DEMOCRATS CAN PRAISE SETH MOULTON ALL THEY WANT -- THE RIGHT WILL STILL CALL THEM COMMIES

D.C. Democrats are largely maintaining radio silence about Donald Trump's incoming administration. But Republicans are still messaging. Take a look at the reaction to an innocuous story by The Hill's Amie Parnes: "Ranking the Democrats: Here’s Who the Party Could Nominate Next as President." Parnes's list of potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates is, in order:

Kamala Harris
Gavin Newsom
Gretchen Whitmer
Josh Shapiro
Pete Buttigieg
JB Pritzker
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Boring, right? Not to the right-wing media. Right-wingers have seized on the list's seventh name and have synchronized their message to suggest to the Republican-base audience that DEMOCRATS WILL NOMINATE A COMMUNIST IN 2028!!!1!1!!!

And I mean literally a communist. Here was one reaction to this story on Fox:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) could prove to be a formidable candidate if she decides to run for president in 2028, according to Monica Crowley.

Crowley, who served as a top public affairs official in the Department of Treasury under former President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News on Friday, where she was asked about AOC’s presidential prospects....

Crowley ... claimed that the 2024 election was a rejection of “communism” and “wokeness,” but that nevertheless, Republicans should not dismiss Ocasio-Cortez.

“However, just a word of warning to the Republicans, to my party,” she added. “Do not underestimate AOC. She’s young, she’s vibrant, she’s attractive. I think she’s wrong on everything, but she does have real grassroots support. And all of the energy and activism in the Democrat party remains with the revolutionary left, of which she is a part. So, every time the Republicans have underestimated the Democrats, we ended up with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama,

All of the energy and activism in the "Democrat Party" remains with the revolutionary left! Did you know that?

Pollster and fake Democrat Doug Schoen also appeared on Fox and weighed in:

A former adviser to President Bill Clinton, Doug Schoen, said it would be a “disaster” if Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) runs for president in 2028.

“I believe the Democratic Party needs to move to the center on cultural issues and on fiscal issues, and be more fiscally disciplined and AOC represents the opposite,” said Schoen, who is a Democratic pollster and strategist, during a Friday appearance on The Ingraham Angle.

He continued, “I think if she runs, it would be a disaster for the party....”

The Democrat Party is the party of AOC! The entire right-wing media delivered this message in perfect sync. RedState: "‘Lost and Rudderless’ Democrats See AOC as 2028 Presidential Contender." Daily Mail: "AOC for President in 2028? Furious Speculation Sweeps Social Media That the Squad Member Could Be Running." Gateway Pundit: "Socialist Starlet AOC Could Make a Run for President in 2028 Along with Other Radical Leftists." John Solomon's Just the News: "As Democrats Search for Next Leadership, AOC Put on Venerable Hill Newspaper's '28 Presidential List." Townhall: "Will AOC Run for President in 2028?" Breitbart: "The Hill Floats AOC as Potential 2028 Presidential Candidate."

I don't see this. I see far more top-level Democrats embracing the message of Seth Moulton's recent Washington Post op-ed, which is "tack to the center and sell trans people out."

Two days after Donald Trump’s victory, I gave an example of how Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone, even on issues where most Americans feel the same way. Speaking as a dad, I said I didn’t like the idea of my two girls one day competing against biological boys on a playing field. My main point, though, is what I said next: “As a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

The blowback, which was swift, included the chair of a local Democratic committee calling me a Nazi “cooperator” and about 200 people gathering in front of my office to protest a sentence....

What has amazed me, though, is what’s happening behind the scenes. Countless Democrats have reached out, from across the party — to thank me. I’ve heard it again and again, from union leaders to colleagues in the House and Senate; from top people from the Obama, Biden and Harris teams to local Democrats stopping me on the street; from fellow dads to many in the LGBTQ+ community: “Thank you for saying that!”

Kamala Harris, of course, didn't stick up for trans people on the campaign trail this year, though pro-trans statements from her 2020 campaign were dredged up by Donald Trump's campaign. On immigration, Harris embraced a bill that was largely written by Republican hard-liners and repeatedly pledged to sign it if elected. Moulton pretends that never happened:

Two years ago, I asked a House colleague who wanted to lead our messaging strategy how we should address the southern border. “We should not talk about immigration!” I was told. Republicans are just “weaponizing” the issue, so, if we respond, we are “playing into their hands.” Another version: Trump is “just tapping into fear and resentment.”

But it turns out that voters knew better, and wanted answers. When 94 percent of Americans said they worried about the border crisis, Trump said he’d fix it.

But the coordinated "BEWARE THE RED MENACE!" message from the right-wing media makes clear that tacking to the right while selling out parts of the Democratic coalition is an exercise in futility. Republicans will still portray Democrats as left-wing extremists.

Most Democrats seem to believe that the party can't possibly out-message the GOP -- there's no Fox News on our side, and Democrats don't have a large enough network of partisan news sites or podcasts. If that's the case -- and it might be, although I think Democrats give up too easily -- then loud rejections of progressivism by Democrats like Moulton are utterly futile. Republicans will always be louder, and they'll always say that Democrats' real leaders are far to the left.

Kamala Harris raised a lot of small-donor cash this year. Maybe it's time to crowdsource the financing of a new Democratic media apparatus, if left-leaning billionaires won't do it. Meanwhile, the right-wing media and Seth Moulton seem to agree on one thing: Democrats are too far to the left. Seth Moulton may think that message helps Democrats, but it doesn't.

ACTUALLY, TRUMP IS AN INSTITUTIONALIST -- AND HE'S THE INSTITUTION

In his latest column, David Brooks argues that true Trumpists have no respect of institutions.

What does heroism look like according the MAGA morality? It looks like the sort of people whom Trump has picked to be in his cabinet. The virtuous man in this morality is self-assertive, combative, transgressive and vengeful. He’s not afraid to break the rules and come to his own conclusions. He has contempt for institutions and is happy to be a battering force to bring them down. He is unbothered by elite scorn but, in fact, revels in it and goes out of his way to generate it.

In this mind-set, if the establishment regards you as a sleazeball, you must be doing something right. If the legal system indicts you, you must be a virtuous man.

In this morality, the fact that a presidential nominee is accused of sexual assault is a feature, not a bug. It’s a sign that this nominee is a manly man. Manly men go after what they want. They assert themselves and smash propriety — including grabbing women “by the pussy” if they feel like it.

In this worldview, a nominee enshrouded in scandal is more trustworthy than a person who has lived an honest life.

But Trumpers don't admire everyone who defies institutional rules, or who is "self-assertive, combative, transgressive and vengeful." They don't admire immigrants who try to improve their lives by defying our immigration laws. They might romanticize the Mafia, but they don't admire contemporary criminals or drug dealers (except, perhaps, their own). Blake Masters, the failed pro-Trump Arizona GOP Senate candidate who, like J.D. Vance, is a far-right Peter Thiel protégé, actually did see the world that way when he was a nineteen-year-old posting at LiveJournal:

In a series of short, polemical blog posts, Masters once suggested that “illegal immigration is an ethical contradiction in terms,” argued that “‘unrestricted’ immigration is the only choice,” and commended U.S. service members who had participated in a drug trafficking ring along the southwestern border as “heroes,” among other things.

But Masters doesn't believe any of that now, and neither does MAGA. Nor does MAGA admire Hunter Biden, who clearly used to play by his own rules regarding sex, drugs, and business.

That's because Donald Trump and his followers actually do believe in institutions -- the Trump Organization, pro-Trump companies like X.com and SpaceX, and the Republican Party and conservative movement, now that they're under total Trumpist control. Trumpists are transgressors, but the transgressors must be loyal to those institutions.

