WAIT -- ARE PUNDITS STILL ARGUING THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS DYING?

I didn't intend this to be Pick On Jamelle Bouie Week, but in his latest column he argues that the Republican Party is weak and dying -- yes, even now. That's preposterous.

Bouie correctly notes that many of Donald Trump's appointees probably wouldn't have been chosen by another Republican -- Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr., Dr. Oz. Trump's appointee list includes many Fox on-air personalities. Bouie writes that Trump has chosen

a team with shockingly little governing experience and almost no connection to the institutional Republican Party.... Trump is not picking from within the broad universe of the Republican Party....

But Fox News is at the center of "the broad universe of the Republican Party" -- it's no surprise that Fox employees and frequent Fox guests will serve in Trump's Cabinet.

It's true that these people aren't lifelong Republican loyalists. And this is undeniably true:

The Republican Party could wither and die, and Donald Trump would not care, provided it did not disrupt his ability to enrich himself and his family.

But that doesn't mean the GOP is weak. Bouie misunderstands what really matters to the party, somehow imagining that governance is what matters, because political scientists say that's what matters to parties:

This dynamic ... underscores one of the most important — and yet under-remarked on — elements of the Republican Party in the age of Trump: its fundamental political impairment.... the Republican Party is, to use a recent term of art, hollow. “At the heart of hollowness lies parties’ incapacity to meet public challenges,” Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld observe in “The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics.”

But the Republican Party doesn't care about its capacity "to meet public challenges," and hasn't cared since at least the 1980s. Here's what the Republican Party cares about: gaining power often enough to keep making the rich richer and less regulated and taxed, particularly rich people who make their money from fossil fuels, a source of energy for which the GOP is determined to preserve primacy until the end of recorded time. Oil and plutocracy -- that's what the GOP cares about, not meeting "public challenges."

Bouie writes:

The institutions of the Republican Party — the establishment, as it were — have no capacity to influence, shape or discipline any of the actors who operate under the Republican umbrella.

Really? During Trump's first term, "the establishment" handed him a Paul Ryan-style tax cut for the rich, and he dutifully signed it into law. He'll save that tax cut in his second term, and probably add on another one.

Beyond that, Bouie misunderstands what the Republican "establishment" is. Right now it's ideologues who hate DEI and trans people, and they've made Trump care about these issues, too. (Don't forget during the 2016 campaign Trump publicly waved a Pride flag and said that Caitlyn Jenner could use the bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower. Now he plans to reinstate his first-term ban on transgender troops and might discharge all trans troops immediately upon taking office.)

The present-day Republican establishment focuses on issues like these because they keep the rubes voting for the GOP, the party guaranteed to give the rich more money and less regulation.

Bouie continues:

To the extent that there is anything left of a national ideological or programmatic agenda, it is a reflection either of Trump’s idiosyncratic preoccupations or those of the cadres of ideologues who have opportunistically latched on to the incoming president.

State abortion bans aren't part of "a national ideological or programmatic agenda"? Shipping immigrants to blue states, as Republican governors did in recent years, isn't part of "a national ideological or programmatic agenda"? What about bans on trans heathcare for minors? Or school library book bans? Or abstinence-only school sex education curricula?

Yes, these issues are being pushed by "cadres of ideologues," but those ideologues are the Republican Party now, and they would have "latched on to" any Republican presidential nominee. (Go read my post from last December about Nikki Haley's interest in many of the ideas of Project 2025.)

All of this is why Bouie is completely wrong to imagine a dying GOP in Trump's absence:

... consider the very plausible world in which Trump lost his bid for a second term. A two-time loser, he would have been a clear burden on the party’s ability to win. If he leaves or is forced out of the political scene, what happens to the Republican Party? Does it quickly reshape itself? Or does it enter a period of terminal crisis now that it is bereft of a figure who organized its priorities for nearly a decade?

But Fox, Chris Rufo, Leonard Leo, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, and Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have also been important organizers of the GOP's priorities in the past decade. Of course the party would regroup.

In the absence of Trump, does the Republican Party look like an entity that can build or mobilize anything like a working electoral majority?

Polling during primary season showed Nikki Haley with a bigger lead over Joe Biden than Trump's.

Even now, in this world, it is clear that the president-elect’s appeal is distinct from that of his party; Republicans lost four Senate races in states that he won and the party’s House majority teeters on a knife’s edge.

Republicans lost Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin by less than a point; they lost the Nevada race by less than two points, and the Arizona race by two and a half -- and, of course, they flipped Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia. At the state level, 27 out of 50 governors are Republican. And at the state legislative level:

Bouie concludes:

The weakness of the institutional Republican Party, the fragility of the Republican majorities, and the volatility of Trump himself are a recipe for political instability and chaos. It all serves as a reminder that whenever Trump does leave the scene, he will likely leave behind a Republican Party that will struggle to find an identity outside of his reach and influence.

Not as long as the right-wing media exists and conservative billionaires still have enough fingers to sign fat checks.

No one should assume that the GOP will be a spent force when Trump is gone. We still have to learn how to beat it -- assuming America remains a legitimate democracy in which beating the GOP is possible.

MEMBERS OF THE LATEST TIMES FOCUS GROUP VOTED FOR A PARALLEL-UNIVERSE TRUMP

The New York Times has just published another focus group roundtable, this one involving fourteen voters "who described Donald Trump as 'extreme' and differed with him on some key issues, including abortion rights, and decided to vote for him anyway." In some ways, these voters will get what they want from Trump: they don't like undocumented immigrants, and, as one participant puts it, they "think we need someone a little arrogant ... to straighten up the world." But in many ways they back an imaginary, parallel-universe Trump -- someone who doesn't exist in the real world.

They all seem dismayed by the state of America today -- with some exceptions:

Mary, 50, Asian, Wyoming, assistant
I was just looking at my retirement accounts, and it looks like the economy is doing pretty well right now.

... Kenneth, 62, Black, California, truck driver
The election went well, but even prior to the new administration coming into office, things were going well. The economy is better.

You folks know who's president right now, don't you?

Trump apparently made populist promises on a frequency only these voters could hear:

Seneca, 28, white, Arizona, charge specialist
I voted for him because I thought he was really smart and really good with money. And then also health care. I think it’s really cool that he’s going to take on fighting the big health care corporations that are charging insane amounts and hopefully get that under control.

