The legality of this strikes me as black and white and unambiguously outside Don's authority. Your political analysis strikes me as debatable- yes maybe some people who made the tradeoffs and took transit instead will be delighted by this. It's also possible that an equal number of people who enjoyed the noticeably reduced congestion will be less pleased. Could be that this'll please more people than it displeases but, to be blunt, Don isn't winning New Jersey or New York state even if he makes some of their upstaters happy two years away from the next election. Whereas the Dems saying "fish you, that's illegal" strikes me as useful for their sides moral in a way that could snowball forward towards the election. I don't think pre-emptive obedience is going to be helpful.
And that's without touching on Trump declaring himself King. Maybe a few libertarians and righties actually would care about that. Lol I know, sorry, couldn't help but try the joke. Snerk.
I agree entirely. Heck, Elons' Muskrats are like a monkeys paw wish granted to small government libertarians. Not only will a lot of what he's trying to pull likely fail in court- if/when he fishes up something important it's the small government libertarian banner he's waving so that's what the public will associate with this fiasco. And even if, by some miracle, the Muskrats manage not to stumble across one of the several major electrified rails buried in the stuff they're blithely rummaging through- everything they're doing will be reversible with the stroke of a pen and every minion they install will be dismissible in the same way they were installed.
It seems to me that the Trumpian strategy, such as it is, is shambling into view now and it is, well, rather underwhelming as far as I can see.
"Same old, same old" seems to be the core of it. The GOP in congress is trying to slash spending on the poor then give tax cuts to the wealthy that eat up any such savings twice over. All while yapping disingenuously about the perils of debt.
The Trumpian innovations to this time dishonored republican strategy appear to be mostly vestigial:
-DOGE is going to barge around breaking things and making a great deal of noise in domestic matters.
-Trump is going to barge around breaking things and making a great deal of noise on foreign policy and trade matters.
For DOGE the point, if there is one at all, is to generate a lot of red meat for the base and then just mumble quietly and forget it all happened when the courts reverse it. There's definitely a degree of experimentation here: how much can court orders be ignored? How much damage can be made irreversible before the courts weigh in? How much red meat can be found that will please the base or even turn the heads of the low info voters (odds look good that the answer to the latter is "not much").
For the Trump stuff, who the fish knows. Is he just a puppet of the Chinese and Putin? Does he have any follow through at all? If he keeps cranking up the uncertainty what's he going to do when the market tanks (a note: keep hiking the uncertainty and the market -will- tank eventually. More even than freeeeeeedom, markets crave stability and predictability)?
For the opposition I have a grab bag of thoughts:
-Delegate: All this DOGE nonsense is likely illegal. The Dems don't have to directly litigate each matter. Every one of these arbitrary nonsensical cuts gores various peoples oxen- let them each litigate. The "Shock and Awe" idea is to overwhelm the Dems but the Dems don't have to personally engage each of these attacks. No amount of Shock and Awe will distract each disparate group of folks who're being screwed and they all have lawyers.
-The McConnell precedent seems both just and judicious at this point. Oppose. Ignore collegiality. The GOP is going to slink up to the Dems behind the scene and snivel "Oh we hate what Trump is doing, we hate these cuts, sign on to our tax cuts and we'll decrease the spending cuts by, oh, *eyelash flutter* maybe half? Then we don't have to be held hostage by the conflicting wings of our own contradictory mandates." Refuse. If the GOP wants to make these policies law make them do it with their own members alone. They have the power to do so in strictly numerical terms. Make them do it themselves. Absolutely no bipartisan cover.
-The preponderance of probability suggests that polite unyielding refusal will make the GOP push collapse. If it does then be ready to offer votes for a wildly different policy: Cage DOGE, muzzle Trump, either continue current funding/taxing levels or, if you really want to tackle the deficit then take all tax cuts off the table and add tax hikes instead. The deficit is actually a problem and a serious bipartisan effort to tackle it would be well timed in the economic cycle and would, strategically, be a good thing to do under a Republican President and trifecta.