Obviously, being loyal to Trumpian institutions means transforming or attempting to destroy institutions that are outside the Trump orbit, because they're not made up of loyal lackeys. That's why Trump affiliated himself with Project 2025, the leaders of which aren't transgressive in their personal lives. Trump thinks Project 2025 will empty out the bureaucracy and restock it exclusively with Trumpists.

That's also why Trump likes Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence, who obviously isn't a hard-partying, sexually predatory man. David Lurie of Public Notice writes:

Trump has long held a grudge against the work of competent intelligence and counterintelligence professionals, including in the FBI, CIA, and the office of the DNI. That is unsurprising, given that their work has inevitably raised questions about Trump’s own curious associations and affinities with many of the nation’s sworn enemies, as reflected in the events that gave rise to the Mueller investigation and Trump’s first impeachment.

... On that background, his elevation of someone like Gabbard to the DNI position makes perfect sense.

I believe Gabbard is a Russian agent. I suspect Trump is merely a Russian dupe. Trump collaborates with Vladimir Putin and can easily be persuaded to do Putin's bidding, but I don't believe he has the larger perspective of Gabbard, who wants to make the United States part of a Moscow-based Axis of Evil. Trump just wants to be pals with a dictator and reap whatever rewards come from that.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is a bit more of a puzzle. A few days ago, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last tried to understand why Trump wants to turn Department of Human Services over to him. Is this why?

Cabinet secretaries exist to enact the vision and priorities of the president.

Ergo, Kennedy must have been given this appointment because he shares the president-elect’s views on vaccines, research, etc. in toto.

Ergo, if Kennedy’s nomination is defeated and someone else takes his place, then he or she would pursue the exact same policy revisions on vaccines, research, et al.

Or is this correct?

The other reading is that Kennedy has been nominated as an act of pure transactionalism:

* Trump needed Kennedy’s support, so he promised him HHS.

* Trump does not give a fig about anything HHS does.

* If Kennedy were to ban all vaccines, Trump would be fine with that.

* If Kennedy’s nomination is blocked and Trump then appoints a normal person like, say, Mike Leavitt, then Leavitt would not pursue any of Kennedy’s policies.

* And Trump would be fine with that, too.

* Because Trump has fully severed policy from ideology and reduced it to nothing but transactionalism.

I think it's mostly the latter, but the appointment wasn't just a payoff to Kennedy personally -- after all, Trump has appointed other skeptics and denialists to the public health bureaucracy.

I think Trump likes the idea that Kennedy will terrorize that bureaucracy, on the assumption that everyone remaining after Kennedy's purge will be loyal to Trump. (I don't think Trump quite realizes that they'll be loyal to a particular crackpot health viewpoint, not to Trump.)

I also think Trump is trying to keep his own voter base loyal -- remember, they've booed him when he said nice things about COVID vaccines. Trump's base is full of skeptics and denialists. Trump's base hates Anthony Fauci as much as Kennedy does and believes Fauci should be in prison, or executed for treason.

Trump might have some anger at the public health bureaucracy. He was frustrated in the fall of 2020 when it became clear that no COVID vaccine would be approved until after the election. And he was a low-level vaccine skeptic years ago, as he made clear in a 2015 primary debate:

"You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — I mean, it looks just like it's meant for a horse, not for a child," Trump said, "and we've had so many instances, people that work for me. Just the other day, 2 years old, 2 1/2-years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic."

But mostly I think Trump hopes that Kennedy will help ensure that Trump's voters and government bureaucrats will be loyal to the one institution Trump cares about -- himself.

HOW DO DEMOCRATS SUCK AT MESSAGING? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

Hi. I know I'm supposed to be thankful today, but it's raining and my household been dealing with minor but annoying health issues and the bad people are still winning in the world of politics, while the good people are barely showing up to compete.

Here's a widely quoted interview in The New York Times in which Senator John Fetterman suggests that Democrats should respond to Donald Trump's Cabinet picks by saying nothing right now:

Trump is assembling a cabinet of people many Democrats find deeply objectionable. How do you think Democrats should respond?

I’m just saying, buckle up and pack a lunch, because it’s going to be four years of this. And if you have a choice to freak out, you know, on the hour, then that’s your right. But I will not. I’m not that dude, and I’m not that Democrat. I’m going to pick my fights. If you freak out on everything, you lose any kind of relevance.

... Do you think Democrats have done too much freaking out when it comes to Trump?

It’s symbiotic. One feeds off the other. The Democrats can’t resist a freakout, and that must be the wind under the wings for Trump.

The Democrats can’t resist a freakout? Really? It seems to me that Democrats are extremely quiet at this moment, particularly about Trump's worst appointees.

Democrats don't have to "freak out on everything" -- they can let Trump have Marco Rubio at State and Elise Stefanik at the UN, because they'll be bad but they won't be catastrophically bad. But maybe Democrats should say something about Robert Kennedy Jr., who doesn't even think polio vaccines are safe and effective, and who "likened vaccinating children to abuse by the Catholic Church," as NBC News reports.

In a recent Emerson College poll, Kennedy has near-majority support -- 47% of poll respondents back him. He has a higher level of support than Rubio (45%). Republicans who despise Matt Gaetz didn't hesitate to express their opposition to him, and Republicans support Trump otherwise. Why would it be so terrible for Democrats to say right now that the Kennedy nomination is a five-alarm fire for American health? Sure, don't "freak out on everything" -- but freak out on him.

Regrettably, Democrats don't message very well between elections. That allows critics, right-wing and otherwise, to define who Democrats are, until Democrats desperately play catch-up during election season. So the result of a survey conducted by Stephen Hawkins and Daniel Yudkin is not surprising: Democratic voters' priority issue is "cost of living/inflation," but Republicans and others, including fellow Democrats, think Democrats' priority issues are abortion and LGBT issues.

... every single demographic group thought Democrats’ top priority was abortion, overestimating the importance of this issue by an average of 20 percentage points. (This included Democrats themselves, suggesting that they are somewhat out of touch even with what their fellow partisans care about.) ...

By far the most notable way that Democrats are misperceived relates to what our survey referred to as “LGBT/transgender policy.” Although this was not a major priority for Democratic voters in reality—it ranked 14th—our survey respondents listed it as Democrats’ second-highest priority. This effect was especially dramatic among Republicans—56 percent listed the issue among Democrats’ top three priorities, compared with just 8 percent who listed inflation—but nearly every major demographic group made a version of the same mistake.

Hawkins and Yudkin blame progressive groups for talking so much about these issues that voters think they're Democrats' top priorities. But while abortion may have seemed like Democrats' #1 issue because Kamala Harris made protecting abortion rights a major part of her campaign message, she rarely if ever talked about LGBT/transgender policy. Republicans attacked her incessantly in ads highlighting her pro-trans stance in the 2020 primaries -- but Fox and the rest of the right-wing media were obsessed with this issue long before the 2024 campaign began, and even the "liberal" media has been anti-trans, particularly The New York Times.

Democrats needed a message on this issue, and the Harris campaign decided it was impossible to craft one on the fly during the campaign. Democrats also needed to do some proactive messaging on the economy -- selling what was working while acknowledging the pain of those still struggling to pay off high grocery bills. Joe Biden is a terrible public communicator in his old age, but no Democrat picked up the slack because Democrats don't message between elections -- they just do stuff and hope voters will like it.

And now we have a whole new sphere in which Republicans are winning the messaging war while Democrats don't even seem to want to deploy troops:

While many on the left have spent the last few weeks debating whether Ms. Harris should have granted an interview to Joe Rogan, the right-leaning host of the world’s most popular podcast, some progressive influencers are now more interested in building up a Rogan of their own.