Oh yeah, that'll happen. (/s)

On immigration, many of these people seem to expect a level of moderation that absolutely won't happen in an administration where Stephen Miller and Tom Homan have top positions:

Chris, 46, white, Pennsylvania, line technician
I think that there’s probably a very good majority of people that are undocumented that are normal, law-abiding people and could be contributing members of society. So I don’t think that getting rid of all of those is necessarily the answer. There are some that obviously don’t deserve to be here, but to just get rid of all of them — there’s people that are born here every day that — would they have to go start a new life in some other country, through no fault of their own? There could be some common-sense ways to go about doing it, other than just picking up and shipping them all out.

Mary, 50, Asian, Wyoming, assistant
I think I agree with Chris. There needs to be some type of metric or something. You can’t just drive a bus down the road and say, “Hey, show me your papers or get on the bus, and we’re taking you to Mexico,” or whatever. I know that there’s a lot of hard-working immigrants here who deserve a shot. If they’ve been here for 10, 15 years, contributing, I see no problem with that.

You can’t just drive a bus down the road and say, “Hey, show me your papers or get on the bus, and we’re taking you to Mexico,” or whatever. That's literally the Trump administration's policy on immigration, as Trump explained every time he spoke on the subject.

These people voted for Trump, but they don't want him to be, y'know, extreme or anything.

Moderator, Patrick Healy
Is there anything that concerns you about a Trump presidency? Is there anything you don’t want him to do as president?

Chris, 46, white, Pennsylvania, line technician
I just hope that it doesn’t go to his head and he starts to get reckless. I just don’t want him to get some of the wrong people in his corner, that are in his ear, that have their own agenda, maybe. Not that he would necessarily do it on purpose, but I feel like he might —

Direnda, 66, white, Kentucky, house cleaner
Be influenced.

Chris, 46, white, Pennsylvania, line technician
— go with the flow and want to please everybody and it just gets out of hand.

But don't worry!

Kathi, 57, white, Ohio, property management
I’m a little bit with Chris on that, but it does seem like this so-called election, he’s been much better about containing himself.

What was it that persuaded you that Trump has been "better about containing himself," Kathi? Was it the time he talked about Arnold Palmer's penis? Was it when he called Kamala Harris "a shit vice president" at the same rally? Was it his threat to put members of the House January 6 committee in prison? Was it when he accused the news media of treason?

On abortion, they're awfully certain that there won't be any more restrictions emerging from Trump's Washington:

Mary, 50, Asian, Wyoming, assistant
I think that he took it off the federal government and put it on the states. He doesn’t have a say anymore.

... Direnda, 66, white, Kentucky, house cleaner
I think Trump did the right thing. He just washed his hands of the whole situation and said: OK, you guys decide.

Trump will appoint several hundred judges and probably at least two Supreme Court justices, all of them bearing the Federalist Society stamp of approval. They're the ones who heard the message "OK, you guys decide."

The focus group participants aren't very concerned about Trump's appointees.

Moderator, Margie Omero
How do you think the Senate should go about considering Trump’s nominees?

Seneca, 28, white, Arizona, charge specialist
I think they should check on the people, run a background check and make sure that they’re qualified to be in the position, but unless there’s something huge, I think they should be going with Trump’s decision.

Is rape huge? Is being a pro-Putin fifth columnist huge? Is not believing that the polio vaccine is safe and effective huge?

Robert Kennedy Jr. gets a pass because (choose one) (a) he's right about vaccines or (b) he's a Kennedy, and Kennedys are dreamy:

Jason, 38, white, Florida, realtor
I’m glad he got picked. His stance on everything during Covid — I very much agreed with it. Obviously, if you wanted to get jabbed, by all means, get jabbed. Again, your body, your choice.

(If Kennedy had been in office during COVID, I assume the U.S. government would never have funded vaccine development or approved the final product, but yeah, sure, his stance is "choice.")

Noah, 62, Latino, Texas, retired
I don’t know that I have enough insight on him, but I have a mild historical optimism. I hope he gets almost Uncle Bobby-like and takes responsibility for all of the fraud that is committed throughout those departments, because that is one of the biggest sources of our expenditures in the country.

It's not "one of the biggest sources of our expenditures in the country," but most Americans have no clue where tax money goes.

These people aren't worried about the FBI or the Justice Department, either.

Joseph, 55, white, Minnesota, handyman
You have to have people that are able to follow the laws of America, the Constitution, and not have somebody that wants to bend the rules and enforce whatever their mind-set might be at the time....

Erich, 23, white, New Jersey, lacrosse coach
As long as they’re taking the good of the country into consideration, that’s really my main concern.

Yeah, I'm sure Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are selfless public servants whose only loyalty is to the rule of law.

And here's a concluding statement from one of the participants:

Noah, 62, Latino, Texas, retired
I think our country would be better off having a more informed citizenry and where people argue their own ideas, not just their party’s statement, on everything from immigration to the economy.

A more informed citizenry where people aren't just listening to party propaganda? Yeah, that would be nice.

YES, SOMETHING MATTERS, BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK

I generally like Jamelle Bouie, but this is privileged arrogance:

i have plenty of thoughts on why it matters that this is an illegal order but here i’ll just comment that i think liberals who throw their hands up and say “it doesn’t matter” have self lobotomized themselves into thinking that trump is god king of america

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 8, 2024 at 11:17 AM

main thing i have to say to a lot of you is that if you truly believe that nothing matters then you should delete your account, log off, cancel your voting registration and stop paying attention to anything political at all

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 8, 2024 at 11:28 AM

go get a real hobby

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 8, 2024 at 11:29 AM

As I told Bouie on Bluesky, in this particular case I don't believe Donald Trump is the god-king of America -- I believe Leonard Leo is the god-king of America. It doesn't matter that courts have ruled for nearly two hundred years that anyone born here is a citizen. It doesn't matter that the Fourteenth Amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." If Leonard Leo's Supreme Court justices and lower-court judges conclude that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is an escape clause from automatic birthright citizenship -- as groups like the Heritage Foundation argue -- and conclude that there's some advantage to the Republican Party in eliminating birthright citizenship, then it'll be gone soon.