-In the very unlikely event the GOP stands firm, slashes spending on the poor massively and cuts taxes then the next thing to do is filibuster. The Dems can't filibuster the tax cuts and spending cuts directly- no. But these cuts will absolutely crush, with both booted feet, huge right wing constituencies. Farmers. Rural voters. Business folk. There will be screaming. The normal Trump MO is to do something that hurts everyone and then rush targeted bailouts to favored constituencies. When his trade wars fished over farmers he rushed bailouts to them. In this scenario reconciliation will have been used up for the cuts. Block and filibuster every attempt at the bailouts Trump will inevitably try and reach for to soothe the people he's fished. Don't let him. Make them own this. And if they axe the filibuster to do it? Good riddance.
Part of the quandary is that, contra what the Trumpkins say, Putin has given no concrete indication he's interested in even stopping the war on terms that Trump is suggesting (an essential draw). He's still demanding a demilitarized Ukraine which, of course, the Ukrainians would never, ever, agree to even under threat of America cutting off all aid.
Yup, the joke of course being that Neocons have so beclowned themselves they don't bring any voters of significant numbers- so they're basically libertarians now. The Dems definitely wasted their effort trying to tout neocons support. I can see why they tried, of course, Haley showed such alluring numbers prior to bending the knee- it'd have only taken a fraction of those voters to work and, if it'd worked it, would have been so easy in coalition and policy terms but it didn't work. The lesson: don't listen to neocons, don't waste time on them.
Well let me turn it around- Obama was horrible? Why is it that moderate Republicans didn't vote for him. Oh, wait, some of them did vote for him which is why he beat Romneybot quite decisively.
And the base question remains ludicrous. And, yes, from a liberal standard Romney was the same semi-neocon, blatant republitarian motherfisher that ran the country into a ditch for eight years from 2000 to 2008. I mean, the a-historicness of the whole premise is somewhat insane- these guys drove you our of being a fishing libertarian- they were so bad, but after 4 years of Obama suddenly it would be incumbent on liberals to support Mitt fishin Romney of the House of vulture capitalists because if liberals didn't, ohhh the right will coalesce behind someone worse!
Jay, a point of order, what you're describing: "vote for our horrible guy or we'll nominate someone worse" is not compromise, that'd be what is more commonly known as extortion.
Okay, let's hear it. Name, let's say, five major things you vehemently disagree with the neocons about. Only one of them is allowed to be Trump related and at least two need to be about the Bush Era, 2000-2008.
The answer to your first question, if we confined it to "something the Dems could have done" which seems to be your implicit assumption is something between "definitely not unless they could all collectively see the future" and "lol of course not what're you smoking?"
Yes, Trump was never big on the anti-gay thing and so basically represented an implicit point when the right conceded on SSM- they never admitted it of course and it was abandoned at the same time they were throwing a lot of other principles overboard so what can ya do?
Heh, you clearly didn't pay attention to the SSM issue much before the mid aughts. In the 90's a lot of the gay rights groups thought SSM was a terrible idea because it was "heteronormative".
I agree the supreme court would eventually have given way on SSM. When gays got equal rights to serve in the military under Obama's first term the gig was up and the social conservative route was starting*. I think a Romney victory would, possibly, have made the courts hesitate a bit longer on Obergefell than they did under an Obama victory.
And we agree Trump was going to happen. The dysfunction on the right was eventually going to summon Trump or someone like him and i don't think that Liberals were going to snap around on Immigration absolutism or on Free trade absent Trump happening.
But it seems like your point was strictly counterfactuals which is entirely fine; I appreciate you clarifying.
*It is interesting that, for all his stomping on Trans matters, neither Trump nor his social con eunuchs have made even gestures at going after SSM. It may be too soon to be sure, but I do suspect that it signifies the final waving of the white flag on SSM. Note, Jay vis a vis our previous discussion on the matter, that the right never did any "We were wrong about SSM" self examinations; they never overtly reversed their positions or pulled out their policy planks or did any of the repentance self flagellating self-examination stuff you think the left needs to do about DEI. They just... stopped emphasizing it and stopped talking about it.
You and me both but I got what I wanted which was to find out if this was simply an appeal to counterfactuals (it seems to be) or if there was any deeper meaning or implication (seems to not be the case) so I'm actually pretty content with the response I got.