They are banding together to create their own networks to make content year-round and not just in the final months before elections. Their goal is to eventually forge self-sustaining advocacy groups and networks, a left-wing answer to the nonprofit Turning Point USA or the media company The Daily Wire on the right. But first they need buy-in — and cash — from the Democratic Party’s donors and institutions to compete in the new attention economy, where people’s time is the currency....

“Conservative influencers have year-round support, and those of us on the left have been left to fend for ourselves and it’s not working,” said Leigh McGowan, who goes by iampoliticsgirl and has more than two million followers across various platforms.

It's bad.

David Pakman, who has a progressive YouTube channel with 2.7 million subscribers ... has looked enviously upon the Turning Point network. “We just don’t have anything like it at all on the left,” he said.

He was among a small group of influencers invited to meet with Ms. Harris for an off-record meet-and-greet linked to the State of the Union address last March. But he had to pay his own way there and for his lodging.

“I think I got a tea bag and some hotel water,” he recalled. Now he worries that Ms. Harris’s loss has sapped enthusiasm on the left and that there’s no plan from the party to keep supporters engaged.

As Collin Rugg noted on X:

David Packman called out his own party for giving up when things get hard.

“It terrifies me because our instinct is the opposite of what the right does.” ...

“When the right loses, they get organized, they fund and they create insanely effective organizations like Turning Point USA, investing in the Daily Wire and building out this huge network of right wing idea ideas and influencers.”

“We are in an algorithmic de subscription spiral right now, because when people start unsubscribing on YouTube, YouTube thinks oh, we probably shouldn't recommend this content...”

But as Oliver Willis has noted, Democrats stand down after Election Day even when they win, and they did this long before the podcast/influencer era:

... Democrats have an annoying habit of powering down after these electoral successes in a way that allows the right to make gains in public sentiment and raw political power that ... allow them to advance just at a time when they should be in retreat. The right understands that the battle over political power in the United States is a long slog, and that even when they lose in spectacular fashion they still retain the power to set the stakes and parameters of the wider conflict. Much to their favor.

After John McCain lost to Obama in 2008, the biggest thumping at the presidential level since 1996, the right spent the political equivalent of about two weeks wondering how they lost. Then they got over it and began a concerted campaign to undermine Obama. The right was practically handing out tri-corner hats and yammering about tea bagging people before Obama had even gotten comfortable behind the Resolute desk.

At the same time, Obama essentially began winding down the campaign machine he had steered to victory and wasted his time cajoling Republicans to support the stimulus and health care reform. They responded to his olive branch by calling him a socialist, a foreigner, and a tyrant. Then we got 2010 and a Democratic disaster.

Republicans succeeded at forcing Obama to spend most of his time in office on defense rather than offense, because Republicans never stop fighting.

Democrats should attack Kennedy (and Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth). They should cultivate that influencer army. And they should stop letting Republicans create the perception of who Democrats and Republicans are. They should do all this, starting immediately, even if John Fetterman disapproves.

IF WE BUILD A LEFT-WING MEDIA, IT NEEDS MORE THAN ONE ENEMY

Josh Marshall has a theory about Kamala Harris's loss and the American media environment.

... Harris performed best — that is, underperformed least — in the battleground states. In the places where her campaign flooded the airwaves with her messaging ... she did better than in most uncompetitive states, red and blue, that saw no campaigning at all....

That speaks to the reality that most of the country is awash in right-wing propaganda all the time. For the olds, it’s Fox News, conservative radio and Sinclair-owned local news; for the youths, it’s the right-wing manosphere podcasts and streams that Trump so assiduously courted all campaign long (plus soothing TikToks promoting retrograde gender roles, evangelical values and distrust of government regulation — think the trad wives and crunchy so-far-left-they’ve-looped-around-to-the-right content — aimed specifically at women).

As Marshall puts it, Harris did best where she "set up a temporary but pervasive media apparatus." He adds:

It’s a playing field that Republicans not only dominate; Democrats don’t even compete. They still depend heavily on traditional media sources that simply don’t operate the same way these right-wing PR arms do.

Marshall brings up the Pod Save America podcast -- which to him suggests a difference between right-wing and progressive/liberal/moderate audiences (and content creators).

There are structural problems with mimicking this right-wing content beat-for-beat. The Pod Save guys, while open about their political allegiances, often criticize the party and its politicians. It would be much more difficult to recreate the fawning adoration of Donald Trump Fox News and those podcasts produce for, say, Joe Biden on the left.

Maybe it would be a bad idea to create a fawning liberal equivalent to Fox News, but would it be difficult? By the end of his second term, George W. Bush was more unpopular than Biden is now, and yet Fox kept up its cheerleading for Bush and the Iraq War for as long as he was in office.

But here's the other thing Fox did then, and still does: When it's not cheerleading for the head of the Republican Party, it's attacking Democrats -- including low- and mid-level Democrats, as well as people its audience identifies with Democrats and liberalism (trans people, Hollywood celebrities, "Antifa," immigrants who commit crimes, people of color who use guns in gun-control cities, and so on). The focus on some individuals can persist for days, weeks, or even months. That's why what was intended to be a niche social media campaign for Bud Light involving a trans influencer named Dylan Mulvaney led to a national boycott by beer drinkers who were never expected to see the campaign. That's why every Fox viewer knows the name of Laken Riley, who was killed earlier this year by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia. That's why, twenty years ago, a Colorado professor named Ward Churchill became nationally famous after he referred to 9/11 victims in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns."

By contrast, liberal media outlets focus on Trump, Trump, and more Trump. Occasionally there'll be an alternate target, but usually it's a harmless-seeming figure of ridicule -- Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. Especially outside of election season, the narrow range of targets conveys the impression that only some Republicans are crazy, that only some Republicans are dangerous, and that the dangerous illiberalism is confined to deep-red states or districts, as well as Trumpworld. On Fox, by contrast, the liberal menace is everywhere.

For years, the focus at MSNBC and at liberal podcasts has been not just Trump, but the legal fight to take down Trump -- a fight that's now ended in failure. Is that because this is the most important story? Or is it because these media outlets want an upmarket, highly educated audience that roots for lawyers?

A search for the name Jack Smith at MSNBC.com gets 17,100 hits. MSNBC has talked much more about Smith than about, for example, some of the dangerous candidates who ran for office as Republicans this year. Even Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate from North Carolina who called himself "a black NAZI" on a porn forum, gets only 730 hits. Other candidates who probably would have gotten saturation coverage on Fox if the parties were reversed have gotten even less coverage than Robinson at MSNBC. Royce White, the Alex Jones-backing, anti-Semitic Republican candidate for Amy Klobuchar's Senate seat in Minnesota who also said, "Women have become too mouthy," gets only 19 hits at MSNBC. Michele Morrow, the QAnon-backing GOP candidate for North Carolina school superintendent who has called for Barack Obama's execution, and who lost her election 51%-49%, gets only 9 hits at MSNBC.

And I haven't even mentioned the MAGA-friendly preachers or manosphere misogynists who get attention at sites like Right Wing Watch but rarely show up on MSNBC or in liberal podcasts. Fox knows how to create the impression that there are enemies everywhere, and that the ideas of these enemies are ridiculous but dangerous. Fox plucks many people from obscurity in order to argue this point. Liberal outlets, by contrast, imply that life might be just fine if Trump would go away.

My hunch is that millions of Americans don't like book banning, think QAnon is crazy, and don't want to live in a country run by theocratic conspiratorialists. I can imagine an approach to left-wing media that's almost tabloid in nature, with lots of villains. The message would be that the audience has simple decency and common sense, but we have to stop these dangerous, aggressive crackpots all across America who want to do us harm. That might work better than endless chitchat with well-dressed lawyers. And it would be the truth.