When I say that, I'm not saying that "nothing matters." This matters a lot. I'm saying that there probably isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I don't see groups I could potentially join massing to defend birthright citizenship in any way that scares Republicans or effectively challenges their power, and I absolutely don't see Democratic officeholders fighting to defend the principle.

Those of us who remain engaged in politics despite our gloom are looking for rays of hope -- good polls for Kamala Harris a few months ago, pockets of resistance now. We were happy when Matt Gaetz had to fall on his sword, though it appears now that Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and other lowlife scum could win Senate approval, possibly with some votes from the Democratic caucus. At this point, we're rooting for incompetence and infighting in Trump World, or surprises. On birthright citizenship and other migration matters, maybe the Leo courts won't side with the hard-liners because business interests don't.

Bouie is a New York Times columnist. He has a powerful platform and so do many of the people he knows. I don't think he understands that what many of us are feeling isn't "nothing matters" but "nothing I do seems to matter." Here are some responses to Bouie:

It's more fun to watch you yell at people about why they should go do something but never tell anyone what to do or how to help or what things might actually make stuff better. Because seriously, literally nothing we have done so far has done anything so I don't know what the fuck

— mav (@mav.wtf) December 8, 2024 at 10:00 PM

feds: Republican states: half Republican, mostly pointless press: largely responsible for this mess courts: you're kidding, right? protests: we've seen where that goes, in 2020 at this point we're pretty well down to hiding people in crawlspaces and prayer

— mav (@mav.wtf) December 8, 2024 at 10:05 PM

At least when Tim Miller recently wrote a column along similar lines at the Bulwark, he seemed to be criticizing people with some clout -- Republicans first:

In the chapter of Why We Did It in which I sketched out the different phenotypes of Trumpian enablers, I described these Republicans this way:

Then you had the LOL Nothing Matters Republicans. This cadre gained steam over the years, especially among my former peers in the campaign set. It is a comforting ethos if you are professionally obligated to defend the indefensible day in and day out. Their arguments no longer needed to have merit or be consistent because, LOL, nothing matters. . . . The LOLNMRs had decided that if someone like Trump could win, then everything that everyone does in politics is meaningless. So they became nihilists.

Miller then turned his focus on Democratic defenders of President Biden's pardon of his son, favorably quoting his colleague Will Saletan, who wrote, contemptuously:

“America elected a convicted felon in 2024 and I no longer care about ‘norms,” one commenter shrugged. “The voters have spoken and integrity is passé,” said another. A third asked: “Why should he [Biden] sacrifice a single thing more for ideals the populace no longer believe in?”

I have no patience for critics of this pardon. Is it a rejection of the rule of law? Literally every presidential pardon is a rejection of the rule of law, because every pardon overturns the judgment of the legal system. At the same time, every presidential pardon is entirely consistent with the law, even the bad ones, because the president's pardon power is effectively absolute and it's right there in the Constitution.

In this specific case, before you tell me that the pardon is morally indefensible, you need to apply your imagination to what might have happened to the president's son in a Trump presidency. I'm not just referring to additional prosecution. I'm saying the Trump administration could have looked the other way while Hunter Biden was murdered in prison. It could have arranged to have him hooded, flown to Gitmo, and waterboarded, citing "national security" because of his international business dealings. Do you really think there are limits? Even if a court declared it unlawful, couldn't the abduction and torture of Hunter Biden happen before the court ruled? Can you say with absolute certainty that this wouldn't have happened?

Public expressions of despair are not compliance. They're not "obeying in advance." In fact, they're the opposite -- they're attempts to send a message to people like Bouie and Miller: What's happening is very, very bad. It's possible that fighting it the normal way won't work -- and besides, the people with the power to fight it the normal way aren't fighting very hard, or at all. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but you don't appear to believe we're in desperate times. Maybe you're right, but maybe you shouldn't be so complacent. Maybe you and everyone else with real power should be ready to fight dirty and not just assume that fighting fair has a good chance of working.

The realtive lack of alarm among certain pundits (and nearly all office-holding Democrats) seems much more of a threat than ordinary anti-Trumpers' gloom.

THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT. WILL TRUMP BE CRUEL ENOUGH FOR HIS BASE?

NBC News has posted a preview of Kristen Welker's interview with Donald Trump, and I'm not sure MAGA voters will be happy with everything Trump says.

First, on MAGA's enemies list:

... [Trump] delivered something of a mixed message when it comes to political retribution. Trump made clear he believes he’s been wronged, but he also sounded a conciliatory note, saying he will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate [President] Biden. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said. “Retribution will be through success.”

On the one hand, he

singled out people he believes crossed the line in investigating his actions, calling special counsel Jack Smith “very corrupt.”

Members of the House committee that examined the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were “political thugs and, you know, creeps,” committing offenses in going about their work, he said.

“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.

But on the other hand:

Asked if he would direct the Justice Department and FBI to punish them, Trump said, “No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to — I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill” — a reference to tapping more oil supplies.

If Biden wants to do it, he could pardon the committee members, Trump said, “and maybe he should.”

MAGA voters will be thrilled when Trump pardons the January 6 insurrectionists, which he told Welker he'll do on Day One. (We all should have known that.) However, if he leaves current and former anti-Trump officeholders and investigators of Trump crimes unpunished, MAGA will be very disappointed. Many of those figures will continue to speak out. New senator Adam Schiff will probably challenge some Trump appointees. This won't go over well in Trump country.

On immigration, Trump will mostly please the base.

... he didn’t flinch in saying he will carry out mass deportation of those who are living in the country illegally.

First will be convicted criminals, he said.

(After the first raids, we'll get footage of weapons stockpiles. We'll be told that the immigrants who have been rounded up were terrible criminals. That may be true -- or the cops might just tap into their own weapons stockpiles for the photo ops. It's a common police practice.)

MAGA will love this:

It’s also possible that American citizens will be caught up in the sweep and deported with family members who are here illegally, or could choose to go.

Asked about families with mixed immigration status, where some are in the U.S. legally and some illegally, Trump said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”

However:

An exception might be the “Dreamers” — people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for years. He voiced openness toward a legislative solution that would allow them to remain in the country.

“I will work with the Democrats on a plan,” he said, praising “Dreamers” who’ve gotten good jobs, started businesses and become successful residents. “We’re going to have to do something with them,” he said.

He won't really work with Democrats on a plan for the Dreamers. But merely hesitating to deport them will profoundly disappoint his base.

