Democrats were "just reflexively opposing anything Trump supports" and "freaking out about everything" in Trump's first term. What were the negative consequences of that?

Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in 2018, gaining 41 seats. Was that a bad thing, according to Democrats now?

And in the 2020 elections, Democrats won back the presidency and the Senate, while holding on to the House. Was that bad?

During Trump's term, he and his party failed to overturn the Affordable Care Act. They faced pushback on separation of immigrant families. Very little of the wall was built. Trump and the GOP passed a standard-issue pro-plutocrat tax cut, but that was Trump's only major legislative accomplishment.

But now I guess Democrats think all that was bad. Winning a few fights with Trump? Can't have that!