YEAH, THAT'LL WORK: DEFEATING TRUMP BY BEING PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE (BUT WITHOUT THE AGGRESSIVE PART)

Politico reports that Democratic progressives have a totally foolproof plan for fighting Trump in his second term:

Progressive Democrats wrestling with how to navigate a second Donald Trump presidency are settling on a new approach: Take his populist, working-class proposals at his word — or at least pretend to.

If he succeeds, they can take some credit for bringing him to the table. If he doesn’t, they can bash him for it.

For instance?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview that she would likely work with Trump if he pursues antitrust promises he made on the campaign trail. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he sees himself partnering with Trump to tackle “large corporate consolidations,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on X that he “looked forward” to Trump “fulfilling his promise” to cap credit card interest rates.

Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ... is finding common cause with the president-elect.

“President Trump announced during his campaign that he intended to put a 10 percent interest rate cap on consumer credit,” Warren told POLITICO. “Bring it on.”

Did Trump make a lot of "antitrust promises" or complain about “large corporate consolidations” on the campaign trail? If so, it's news to me. In October he talked about not breaking up Google. He's expected to fire Lina Khan, President Biden's antitrust enforcer at the Federal Trade Commission.

It's true that he said in September,

“While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates. We’re going to cap it at around 10 percent. We can’t let them make 25 and 30 percent.”

But what benefit is there in passively waiting for Trump to make good on this promise? Most voters are unlikely to remember it. It was a much less prominent part of his campaign than his promises to deport all undocumented immigrants or end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Want to try holding Trump to this promise? Introduce a bill to lower credit card interest rates -- and put Trump's name on it.

Sanders and Warren should write a bill limit credit card interest rates and call it the Donald Trump Credit Card Sanity Act. They should put Trump's September quote in a "Whereas" paragraph at the beginning of the bill. They should dare him to oppose a bill with his name on it. Dare Senate Republicans to oppose a bill named after him.

I know, I know -- most mainstream economists, across the political spectrum, oppose limits on credit card fees, because they make it less likely that banks will offer cards to poorer people. Last year, when Senator Josh Hawley, of all people, introduced a bill to limit credit card interest rates, the bill went nowhere and had no co-sponsors, not even Sanders or Warren.

But if you want to make the point, don't sit around waiting for Trump not to act. Actively hold him to his word, and do it in an attention-getting, headline-grabbing way.

YES, ROBERT KENNEDY JR. IS AN AUTHORITARIAN (AS IS TRUMP, OBVIOUSLY)

The opinion section of The New York Times has just published a roundtable discussion of the incoming Trump administration, featuring left-leaners Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, and Lydia Polgreen, along with token right-winger Ross Douthat. Patrick Healy is the moderator. The teaser headline on the front page of the Times is "What If It Gets Really Bad? Four Columnists Debate Trump’s Approach to Power."

It's a frustrating discussion, because while Bouie, Gessen, and Polgreen expect the Trump presidency to be authoritarian, they're also upset about likely consequences of Trump's election that aren't technically authoritarian but will be Reaganism on steroids. Polgreen, for instance, predicts that

what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are cooking up at their Department of Government Efficiency could cause a tremendous amount of suffering very quickly. Sharp, thoughtless cuts to Medicaid, for example, will have an immediate effect on the health and well-being of millions of poor Americans, especially children. Not to mention the economic impact of throwing potentially millions of federal workers out of work. The government would save money on salaries, but individual communities across the country would lose earners who contribute to the overall economy in many ways. It is all just so heedless.

All this gives Douthat an opening to be the contrarian who argues that the Trump presidency might not be authoritarian. At one point, Healy asks Douthat:

... I wonder, when you look at the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard, Kennedy or the now withdrawn Matt Gaetz — people who seem to see the state as the enemy and give off authoritarian vibes in different respects — do you see any signs of darkness ahead?

Douthat replies:

In what sense do you think that Kennedy, whose potpourri of positions combine old-school lefty critiques of everything from nuclear power to big pharma with libertarian-inflected support for alternative medicine, psychedelics and fad diets, gives off “authoritarian vibes”? His most deplorable position is his anti-vaccine advocacy, which has nothing authoritarian about it; it’s a form of crunchy libertarianism taken to a regrettable extreme. Not everything unwise or reckless can be collapsed into the category of creeping authoritarianism; there are plenty of errors that run in the opposite direction!

Later, Gessen defines Robert Kennedy as an authoritarian because ... he rejects mainstream science. I don't like Douthat, but saying this makes his job very easy:

Gessen: ... let’s agree that one aspect of authoritarian government is decision-making by one person or a small group of people, outside of any transparent deliberative process. This is what makes Kennedy’s wacky positions on things such as vaccines “authoritarian” — it’s not what he thinks, necessarily; it’s his rejection of expertise and the deliberation that has produced existing policies.

Douthat: I’ll just say again that I don’t think the rejection of expertise is authoritarian — if so, then Americans have always been authoritarian — unless it is enforced by actual dictatorial means.

None of the panelists seem to realize that Kennedy has made expressly authoritarian threats. I told you about this in April 2023, just after Kennedy, who at the time was a presidential candidate, made clear that he was prepared to bring criminal charges against government health officials and editors of medical journals whose positions differ from his.

In a Twitter thread, Kennedy reassured us that he didn't intend to be vindictive against Anthony Fauci and other government health officials if he was elected president.

It is dawning on mainstream figures like Anthony Fauci that their Covid policies were a public health disaster. Lots of us are angry about the mandates, the lockdowns, the censorship, the insanity. But we need to avoid the toxic quagmire of retribution and blame and focus on ensuring this never happens again. Clean up the regulatory agencies, get corporate money out of public health, and guarantee free, open, uncensored public and scientific discourse.

But then he immediately withdrew the olive branch:

Of course, officials who betrayed the public trust must not be allowed to hold power. I will remove them from their positions and, if laws were broken, my attorney general will prosecute.

Just to be clear, I will prosecute any official who engaged in criminal wrongdoing during the pandemic.....

As President, I will direct my attorney general to investigate and prosecute every person who knowingly defrauded or deceived the American public about the safety and efficacy of medical products and I will obtain justice and compensation for every American who was injured or suffered the death of family members from those actions.

Kennedy has called the COVID vaccine "the deadliest vaccine ever made." He said in this thread that he was eager to "prosecute every person who knowingly defrauded or deceived the American public about the safety and efficacy of medical products." You do the math.

And he seemed eager to prosecute the editors of medical journals:

"I'll bring the medical journals ... into the Justice Department as soon as I appoint an AG, and I'll say to them “You guys are part of a racketeering syndicate ... We are gonna sue you both civilly for damages and criminally”" —@RobertKennedyJr https://t.co/kx1qxTVVPL pic.twitter.com/GcwoHqQeJR

— Dr. ZW (@ZombyWoof2022) April 26, 2023

Kennedy's words:

I'll bring all the medical journals -- The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA -- into the Justice Department, as soon as I appoint an AG, and I'll say to them, "You guys are part of a racketeering syndicate. You're collaborating with this pharmaceutical industry, lie to the American public about the efficacy and safety of these products, and you're causing enormous harm, and we are going to sue you both civilly, for damages, and we're going to sue you criminally, unless you come up with a plan right now for how you're going to stop doing that.

Apparently, no one in the Times discussion remembers any of this.

*****

In this discussion, it's remarkable how long it takes panelists who work for a newspaper to mentions Trumpworld's threats to the press. It's only near the end of the discussion that Gessen warns of "media capture (e.g., bringing media outlets to heel by exerting pressure on owners, often using their other business interests)." Polgreen invokes an aspect of Narendra Modi's authoritarianism in India: "Intimidate the press through legal harassment and by threatening owners’ other business interests." You'd think the panelists would be very focused on this, given the fact that Trump recently sued CBS for $10 billion because, he claims, CBS edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, and Trump's attorneys also sent a letter to the Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages because, according to the letter "false and defamatory statements" appeared in Times articles by Peter Baker, Michael Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, as well as in a Penguin Random House book written by Buettner and Craig.