And Greg Sargent thinks he'll face corporate resistance to mass deportations:

Reuters reports that agriculture interests, which are heavily concentrated in GOP areas, are urging the incoming Trump administration to refrain from removing untold numbers of migrants working throughout the food supply chain, including in farming, dairy, and meatpacking....

Now over to Texas. NPR reports that various industries there fear that mass deportations could cripple them, particularly in construction, where nearly 300,000 undocumented immigrants toiled as of 2022.... Local analysts and executives want Trump to refrain from removing all these people or create new ways for them to work here legally....

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Trump’s threat of mass deportations is awakening new awareness that undocumented immigrants drive industries like construction, landscaping, and agriculture, reports The Wall Street Journal. In Dalton, a town that backed Trump, fear is spreading that removals could “upend its economy and workforce.”

As I've said before, right-wingers like anecdotes and dislike data. No matter how much data you show them demonstrating the fact that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, they look at individual incidents -- crimes endlessly discussed on Fox News -- as all the evidence they need that "migrant crime" is at epidemic levels. They'll have the same response to Trump's deportation process: If they see a lot of footage of immigrants being rounded up and shipped out, they probably won't notice how many aren't being rounded up and shipped out.

I think Sargent is right about how this will work:

Exactly. Deportation raids in blue areas will allow Trump to boast that he's bringing pacification to urban cesspools with military-style force, complete with footage given to Fox News and other MAGA propagandists. Meanwhile some MAGA-friendly industries and areas will quietly secure forbearance.

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— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) December 8, 2024 at 8:47 AM

My response to this:

"Quietly secure forbearance."

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— Steve M. (@stevemnomoremister.bsky.social) December 8, 2024 at 8:49 AM

But what if one of the crimes MAGA voters obsess over happens because a CEO or industry prevailed upon Trump to leave local immigrants alone? Will those crimes simply not be reported in the right-wing media? Or will Trump supporters see them as evidence that Mr. MAGA himself isn't MAGA enough and we need a real immigration hard-liner to clean up America?

In all likelihood, Trump will make his base happy even if he doesn't display maximum cruelty. He'll probably be more than sufficiently cruel as far as the base is concerned. But if they want even more, there's a chance that he might not deliver. And since we know he won't lower the price of eggs, he might not be quite the hero they expect. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3lcsdysh4y22z

HEGSETH COULD STILL BE CONFIRMED, AND I'M NOT SURE WHY

The Bulwark's Marc Caputo now believes that Pete Hegseth might be winning his nomination fight:

... on Friday, the president-elect went out of his way to give an attaboy to Pete Hegseth just hours after the defense secretary pick scolded reporters who have been hounding him in the U.S. Capitol over accusations of sexual misconduct and drunkenness.

“Pete’s fighting like hell,” Trump told an adviser when he saw the video clip of Hegseth. “He’s a fighter.”

There are few political acts that Trump values more than ance in the face of media scrutiny. And Hegseth’s charge on Thursday—clearly directed at an audience in Mar-a-Lago—bought him both time and goodwill. After rampant speculation that he could soon drop his nomination, there is little expectation of that now.

But is Hegseth on the verge of victory? Or is it just that his defiance is strategically useful to Trump? Caputo's interviewees aren't sure:

Aides believe that the longer Hegseth remains in contention for the post, the higher his chances of confirmation will be, simply because it subjects GOP senators to a sustained pressure campaign from the MAGA base, and because many will have a hard time scuttling him in a public vote. Those aides also believe that if Hegseth is drawing fire from critics, there will be less attention and heat on Trump’s other controversial nominees like Kash Patel (FBI), Tulsi Gabbard (director of national intelligence), or Robert Kennedy Jr. (HHS).

“Hegseth is a heatshield,” said a senior Trump adviser. “Pete can take the heat, and that’s better for everyone else.”

But why use Hegseth as a "heatshield" when you have Kennedy, who's just as arrogant as Hegseth, and whose agenda really isn't Trump's agenda?

I think Trump has a mancrush on anyone who's defiant in a way that advances his own agenda. I'm sure he's greatly enjoying Hegseth's performance right now. But others in the GOP are fighting for Hegseth in a way they didn't fight for Matt Gaetz. They're turning the screws on Iowa senator Joni Ernst, who's up for reelection in two years and who still won't say she's voting for Hegseth. From the Des Moines Register:

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird penned a column in the conservative website Breitbart urging the Senate to confirm Trump's Cabinet nominees. Although it doesn't call out Ernst by name, she castigates the "D.C. politicians" who "think they can ignore the voices of their constituents and entertain smears from the same outlets that have pushed out lies for years."

"What we’re witnessing in Washington right now is a Deep State attempt to undermine the will of the people," Bird, a Trump endorser, wrote. "We must not let Washington kill nominations before the Constitutional confirmation process even begins."

... Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative commentator and media personality, posted on the social media website X that he would be willing to run against Ernst in a Republican primary if she seeks reelection in 2026.

(Steve Deace? Really? He endorsed Ted Cruz in 2016, then quit the GOP when Trump won the nomination and voted for a third-party candidate in the general election. He came back around to Trump after that and was an election truther in 2020, but he endorsed Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries.)

Whatever the reason, the GOP establishment wants Hegseth to win. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025, has pledged $1 million in spending to get Hegseth approved.

Why him, when any other Trump nominee for this position is likely to be on board with the same agenda (expulsion of trans troops and "woke" generals, use of troops on U.S. territory)?

Is it because Hegseth is also expected to be pro-theocracy? Roberts is connected to the far-right Catholic group Opus Dei and Hegseth belongs to a Christian nationalist Protestant church. Even The New York Times acknowledged that Hegseth "has praised the brutal religious military campaigns of the past and has called for a Christian approach to governing," in a story called "Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade."

Is Hegseth still confirmable because big-money Christian nationalists don't want him to withdraw, even for another Trumpian hard-liner? Do they think he's the best choice because he's the most unabashed theocrat?

*****

If Hegseth gets a confirmation hearing, I assume Democrats will be afraid to bring up his church. They shouldn't be, if they know how to talk about it in the right way.

Of course they shouldn't say anything like what Dianne Feinstein stupidly said to Amy Coney Barrett in her 2017 confirmation hearing: "The dogma lives loudly within you." Anyone who questions Hegseth about his church needs to make it absolutely clear that the questions aren't about faith or religious dogma -- they focus on what the head of the church says about life right here on earth.

Amanda Marcotte notes that Hegseth

became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson....

The Times tells us:

on a podcast Mr. Hegseth said that he would not send his children to Harvard but would send them to Mr. Wilson’s college in Idaho.

The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, reported on that school, New Saint Andrews College, in 2006, telling us:

[Wilson] acknowledges that portraits of Lee and Confederate flags have adorned office and school walls at times and says that he believes in some – but not all – of the tenets on which the Southern confederacy was built: a society centered around God and belief, a simple farming life as opposed to a hectic modern one, and an emphasis on traditional family and community.

In a 2007 New York Times Magazine story on the school, Wilson described the depths of his conservatism this way:

Doug Wilson proudly declares himself more right-wing than most Idaho conservatives. “They voted for Bush; I’d vote for Jefferson Davis,” he chuckles.

A 2004 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center quotes a few inflammatory passages from a book Wilson co-wrote, Southern Slavery, as It Was:

"Slavery as it existed in the South ... was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence," the excerpts read in part. "There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. ...

"Slave life was to them [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care."

A Democratic senator could ask Hegseth: Do you agree with what the head of your chuch says about slavery? Do you admire the president of the Confederacy?

The SPLC report also tells us:

The world as Wilson sees it is divided not by race but by religion — biblical Christians versus all others. As he says in one of his books, "[I]f neither parent believes in Jesus Christ, then the children are foul — unclean."

There are two Jewish Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard Blumenthal and Jacky Rosen. Maybe one of them could ask, "Do you agree with Wilson that my children are 'foul' and 'unclean'?"

I don't expect this to happen. But if it did, I think it might give middle-of-the-road voters even more reason to question Hegseth's firness to serve. If Republicans could use Jeremiah Wright's words against Barack Obama, why not use Wilson's words against Hegseth?

ANGRY ABOUT YOUR SHITTY HEALTH INSURANCE? YOU'RE ON THE "FAR LEFT," ACCORDING TO "POPULIST" FOX NEWS

I'm not 100% certain that we know the motive for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The obvious answer is that he was killed by a policyholder who was denied coverage, although it also seems possible that the shooting is connected to an insider trading investigation of Thompson and other executives. If so, evidence pointing to an angry customer might be deliberate misdirection, especially one of the melodramatic clues in the case -- shell casings found at the scene with the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" on them. (A 2010 book on the insurance industry is titled Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.) The shooting seems to have been a more professional job than you'd expect from a customer at the end of his rope. Nevertheless, the obvious theory is probably correct.

I won't defend the shooting, but I understand it. I've felt for years that it might be impossible to use ordinary means to get out of the doom loop we're in -- Republicans massively redistribute money to the rich and the tax burden to the non-rich, while Democrats only tinker at the margins when they're in power, and so inequality never stops increasing. People have to run harder and harder just to stay in the same place, as healthcare, education, and housing become more and more expensive. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, if changing this through non-violent means is impossible, efforts to change it through violent means might be inevitable.

I'm saying this from a left-liberal perspective, but I don't believe that the many people who are making snarky comments about the Thompson murder are leftists, liberals, or Democrats. I'm not sure the shooter will turn out to be a Democrat. Hey, haven't pundits been telling us for years that the Republican Party under Donald Trump is a populist, pro-working-class party that despises "elites"?

Funny thing, though -- the Trump GOP's ministry of information, otherwise known as Fox News, doesn't seem particularly sympathetic to Americans with porous health coverage. Here's the headline for Fox's story on the snark:

Culture of life? UnitedHealthcare CEO's murder mocked and celebrated by far-left

Yup -- if you were on social media and wrote (or liked) a comment such as “I would offer thoughts and prayers but I’m gonna need a prior authorization first,” you're part of the "far left."

More from the Fox story:

In one post, left-wing journalist Ken Klippenstein quipped that he hoped Thompson's ambulance ride "was in network."

... The comment section on MSNBC's post included "thoughts. But prayers require prior authorization first" and "my prayers are denied for now," was posted in the thread of The New York Times's post.

... "I think this encapsulates the far left's worldview: If you run a company that isn't to their liking, you deserve to die," Fox News contributor and columnist Joe Concha shared with Fox News Digital.

Given how fond the right is of the expression "liberalism is a mental illness," it's no surprise that Fox trots out a regular guest who's a shrink:

Manhattan-based psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert said the ghoulish reactions belied progressive values.

"For progressive movements that often advocate for compassion, equality, and justice, such reactions are particularly contradictory and counterproductive, but again, not surprising," he told Fox News Digital. "I saw a similar phenomenon following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Many clients expressed disappointment over the shooter not succeeding in his mission. It brings front and center the question: why is it that the party that supposedly is all about acceptance seems to be rejecting of people who might think differently than them?"

No one is feeling schadenfreude about this death because Thompson used to think differently from the rest of us. They're feeling schadenfreude because his company denied their medical claims. They're feeling schadenfreude because the decisions that made him wealthy hurt ordinary people.

But, of course, that's not the takeaway at the one news source trusted by dedicated voters for the party of the working class.

SHOULD NEW MEDIA OUTLETS DO THEIR OWN HEARTLAND SAFARIS?

In The New York Times yesterday, Thomas Edsall published a piece titled "Trump’s Project 2025 May Not Be What It Seemed. It’s Worse." Despite the headline, it's not really a detailed look at Project 2025 -- it's primarily an effort to imagine a Project 2025 target list:

In this struggle, who are the targets?

The list is long, often focusing on academia, especially on elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford; fields such as sociology and psychology; sanctuary cities; the nonprofit sector, which employs 12.8 million people, with an annual payroll of $873.1 billion; the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants; the three major television networks that are not Fox; the top ranks of the Justice Department, the C.I.A. and the armed forces; the array of civil rights enforcement departments embedded throughout the public and private sectors; and the already faltering diversity, equity and inclusion nests in corporations across America.

This seems to be a list of all the groups we identify as liberal "elites." Apart from immigrants, there seem to be no ordinary people on this list. We're given an employment count for the non-profit sector, but that seems to Edsall's way of saying, Look at how vast the world of liberal elitism is. (In fact, most non-profit workers are employed in hospitals or have other healthcare jobs. They're not in liberal organizations that are trying to change the culture, as Edsall apparently wants you to believe.)