And now there's this:

... Elon Musk shared a bawdy meme on his X platform that joked about tapping into his deep pockets to purchase MSNBC....

MSNBC’s parent company Comcast ... has been eyeing plans to spin off nearly all of its cable channels into a company dubbed SpinCo. Other channels in the group include CNBC, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and the Golf Channel....

The tech mogul also joked about purchasing Twitter (now X) for years before he actually pulled the trigger.

“How much is it?” he asked in 2017 on the platform.

Here are some of the relevant tweets:

And lead us not into temptation … pic.twitter.com/0FG24fdwUc

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2024

How much does it cost?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2024

Deal 🔥🚀🤣

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2024

This might have happened after the roundtable took place -- but the Trump lawsuit and the threatening letter were already old news, as was the apparent intimidation that led The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to withdraw their Kamala Harris endorsements. Now the intimidation is happening live on Elon Musk's platform. I'm sorry no one asked Douthat why all this isn't already fascism, or at least fascist in intent.

IT'S GOOD TO KNOW WHAT RIGHT-WINGERS ARE THINKING, BUT WE DON'T NEED TO TALK TO THEM

A few days ago, a centrist Democratic congressman who mounted a failed challenge to President Biden in the 2024 primaries posted a tweet that's getting a lot of attention, much of it negative:

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, I followed quite a few right-wingers there. I liked knowing what they were thinking and how they framed their ideas. As longtime readers of this blog know, I often lurk at right-wing sites -- I still sometimes go to Free Republic, and I like knowing what's being said at the Fox News site, at Breitbart, and even at Gateway Pundit.

But I don't see what value there is in engaging social media right-wingers. As The Atlantic's Ali Breland notes, polite debate isn't want social media right-wingers want:

The conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who has successfully seeded moral panics around critical race theory and DEI hiring practices, has directly pointed to X as a tool that has let him reach a general audience....

The nature of reactionary politics demands constant confrontations—literal reactions—to the left. People like Rufo would have a substantially harder time trying to influence opinions on a platform without liberals. “Triggering the libs” sounds like a joke, but it is often essential for segments of the right. This explains the popularity of some X accounts with millions of followers, such as Libs of TikTok, whose purpose is to troll liberals.

Libs of TikTok seeks to troll liberals and also target liberals, directing right-wing followers' attention to supposed enemies who don't have the means to defend themselves against the right's doxxing, harassment, death threats, and so on. (Elon Musk is now targeting government employees in this way.) Rufo wants to shape the way the entire culture talks about right-wing wedge issues:

So is pronouns this is awesome we are fighting back we are winning

— Steve (@Steve113875651) August 11, 2023

This isn't debate. This is warfare. There's no reason for liberals to engage it.

However, it's useful to know what these people are saying. Forewarned is forearmed. What we want to know is how they talk to one another when they think the rest of us aren't listening. That's why I lurk at exclusively right-wing sites. That's why I think people who capture and reproduce right-wingers' words to one another -- Media Matters, Right Wing Watch, NewsHounds, Kat Abu -- are performing a vital service.

It's also good to know what appears in the books that right-wing personalities churn out in bulk, because rightists really don't expect us to notice what they say in those books. Jonathan Chait has been reading three recent books by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, and I hope what he found shocks people who think contemporary conservatism is merely an inch or two to the right of Gerald Ford, accompanied by some empty Trumpian bluster. I wish every Democratic politician and mainstream pundit could understand that what Chait found is what all those Trump guys in diners really believe, or at least it's rhetoric that would make them enthusiastically nod in agreement (sadly, Chait doesn't seem to understand this):

Where Hegseth’s thinking begins venturing into truly odd territory is his argument, developed in Battle for the American Mind, that the entire basic design of the U.S. public education system is the product of a century-long, totally successful communist plot....

The Marxist conspiracy has also, according to Hegseth, begun creeping into the U.S. military, the institution he is now poised to run....

In The War on Warriors, Hegseth makes plain that he considers the very idea of “rules of war” just more woke nonsense. “Modern war-fighters fight lawyers as much as we fight bad guys,” he writes. “Our enemies should get bullets, not attorneys.” He repeatedly disparages Army lawyers (“jagoffs”), even claiming that their pointless rules are “why America hasn’t won a war since World War II.”

... American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.”

... The War on Warriors repeatedly urges readers to treat the American left exactly like foreign combatants. Describing the military’s responsibility to the nation, Hegseth writes, “The expectation is that we will defend it against all enemies—both foreign and domestic. Not political opponents, but real enemies. (Yes, Marxists are our enemies.)” The Marxist exception swallows the “not political opponents” rule because pretty much all of his political opponents turn out to be Marxists. These include, but are not limited to, diversity advocates (“They are Marxists ... You know what they are? They’re traitors”), newspapers (“the communist Star Tribune”), and, as noted, almost anybody involved in public education.

Hegseth’s idea of illegitimate behavior by the domestic enemy is quite expansive. Consider this passage, recalling his time advocating for the Iraq War: “While I debated these things in good faith, the Left mobilized. Electing Obama, railroading the military, pushing women in combat—readiness be damned. The Left has never fought fair.” The most remarkable phrase there is “electing Obama.” Hegseth’s notion of unfair tactics used by the left includes not only enacting administrative policies that he disagrees with, but the basic act of voting for Democrats. The inability or unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate political opposition likely endeared Hegseth to Trump, who shares the trait.

You know who else shares an inabilty to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate political opposition? Everyone in America who binge-watches Fox. They all believe it's illegitimate to vote for Democrats -- doing so, they believe, marks the voter as a traitor to the cause of true Americanism.

Our political culture needs to know what these people think. Every mainstream journalist should at least scan the ragebait headlines at FoxNews.com and other right-wing sites every day, and should watch Fox, or at least Fox clips, on a regular basis to understand how far to the right the GOP electorate has drifted.

But there's no point arguing with right-wingers on social media. They don't want civic debate. They won't total political and cultural domination.

KIM JONG UN + DEUTSCHE BANK + TRUMP'S MIT UNCLE + LINDSEY GRAHAM + BARRON = ELON MUSK

I keep trying to understand why Donald Trump hasn't parted ways with Elon Musk yet, even though nearly everyone believes he will. The formula above is the closest I can come to an explanation.

The Lindsey Graham part isn't obvious to most people, but it seems clear to me. We're told that Trump and Musk is a clash of egos, but Musk shows Graham-like deference to Trump when he needs to. This is from a recent New York Times story:

... it is notable that Mr. Musk has appeared concerned about the perception of his influence. On Wednesday, in response to a headline describing him as Mr. Trump’s “closest confidant,” the tech billionaire went out of his way to praise “the large number of loyal, good people at Mar-a-Lago who have worked for him for many years.”

“To be clear, while I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates, many selections occur without my knowledge and decisions are 100% that of the President,” he wrote on X.

But Trump also likes and admires the people he calls "killers." Sometimes he likes them because they're literally killers. Here was Trump in 2018:

Mr. Trump had ... praised Kim [Jong Un] as very "talented." [Bret] Baier [of Fox News] pressed Mr. Trump on his praise for Kim, pointing to the North Korean leader's murderous regime record....

"You know you call people sometimes killers, he is a killer. He's clearly executing people," Baier said.

"He's a tough guy," Mr. Trump responded.

"Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don't care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have," the president continued. "If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean that's one in 10,000 that could do that. So he's a very smart guy, he's a great negotiator. But I think we understand each other."

Musk may not literally be a killer, but it appears that he's trying to get people killed:

... this week, Musk has escalated from targeting government agencies to singling out individuals....

One recent post by the billionaire zeroed in on Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., after another user on Musk’s social-media platform X questioned her role.

Musk’s repost—“So many fake jobs”—garnered 32 million views, triggering an avalanche of memes and ridicule from his followers against the employee....

He also targeted a relative of Nancy Pelosi, an adviser to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who's criticized the safety of Tesla vehicles, and "two obscure federal officials with climate-related jobs—including one who had actually left her job at the Energy Department in August."

What does Ashley Thomas do?

An agency official said the climate diversification portfolio is highly technical and is focused on identifying innovations that serve U.S. strategic interests, including bolstering agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather events.

Merely acknowledging the existence of climate change is heresy in the Trump administration -- or maybe the tweeter whose post Musk amplified saw "Climate Diversification" in Thomas's job title and thought it had something to do with diversity.

So many fake jobs https://t.co/aVH8QtMcLE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024

This stochastic terrorism has had the intended effect:

LinkedIn and Facebook pages for Thomas, who lives in the Seattle area, were no longer live as of Wednesday.

To Trump, Musk is also, obviously, a potential source of money -- both his own and that of his tech billionaire friends.

And I think Trump sees Musk as some sort of science genius (which makes him no different from millions of people all over the world, including many credulous journalists). To Trump, Musk is the master of social media, where Trump has taken up residence for a decade or so. But it's not just that. Notice how Trump can only gaze in awe at Musk waving a model rocket in the air:

We know that Trump thinks there are genius genes in his bloodline, but when he says this, who is his go-to example? Uncle John Trump, a "super genius" MIT professor. Trump has said of his uncle that he "used to discuss nuclear with him all the time."

Trump didn't invite classical musicians to his White House, like JFK. He doesn't read serious fiction or nonfiction, like Barack Obama. Musk is a tech genius, so he's a genius as Trump defines genius (which probably means that he manages to make Trump feel as if he's a genius).

And as I said a couple of weeks ago, there seems to be a weird father-son dyamic here:

... I think it's noteworthy that Trump is the same age as Musk's father. If Musk is an alpha male, he's a weirdly wounded one -- before he went full Nazi on X, he seemed to be using it to get love, in a quest to become the world's most famous shitposter. Now Trump seems to be giving him the love he needs.

And Trump might be looking for a son. He seems disappointed in his three biological sons, although he appears to be grateful to Barron for steering him in the direction of the bro podcasters who helped him win this election. Maybe Trump sees Musk as Barron if Barron found a way to be a "killer" as a result of being extremely online.

I could be wrong about all this, but I think this relationship could last.

GAETZ'S DOWNFALL IS A WIN, BUT IT'S NOT OUR WIN

Amanda Marcotte gives credit for Matt Gaetz's downfall to "the resistance."

It's a reminder that resistance is not futile.

Gaetz throwing in the towel is a necessary reminder that it can pay to fight back.

But what did we do, exactly, that led Gaetz to withdraw, according to Marcotte?

Republicans were sullenly falling into formation behind this pick, as evidenced by the suppression of the ethics report. But because ordinary people showed some spine — and some interest in consuming news about the scandal — the embarrassing details about Gaetz kept coming out.

So we "resisted" by watching and reading news about Gaetz's sex scandals?

If that were sufficient to bring down a Republican, Pete Hegseth would have withdrawn is name by now as well. Attention to scandals might also have brought down Robert Kennedy Jr., although the sexual assault allegations against him haven't received nearly enough attention. And, of course, we wouldn't be talking about any of these nominations if consuming news about sexual assault were a successful resistance tactic, because Donald Trump wouldn't have won the election.

The truth is that Gaetz is gone because Republicans opposed him.

Mr. Gaetz told people close to him that after conversations with senators and members of their staffs, he had concluded that there were at least four Republican senators in the next Congress who were implacably opposed to his nomination: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the newly elected John Curtis of Utah. With a 53-member majority, four defections would be enough to defeat the nomination.

It would be nice to think that fear of Democratic and swing voters led to this outcome, but that's unlikely. Collins is up for reelection two years from now in a blue state, but Murkowski won't need to run again until 2028. Curtis just won his seat and won't need to defend it until 2030. McConnell has stepped down as Republican leader and probably won't run in 2026, when he'll be 84, but he's in a red state where the one popular Democrat, Governor Andy Beshear, says he won't run for the Senate seat (probably because he's gearing up for a presidential run).

Yes, there was probably an element of resistance in the leaking of details about the Gaetz investigations (although the leaks could also have been the work of people who support Trump but despise Gaetz). Nevertheless, no one in the Democratic leadership stood up and openly defied Trump on this nomination. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called for the release of the Ethics Committee report on Gaetz but didn't demand it, and no Democrat leaked it. As a result, the public won't associate this win with our side. If you're a voter to whom it now appears that sexual predators are operating with impunity, you're seeing no evidence that Democrats have your back.

And we're being told that this is by design:

Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader for a few more weeks, is not known for keeping his thoughts to himself. But he has been uncharacteristically restrained about offering up his views on even the most eyebrow-raising potential Trump administration nominees emanating from Mar-a-Lago.

“We’re going to wait and see what happens in each of these instances before commenting,” Mr. Schumer told reporters this week, passing up a television camera-ready opportunity he would normally grab to slip a knife into any of the president-elect’s cabinet picks.

He is keeping quiet for a reason, and it is not because he does not have opinions on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration in the making. With some Republicans raising their own profound concerns about Mr. Trump’s ethically and legally challenged choices, such as the former Representative Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, why get in the way of their intraparty hand-wringing?

Why get in the way of Republicans' intraparty handwringing? Because there may not be any more of it. It's quite possible that every other Trump appointee will sail through, including alleged rapist Pete Hegseth, Russian agent Tulsi Gabbard, and polio vaccine opponent Robert Kennedy Jr.

What does Schumer think would be the downside of being forthright about these nominees now?

Mr. Schumer does not want Republicans to be able to paint him as the face of the opposition, a prospect that could help rally the G.O.P. around Mr. Trump’s choices.

Heaven forbid! We certainly wouldn't want the American people to think that Democrats have different opinions from Republicans!

Donald Trump barely won this election. He didn't win a majority of the popular vote. Even Peter Baker of The New York Times is reporting this. Why are Democrats still so afraid to speak up in opposition to him? After a presidential campaign whose main message often seemed to be "See, I'm a good person -- Republicans like me!," Democrats apparently want Republicans to get all the credit for sinking Trump nominees. They don't want to be seen as part of that process. And now we may have seen the last nominee to sink.

WHY DOESN'T TRUMP HAVE A PLAN B AFTER GAETZ? (updated)

Matt Gaetz is out:

Matt Gaetz withdrew Thursday as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general following continued scrutiny over a federal sex trafficking investigation that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer.

Bizarrely, Trump doesn't seem to have a backup plan. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports:

Trump does not have a new name in mind for attorney general and now returns to the search. He had struggled to find a candidate he liked initially, which is what led him to Gaetz. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Sullivan & Cromwell attorney Robert Giuffra had been two names he was looking at last week. Trump wasn't sold on either. He has been mainly focused on Treasury and the FBI this week.

How is this possible? There are countless lawyers all over the country who'd happily carry out the Republican agenda of politicizing the Justice Department. There are radical right-wing activists like Texas attorney general Ken Paxton who are eager to turn the DoJ into a tool of GOP vengeance. In fact, when the Gaetz pick was announced, many people speculated that he was offered up as an appointee the Senate could vote down, after which there'd be less pressure to reject other controversial Trump picks, and then Trump could appoint Paxton instead.