This is what we talk about when we talk about liberalism these days: People who've ascended to the commanding heights in government, in academia, in the media, in the non-profit sector, in the HR departments of private corporations. People with big brains and lots of degrees who tell everyone else what to do and how to talk. This is who we think voted for Democrats this year: elitists, and only elitists.

But that's not true. Nearly 75 million people voted for Kamala Harris. America simply doesn't have that many college professors, non-profit executives, and chief diversity officers. Not everyone who voted for Harris is a liberal, but there are clearly millions of ordinary liberals in America -- people who have no control over the culture, people who don't have mutiple degrees from the finest colleges, people who just want a tolerant, generous, decent country. They're teachers, librarians, blue-collar workers, baristas, retirees. They want a higher minimum wage, they want abortion to be legal, they want police brutality to end, they want medical bankruptcy to be a thing of the past, they want gay and trans people's rights to be respected, they want people of all ethnic backgrounds and belief systems to coexist peacefully, they want slavery and the civil rights era to be taught honestly in schools, they want libraries not to be targeted...

Yet they're invisible. They're invisible because commentators across the political spectrum believe that they don't exist, that all Democrats are elitist winners of the meritocracy's Hunger Games.

It would be pointless to wish that the mainstream media might start sending reporters out looking for these invisible liberals. That didn't happen after Donald Trump won in 2016 and it didn't happen after Republicans struggled in 2018, 2020, and 2022. After every election, the media safaris go only one way: toward the rural diners where Trumpers hang out.

There are new media outlets -- ProPublica, for instance, or Judd Legum's Popular Information -- but they concentrate on hard news that's being ignored by bigger news outlets. Right now, the lead story at ProPublica is "Missouri Voters Enshrined Abortion Rights. GOP Lawmakers Are Already Working to Roll Them Back." At Popular Information, the lead story is "North Carolina Supreme Court Candidate Seeks to Disqualify 60,000 voters — Including His Opponent's Parents." That's what these outlets do best. That's the best use of the scarce resources they have.

But I wish someone in the new media had enough resources to report the news that ordinary liberals exist. It's clearly not something our political culture understands, and that's distorting our understanding of America.

THERE ARE PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON WHO AREN'T OBEYING IN ADVANCE, BUT THEY DON'T SEEM TO BE DEMOCRATS

As we approach Inauguration Day, many Trump critics are quoting this passage from Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny:

Lesson 1: Do not obey in advance. Thread of lessons from my book #OnTyranny. Written in 2016.

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— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) November 23, 2024 at 8:43 AM

There are people who Washington who are openly refusing to obey every command from Donald Trump in advance ... but they mostly seem to be Republicans. Here's a list of setbacks Trump has had since Election Day:

Over the last 24 hours, Donald Trump lost his pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration. His choice for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is struggling to gain support from Senate Republicans....

And these shake-ups to his not-yet-formed administration come after former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump’s choice for attorney general.

You might have missed the DEA story:

On Tuesday, Chad Chronister, Trump’s choice for DEA administrator, abruptly withdrew from consideration just days after being announced, saying in a post on X he made the decision “as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in,” without citing a specific reason.

Chronister is the sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida. Why did he withdraw? Because he offended right-wingers:

Opponents on the political right pointed to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office’s arrest of Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne in March 2020 for holding a church service in violation of lockdown rules....

The Libertarian Party of Mississippi posted on X below the announcement of Mr. Chronister, “Trump’s nominee for DEA arrested a pastor for having the audacity to...checks notes...hold church service.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, responded to the Mississippi Libertarian Party’s statement by saying Mr. Trump’s DEA pick should be excluded from being nominated to lead the DEA based on the arrest of the pastor.

“I’m going to call ’em like I see ’em. Trump’s nominee for head of DEA should be disqualified for ordering the arrest of a pastor who defied COVID lockdowns,” Mr. Massie wrote on X.

(Here's as reminder: There were more than a thousand COVID deaths in the U.S. every single day in April 2020. Public officials were right to try to limit public gatherings in March.)

As for Hegseth, some Republicans are making it clear that his nomination is in trouble:

As many as six Senate Republicans, perhaps more, are currently not comfortable supporting Hegseth's bid to lead the Pentagon as new revelations about his past continue to be made public, three Republican sources with direct knowledge of his nomination process said....

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is on the Armed Services Committee, would not commit to support Hegseth's nomination and said she planned to grill him about news accounts of allegations of alcohol abuse, mistreatment of woman and financial mismanagement....

After his first round of meetings on Capitol Hill last month, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said he expected Hegseth to be confirmed. On Tuesday, after a series of other reports about Hegseth’s past but before NBC News reported on allegations concerning drinking at Fox News, Wicker sounded more cautious.

“I think there are questions that some members have, and we’re going to be looking for an answer,” Wicker said....

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is still open to supporting Hegseth and believes he deserves a fair vetting, but he said Tuesday that Hegseth must explain media reports about his past conduct in a way that would make senators comfortable voting to confirm him.

And prior to this, Trump dumped Matt Gaetz as his attorney general nominee when "between four and six" Republican senators made clear to him that they wouldn't vote for him. (Trump can afford to lose only three Republicans if every Democrat votes no.)

Republicans are letting it be known that they won't rubber-stamp every nominee. Democrats will presumably vote no as a bloc on the worst picks, but they're being very quiet about any objections. That seems to be by design.

Senate Democrats staged dramatic showdowns to protest nominations during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office. This time around, Democrats are shifting tactics, reluctant to pick endless battles with Trump Cabinet picks that are unlikely to succeed....

“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.

Is that your memory of how those confirmations went? I looked it up, and thirteen Democratric senators voted for a majority of Trump's initial Cabinet picks, as did Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats. Schatz himself voted for 9 of them (out of 22).

Obviously, Democrats are in the minority and can't make or break a nominee. But they can say something. They can do what Mike Bloomberg did this week:

Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, launched a lengthy broadside on Tuesday against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., using his opening remarks at a public health conference to warn that installing Mr. Kennedy as health secretary would be “beyond dangerous,” and tantamount to “medical malpractice on a mass scale.”