But Trump clearly doesn't want a tool of Republican vengeance. Trump wants a tool of Trump vengeance. He doesn't want someone who'll simply do what's in the Project 2025 playbook. He wants someone who'll focus on hurting his enemies and satisfying his whims.

Republican radicals want the government to be remade in a manner that will lead to a durable one-party plutocratic theocracy. Trump just wants his needs catered to at all times. He wants Justice to be a private law firm devoted solely to his wishes and run by a modern Roy Cohn.

This may not be the last time we see a conflict between Trump's agenda and the agenda of Republican radicals. It may be what saves us from the radicals' most frightening plans.

*****

UPDATE: Well, now Trump has chosen former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. You remember her, right?

In March 2016, CREW discovered that the Trump Foundation had broken the law by giving an illegal $25,000 contribution to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Charitable foundations like the Trump Foundation are not allowed to engage in politics. Even more problematic was the fact that the contribution was given as Bondi’s office was deciding whether to take legal action related to Trump University.

Needless to say, Bondi never investigated Trump University. And then....

Not long after Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi decided not to investigate Trump University, Donald Trump hosted a fundraiser for for her, reported The Huffington Post.

The report showed the invitation to the fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, with its minimum donation request of $3,000 per person, and a Bondi staffer told The Huffington Post that about 50 people attended, meaning Bondi picked up at least $150,000 from the March 2014 event.

still surprised he's not going for Paxton or Davis which seems to show me that he really wants a loyalist more than he wants an ideologue who is *also* loyal

[image or embed]

— Sharon Kuruvilla (@sharonk.bsky.social) November 21, 2024 at 6:45 PM

Yup.

HOW REPUBLICANS WOULD RESPOND TO NANCY MACE'S BIGOTED GRANDSTANDING, IF THE PARTIES WERE REVERSED

As I'm sure you know, Nancy Mace got her scalp:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday that transgender women are not permitted to use bathrooms in the Capitol that match their gender identity....

Johnson’s statement — which was made on Transgender Day of Remembrance, recognized annually to memorialize trans people who died due to anti-trans violence — comes days after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a bill to bar transgender women from facilities on Capitol Hill that match their gender identity, a response to the election earlier this month of Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.).

McBride will be the first openly transgender person in Congress.

In a statement following the policy announcement Wednesday, McBride said she disagreed with the new rule but would abide by it.

It has been pointed out that Mace wasn't always an anti-trans bigot -- in fact, she once co-sponsored a (moderately) pro-trans bill:

In 2021, she co-sponsored the Fairness for All Act, a bill seeking to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination while balancing religious liberty.

At the time, Mace tweeted....

So what happened to Mace? The answer is easy: Redistricting happened. Her district in and around Charleston, South Carolina, had been swingy enough for a Democrat to win it in 2018. A redistricting plan signed into law in 2022 made the district much more Republican, but it was challenged in court. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court approved the plan, making the district solidly Republican.

Democrats should still call out her hypocrisy. They should do what I think Republicans would do if the parties' positions on LGBTQ rights were reversed and a hypocritical Democrat named Nancy Mace had done what the real Nancy Mace has done.

Democrats should take the bill she co-sponsored and introduce it themselves. They shouldn't change a word. The only change they should make is to the title.

Instead of calling it the Fairness for All Act, they should call it the Make America Compassionate for Everyone Act.

Short version: the MACE Act.

Yes, this would be a stunt, and I know: Democrats don't do stunts. Democrats think stunts are beneath them.

But if I were a House Democrat, I'd do the stunt. Stunts can make a point in a vivid way. (I know: Most Democrats don't do vivid, either.)

There are problems with the bill. It was filed as a Republican alternative to the Equality Act, which House Democrats passed in 2021 on a mostly party-line vote. (In the Senate, the Equality Act died in committee.) The Republican bill explicitly permits discrimination by religious groups and in school sports. But even if the bill is flawed, it would have created a better world for trans people than the hellscape Republicans want to create for them now.

It doesn't matter. The bill wouldn't pass now, or even get out of committee. The point of filing it is to inform voters that the great crusader against the transgender menace knew three years ago that trans people aren't a menace. And so did the other co-sponsors, including Donald Trump's pick for UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik. But Democrats won't do it.

NANCY MACE IS HAVING FUN

I know I'm supposed to take House Republicans' expressions of contempt for incoming congresswoman Sarah McBride very, very seriously....

House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled support Tuesday for a Republican effort to ban Democrat Sarah McBride — the first transgender person to be elected to Congress — from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol once she’s sworn into office next year....

A resolution proposed Monday by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina would prohibit any lawmakers and House employees from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” Mace said the bill is aimed specifically at McBride, who was elected to the House this month from Delaware.

But it's hard to believe they're actually worried about sexual assault or the downfall of civilization when the leader of this witch hunt is so obviously having the time of her life:

A woman being bullied for **wait for it** protecting women, is the height of gas lighting. I’ll drink your tears in my pinot noir tonight. Cheers! 🍷 pic.twitter.com/431eWCfXGk

— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) November 20, 2024

I've been working overtime for you, Ron. https://t.co/qNg6ukiCW2

— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) November 20, 2024

This is fun for her! She's the center of attention now. She'll probably be on every Sunday talk show next weekend. It's fun for Mike Johnson, too -- almost as much fun as turning America into an unrecognizable theocratic authoritarian kleptocracy.

They know there's no urgent civilizational crisis here. As Charlotte Clymer noted on Threads,

... trans women have been using women's restrooms in the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings and the White House and the Pentagon for many years now, including during all four years of the Trump Administration.

Under Donald Trump's leadership, trans women were permitted to use women's restrooms in federal buildings in D.C. and there was never any issue.

In the four years that Rep. Nancy Mace has been in Congress, she's known that trans women use women's restrooms in federal buildings in D.C. and it's never been an issue for her. Not once. In all this time.

Until the first openly-trans person was elected to Congress. Then it suddenly became an issue.

They like winning. They like punching down. They like rallying their voters with manufactured rage, and they really like the votes and money they get as a result.

And most of their voters aren't really angry either. You can see that at Trump rallies. It was very obvious at the 2020 boat parades, which, by definition, were attended by Trump supporters who were quite well off.

In March of last year, I wrote this about supposedly angry GOP voters:

Deep down, they know that life is pretty sweet for people like them. No one's really coming for their guns -- they have plenty, and it's easy to buy more. No one's really coming for their red meat or their big-ass SUVs. No one's forcing them to be gay or bi or trans. Politically, they run half the states. They run the Supreme Court and will control it for decades. They run the House, and they have an excellent chance of taking the Senate and the White House next year.

And in the meantime, they make liberals squeal in agony any time they please. Hey, let's propose a bill to make being a Democrat illegal! A legislator in Florida actually did that. Let's hand out AR-15 pins on the House floor! Let's find creative new ways to make guns more available and abortions less available! Let's ban books and drag shows, and put up more and more barriers to being trans, until eventually it's illegal at every age! Past a certain point, it's all just sport. It's quite possible that most right-wingers don't even care about the actual policy outcomes -- as the man said, the cruelty is the point....

We want to solve big problems -- bigotry, economic inequality, a rapidly warming planet -- and all those fights are hard. But right-wingers, for all their complaining, mostly like our society just fine. All they want to do is fuck with us -- and they don't have very much trouble getting what they want.

What's the point of the Trump presidency? They're happy. We're miserable. That's the whole point.

NOBODY COULD HAVE FORESEEN!

The New York Times just posted the transcript of Ezra Klein's most recent podcast, under the headline "Trump Kicks Down the Guardrails." Klein begins his opening monologue by asserting that Donald Trump is acting in a way resonable people never believed he'd act:

Think back two months. Imagine it’s September. You’re reading the Substack of some resistance-era liberal. They’re ranting about the dangers of the Orange Man coming back. “Imagine what a second term is going to be like,” they write. “You’re going to have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary. Tulsi Gabbard is going to lead the intelligence services. Matt Gaetz is going to be the attorney general. Maybe Donald Trump is going to make a ‘Fox & Friends’ host secretary of defense.”

I think most people reading that would have said: Oh, come on! Donald Trump might be a menace. He is a menace. But that’s a parody of what a Trump-hating liberal imagines a Trump administration is going to be. Let’s be real about this.

But here we are in the real, and that is not what a Trump-hating liberal imagines a Trump administration is going to be. This is what Donald Trump imagines a Trump administration is going to be. It is what he is trying to make it be.

Seriously?

How could any political observer fail to anticipate that Trump might pick Kennedy for HHS? As I've been telling you, this pick was discussed in August, and Trump told CNN he "probably would" give Kennedy a job in the administration.

How could Klein fail to notice the popularity of Gabbard within the MAGA/Fox News bubble, and the widespread pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine sentiment within that bubble? Haven't we spent eight years debating whether Trump is a Russian agent or merely a pro-Putin useful idiot? Didn't Trump pick J.D. "I don't really care what happens to Ukraine" Vance as his running mate? And remember that Vance was recommended by Donald Trump Jr. -- y'know, this guy:

On the latest episode of Triggered, I spoke with America First rock star @JDVance1 about the weird obsession the political establishment has with Zelensky and the rampant corruption happening in Ukraine funded by American taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/f1An5l7US2

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 17, 2024

Why was anyone surprised at the pro-Russia choice of Gabbard?

I admit that the Gaetz pick was a surprise to me -- though we all should have realized that Trump would choose someone who intended to go the the Justice Department and "start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads," which is what a unnamed Trump adviser told Marc Caputo of The Bulwark that Gaetz vowed to do.

And we know Trump likes Hegseth because he considered making him head of the Department of Veterans Affairs in his first term.

I love the way Klein expresses contempt for the "ranting" of "resistance" Trump-bashers even as he admits that we were right. (We were right, but I guess we were right in a gauche way, so Klein and his entire crowd are still smarter and cooler than we are.)

Klein is horrified to discover that Trump doesn't feel constrained by "guardrails." Wow, who could have predicted that? Oh, right -- lots of people.

Washington Post, November 1, 2023:

Trump and his allies have plans to remove the guardrails in a second term

... He wants lawyers like John Eastman, willing to wrench and blowtorch legal language until the will of the electorate becomes secondary to the will of Donald Trump.

The New York Times, December 4, 2023:

Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First

... He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.

... Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

CNN, September 26, 2023:

@jaketapper

Hutchinson: In A Second Term, Trump would Not Have Guardrails

♬ original sound - Jake Tapper

We were talking about Trump and "guardrails" a year ago. We knew. But Klein is the kind of person who never experiences any disruption to his very comfortable life and therefore can't imagine this level of disruption happening at all in his world. He knew people were forewarning us about this, but it couldn't really occur, could it? Because if it did, it would be really bad! Nothing really bad ever happens in Ezra Klein's world!

Well, it's happening. The leopards still won't eat Ezra Klein's face, in all likelihood, but he should be prepared to see a lot of faceless people, and a lot of leopards.

WHAT I WANT A SENATOR TO ASK PETE HEGSETH

I don't think Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump's other controversial appointees will ever go through confirmation hearings. I assume that even if the Senate resists allowing Trump to seat them as recess appointments, simpering toady Mike Johnson in the House will put forth a resolution to recess both houses of Congress, as outlined in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, and get the votes he needs to pass the resolution because most House Republicans will be too afraid of primary challenges and death threats to resist.

But on the off chance that there are Senate hearings on Hegseth's nomination, I hope some Democrat asks him about a passage New York magazine's Sarah Jones found in one of his books:

In American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, he outlined his case for Trump’s reelection in 2020 and drew parallels between contemporary America and the medieval era. “Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he writes. “Arm yourself — metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

This is probably a naive fantasy, but here's what I want a Democratic senator to ask Hegseth about this passage:

As you know, Mr. Hegseth, I'm a Democrat. Many of the people who voted for me are Democrats.

In the shooting war that you say will be necessary at some point in America's future, who exactly do you think you're going to be pointing guns at? Is it me? Is it my voters? Is it everyone in my state? When this conflict starts -- and the conflict sounds a lot to me like a second civil war -- are we the enemy? I'd like a yes or no answer, please.

This passage was just meant to be pro-wrestling-style trash talk dressed up in fancy language so it sounds like a modern version of an eighteenth-century pamphlet. Fox News and the Republican Party have loved this sort of verbal aggression for a long time. But at a certain point, as Kurt Vonnegut said, we are what we pretend to be. This empty bombast has millions of Americans actually looking forward to a shooting war against Democrats. And we have a president-elect who relishes the notion of using the military against domestic enemies. Secretary of Defense-Designate Hegseth clearly likes the idea, too.

Hegseth would talk around the question, which should lead to a follow-up:

Yes or no, Mr. Hegseth: When you and your allies go to war against fellow Americans, perhaps because the president has invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed the military against citizens, will the mark of the enemy be that we voted for the wrong party? Can you say to me right now, sir, "No, we won't target you just because you vote for Democrats"?

Wouldn't Hegseth offend the president, the president's base, and every binge watcher of Fox News if he said, "No, we won't target you just because you vote for Democrats"? I don't think he'd offer that reassurance.

I'd love for that to be the story of his hearings, assuming they ever happen. I'd love for it to slowly dawn on the mainstream media and normie politics-avoiders that Republicans would be happy to hang half the country for treason just because they vote Democratic. I think there are many centrist voters who don't really get that yet, and who would think it's a bit much. Or maybe that's the naive part of this fantasy.

I also wish someone would school Hegseth on this:

Later, in 2024’s The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, Hegseth complains that the U.S. military has become too woke, too effeminate, and too vaccinated to be fit for purpose. “At a basic level, do we really want only the woke ‘diverse’ recruits that the Biden administration is curating to be the ones with the guns and the guidons?” he writes in the introduction to The War on Warriors. “But more than that, we want those diverse recruits — pumped full of vaccines and even more poisonous ideologies — to be sharing a basic training bunk with sane Americans.”

I expect all Republicans in good standing to believe the military is woke -- but "pumped full of vaccines"?

Does Hegseth know about this?

George Washington, as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, ordered mandatory inoculation against smallpox for any soldier who had not gained prior immunity against the disease through infection....

As a result of Washington’s orders, the Continental Army was the first in the world with an organized program to prevent smallpox. Some historians have suggested that if smallpox inoculation had been performed earlier, the smallpox outbreak among Continental soldiers in Quebec could have been avoided—speeding up the conclusion of the Revolutionary War....

Does Hegseth know that servicemembers in World War II were "vaccinated for cholera, diphtheria, plague, smallpox, tetanus, typhoid, paratyphoid A and paratyphoid B, epidemic typhus, and yellow fever"? We won that war, dude.

But this is the sociopathy of the right. These people didn't start by opposing vaccines. They saw during 2020 and 2021 that they could use vaccination as a wedge issue, and because all they care about is beating us, they were willing to undermine the health of America (and America's troops) just to own the libs.

And now some of them actually believe what they've been saying. Is Hegseth one of them? Will he change military policy so we no longer vaccinate the troops against diseases like malaria and cholera? Maybe someone should ask him whether precisely which vaccines he no longer wants the troops "pumped full of."