Mr. Bloomberg, speaking at the two-day Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington, called on Senate Republicans to persuade President-elect Donald J. Trump to “rethink” his choice of Mr. Kennedy for health secretary. If Mr. Trump cannot be persuaded, he said, the Senate has “a duty to our whole country, but especially to our children,” to vote against confirming him.

Mr. Bloomberg also assailed Mr. Kennedy for discouraging measles vaccination during an outbreak in the island nation of Samoa, where 83 people died.

“Parents who have been swayed by vaccine skepticism love their children and want to protect them, and we need leaders who will help them do that,” he said, “not conspiracy theorists who will scare them into decisions that will put their children at risk of disease.”

By saying nothing, Democrats are reinforcing the notion that they have no moral authority and a political position becomes valid only when Republicans embrace it. (Democrats also reinforce this message every time they sing the praises of bipartisanship and tell us that Republican endorsements are proof that they're worthy of our votes.)

Democrats need to talk about the unfitness of Hegseth, Kennedy, and other Trump appointees. If they speak up in a compelling way, those of us who are dyed-in-the-wool Democrats will feel that they're fighting for us, while voters in the middle might start getting used to the idea that Democrats have valid opinions (and might get used to hearing Republican ideas rebutted). But elected Democrats seem to think voters won't like them unless they say as little as possible.

PARDON-GHAZI: BLAME "THE MOMMY PARTY" FOR THE FAILINGS OF DADDY

I'm thinking about two stories this morning -- and in some sense they're the same story.

One story is President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter, which continues to be the media's obsession. The other story is one that won't get the attention it deserves: Amanda Marcotte's report on Pete Hegseth's church. Marcotte reports that in the late 2010s, Hegseth

became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson, an untrained and self-proclaimed pastor who advocates for Christian nationalism and has become famous for his trollish promotion of his far-right political views.

But Wilson isn't just a wingnut Christian nationalist.

At the center of Wilson's philosophy is a misogyny so overt that it's sometimes hard to believe he's serious....

In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women's fault for not being submissive enough. "[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party," he writes. "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to "dream of being rapists," deprived of the "erotic necessity" found in women's submission....

Hegseth has blamed sexual assault in the military on "equality," claiming that the issue was "exacerbated" by letting women enlist in the first place. This aligns with CREC teachings that male sexuality is ravenous and the tendency to blame victims for "immodesty" when sexual violence happens.

Hegseth paid off a woman who once accused him of rape, and his own mother called him "an abuser of women," so it seems fitting that he chose a church whose leader believes that women are responsible for male sexual violence.

But in a non-sexual way, the mainstream reaction to President Biden's pardon of Hunter resembles Hegseth and Wilson's response to male sexual violence. Hegseth and Wilson believe it's unnatural to deny men's natural rampant sexuality. The political world believes that norm-breaking and corruption are essential elements of Donald Trump's nature, so when Trump corruptly gave pardons or clemency in his first term to Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Dinesh D'Souza, and Charles Kushner, among others, the executive actions were one-day stories at best. "Trump is just being Trump" is the political equivalent of "boys will be boys."

And just as Hegseth and Wilson blame women for male sexual violence, the political world is prepared to blame Biden for corrupt pardons in Trump's second term, even though Trump has been loudly telegraphing his intent to use the justice system in a corrupt way for years. In particular, Trump has talked about pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists since early 2022.

The Washington Post's editorial board writes:

To be clear: Mr. Biden had an unquestionable legal right to pardon his son Hunter. But in so doing on Sunday, he maligned the Justice Department and invited Mr. Trump to draw equivalence between the Hunter Biden pardon and any future moves Mr. Trump might take against the impartial administration of justice.

Outgoing Michigan senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, says:

This was an improper use of power, it erodes trust in our government, and it emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.

And:

"With this decision, Biden has now made it easier for Trump to abuse the clemency power again," Jeffrey Crouch, a legal expert from American University, told CBS.... "If presidents from both political parties feel free to abuse clemency without consequence, the pardon power becomes less a tool of grace and more of a political instrument."

Let me say it again: In a second term, Trump was always going to "feel free to abuse clemency without consequence." Jonathan Last is right:

Will pardoning Hunter “embolden” Trump to break more norms? LOL no.

Will pardoning Hunter make it “easier” for Trump’s defenders?

They are having an easy time already. They defend everything Trump says/does. Because Hunter was pardoned, they will include this in their daily litanies. Had Hunter not been pardoned, the litanies would include something else.

Back in 1991, Chris Matthews called the Democratic Party "the Mommy party," writing:

There’s an accepted division of chores in American politics. Republicans protect us with strong national defense; Democrats nourish us with Social Security and Medicare. Republicans worry about our business affairs; Democrats look after our health, nutrition and welfare. Republicans control the White House; Democrats provide a warm, caring presence on Capitol Hill.

The paradigm for this snug arrangement is familiar. It’s the traditional American family. “Daddy” locks the doors at night and brings home the bacon. “Mommy” worries when the kids are sick and makes sure each one gets treated fairly. This partition of authority and duty may seem an anachronism from the “Leave it to Beaver” era, but it’s an apt model for today’s political household.

Now Republicans win the male vote by double digits, while Democrats win the female vote. Republicans openly brag about their toxic masculinity -- they're the frat party, not the Daddy party.

We conclude that we can't expect them to go against their essential fratty nature, or hold them accountable if they do harm as a result. So we blame the female party for male failings, as nature and God apparently intended.

ON THE HUNTER BIDEN PARDON AND POLITICAL "PICK ME"S

On the subject of the Hunter Biden pardon, I don't think we should dismiss this theory:

After spending some time wondering what could have tipped the balance leading to the Hunter Biden pardon, I finally started to think that the fascists may have been planning to use Hunter as their first ginned-up treason charge followed by execution.

— Jim "Not a Football Presenter" White (@jimwhitegnv.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 8:04 AM

In June, just after Hunter Biden was convicted on felony gun charges, The New York Times noted this:

During the final 11 days of the 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump referred to Hunter Biden more than five dozen times at rallies, during interviews and in social media posts. Instead of focusing on an argument for why he deserved a second term, he repeatedly posted the question, “Where’s Hunter?”

“It’s treason, or whatever you want to call it,” Mr. Trump said on the last day of the 2020 race. “We caught the whole thing. The son — where’s Hunter? Where’s Hunter?”

The Times story pointed out that Trump expressed more sympathy for the president's son during the 2024 campaign (“I had a brother who suffered tremendously from alcoholism and alcohol...”). But the story also noted that this was pure cynicism on Trump's part:

In a meeting last year, Mr. Trump acknowledged privately to an associate that attacks against the president’s son had the potential to backfire politically, according to a person who attended the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. Mr. Trump said Republicans needed to be careful, the person said, “not to go overboard” on the Hunter Biden attacks, especially on the drug addiction issue, because it could elicit sympathy and make people view the president as a caring father.

The campaign is over, so that strategy is no longer relevant. And in any case, future FBI director Kash Patel hasn't mellowed on Hunter, even strategically. Patel clearly wants to bring new charges against Hunter. He mentions the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the clip below, but who knows what else he has in mind?

One year ago, Kash Patel, while sniffling repeatedly as he does in every interview (he just can’t shake that cold) promised to prosecute Hunter for new crimes. Then Trump names him FBI Director. He told you ahead of time he’s going after Hunter. So tired of the pearl clutchers.

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— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 12:26 PM

I won't be surprised if Trump, Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi try to bring President Biden up on treason charges, now that Hunter appears to be out of their reach. Right-wingers don't just believe that Hunter was trading on his family name for cash. They believe both Bidens were cashing in, and selling America out to China and Ukraine. The proof they've amassed is as nonexistent as the proof that Democrats rigged the 2020 election. But they might feel they're bulletproof now and can pursue any case they find emotionally satisfying.

I've seen condemnations of the pardon described as "pearl clutching," but what I'm seeing in those condemnations is a self-righteousness that's almost gleeful. I like this response to the increasingly insufferable Nate Silver, from a former legislative candidate in New York State:

Remember, kids: Democrats must meet a peak and unbreakable sense of morality.

Republicans don’t have to meet any of those standards. There are no consequences.

But if Democrats falter, even for a moment, they must pay the price. https://t.co/XEdfj08K7n

— Skyler Johnson (@SkylerforNY) December 2, 2024

I'm sure it will astonish you to know that Silver was much more tolerant of presidential pardons during the previous administration:

Really, Nate? Now this is a red line for you? https://t.co/dE1tUUoi0D pic.twitter.com/7LYxUuzjiw

— Skyler Johnson (@SkylerforNY) December 2, 2024

Nate Silver has no ties to the Democratic Party. I can't say the same for Colorado governor Jared Polis:

Trump pardoned Jared Kushner's dad while Jared worked in the White House, then yesterday appointed Jared's dad as an ambassador, but Polis didn't have the same energy for that. Pathetic stuff that I for one won't soon forget.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 1, 2024 at 8:52 PM

Polis was last seen saying nice things about the man who wants to Make Polio Great Again:

I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov. He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than… pic.twitter.com/cILtTYplcn

— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) November 14, 2024

The young have a name for people like Polis: he's a "pick me." It's a name that isn't political, and is sometimes regarded as offensive. Urban Dictionary says:

A pick me is a woman that is willing to do anything for male approval. She will embarrass or throw other women under the bus to achieve this goal.

That's Polis, except he's a Democrat willing to throw other Democrats under the bus for the approval of Republicans (and members of the media, and other self-hating Democrats). Nate Silver isn't a Democrat, but he built an audience full of Democrats when he was making his name as a politcal forecaster, and now he wants to be noticed every time he slags a Democrat. It's the surest path to widespread approval in the world of politics.

Our politcal culture thinks genuine Democrats are pathetic and disgusting. It's always polite to insult Democrats. Fox News will praise you. James Carville will praise you.

The only people who won't praise you are ordinary committed Democratic voters. Unfortunately, very people in the world of politics care what we think.

WHY PETE HEGSETH WILL SURVIVE THAT EMAIL FROM HIS MOTHER

This New York Times story was published a couple of days ago, and it already seems like old news:

The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.

She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

When I read the story and the email, it seemed possible that Hegseth would quickly withdraw his name from consideration for the job. But he hasn't done that, and there are no signs that he might.

And between then and now -- remember, it's been only two days -- Trump has given us two utterly batshit appointments: Jared Kushner's felon father, Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France, and Kash Patel as a replacement for Christopher Wray at the FBI, even though Wray was a Trump appointee and his term has three years to go. Kushner's awfulness has been attested to by Chris Christie, who prosecuted him as a U.S. attorney:

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he prosecuted more than a decade ago when he was a US attorney was committed by the father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner....

Christie was referring to an elaborate revenge plot that the older Kushner hatched in 2003 in order to target his his brother-in-law, William Schulder, a former employee turned witness for federal prosecutors in their case against Kushner, who was under investigation at the time for making illegal campaign contributions.

As a part of the plot, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure Schulder into having sex in a Bridgewater, New Jersey, motel room as a hidden camera rolled. A tape of the encounter was then sent to Kushner’s sister and Schulder’s wife, Esther.

Ultimately, the intimidation stunt failed. The Schulders brought the video to prosecutors, who tracked down the call girl and threatened her with arrest. She promptly turned on Kushner.

In a plea deal negotiated by Christie, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness – his brother-in-law – and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission.

Trump pardoned Kushner in 2020.

Patel has made support for Trump his entire personality. He's written three children's books about Trump. He's made clear that he'll use the job to punish Trump's enemies, both within the Bureau and elsewhere in politics, law enforcement, and the media.

Presto! We've all forgotten about the Hegseth email. If it's brought up in his hearings, it'll seem like a tired old tale that's been litigated and forgotten.

The Times seems to have done the responsible thing with this story: it was apparently run as soon as it was ready. But if the parties were reversed and Fox News had a story like this on a Democratic appointee, I don't believe it would have run the piece on the Friday of a four-day holiday weekend. I think Fox would have saved the story until Monday morning.

I don't think the Times ran this story over a holiday weekend as a favor to Hegseth or the incoming Trump administration. The real favor would be not running the story at all. But the timing means the story will be lost.

Maybe this wouldn't be happening if some Democrats were making noise about the unfitness of Trump's worst picks -- Hegseth, Patel, Kushner, Robert Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard. But they seem to be waiting until next year. It really might be too late then.