Obama had two choices on the subject- consume his entire term punishing, persecuting and reversing W's atrocities or sort of mumble past them, stop doing them where possible and do other things. I don't think it speaks well of him that he chose not to do the former but it's very understandable that he looked at his historic mega-trifecta and said "I'm expected to squander this on Bush?!?!" and went for the ACA instead.
Counterfactuals are extremely hard to run, to put it mildly, would Pres Romneybot have had a Dem Senate in '12? Would the GOP have taken full control of Congress in '14?
I think the only thing we can say with any confidence is SSM would have been pushed back a few years and the Iran deal would have never occurred. Since I, and most liberals, consider both of those good policies obviously Romney would have been a terrible trade without even assuming his normal Republitarian tax cut nonsense would have been an awful trade for the gridlock that Obama had. There's also a non-zero chance that Romneybot sends boots in when Syria uses chemical weapons which would have been a W style clusterfish. Does Pres. Romneybot butterfly away Trump? Maybe in 16. Do I think Hillary would have beat him? If he beat Obama how on God(ess?)'s green earth would he have lost to Hillary??! Anything post 2016 is, frankly, nonsensical to even speculate on.
Like I said, the counterfactuals break down fast. Romney didn't narrowly lose to Obama, remember, he got pretty firmly walloped.
Which brings me back to the core question: were liberals incorrectly or unfairly unsupportive of Romney? Hahaha God(ess?) no! Would a world of a Romney presidency be a brighter one from a liberal point of view? No, not even if we assume only one term.
And would Romney have prevented Trump? I'd say absolutely not. Trump took over the GOP because of the gaping chasm between the GOP's ruling elite and their voters on tax policy, gov spending and immigration along with the shriveling of the social conservative movement that papered over it. Romney wouldn't have addressed any of those problems and, if anything, would have likely exacerbated them.
It could be just presentism and the fact that Ronal Regan was before my time but by the numbers for tax cuts, budgets exploded and horrific utterly useless wars embroiled in Bush W seems to have Ronny beat handily. I am not even sure how to balance Iran Contra against W's torture regime, but I feel that the latter is even more atrocious than the former.
I'd agree and you and I probably also find a certain bitter commonality in that we both think that Bush W still wears the feces caked crown of the most destructive American President for the welfare of the union in modern American history. Trump is horrible but for all his embarrassments, idiocies and flailing he hasn't come close to W yet in terms of material devastation to the American standing and welfare.
As far as I've seen from your writing style and your substantive positions the answer to that question would be: absolutely yes, always have been, my goodness how could you possibly think otherwise?
And I don't even use it pejoratively, it makes me feel like I'm in my 20's and 30's again when I read your stuff.
It's always bemusing when you return to this well and I just have to ask what your assertion is?
Like, was Romneybot treated unfairly when he ran in 2012? Any objective review at how Presidential candidates in the recent past were treated, especially on the left, would have to answer that question "no, not particularily". LIkewise are you suggesting it'd have been better for liberals if Romney had won in 2012? As in trading a term for Obama for 1-2 theoretical terms of Romney and the obvious rejoinder is "LOL of course not". So that, then, begs the question as to what your core assertion vis a vis Romney is?
I think it's really good for posterity that we host the neocon writers we host- it's always good to remember just how they used to argue and how they were; if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of why it is that Trump, of all people, was able to utterly defenestrated them out of their own party.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
The legality of this strikes me as black and white and unambiguously outside Don's authority. Your political analysis strikes me as debatable- yes maybe some people who made the tradeoffs and took transit instead will be delighted by this. It's also possible that an equal number of people who enjoyed the noticeably reduced congestion will be less pleased. Could be that this'll please more people than it displeases but, to be blunt, Don isn't winning New Jersey or New York state even if he makes some of their upstaters happy two years away from the next election. Whereas the Dems saying "fish you, that's illegal" strikes me as useful for their sides moral in a way that could snowball forward towards the election. I don't think pre-emptive obedience is going to be helpful.
And that's without touching on Trump declaring himself King. Maybe a few libertarians and righties actually would care about that. Lol I know, sorry, couldn't help but try the joke. Snerk.
"
What the heck happened? Did Hochul get abducted and replaced with a pod person? Is there some way to make sure the real one doesn't come back?
On “Bull-DOGEing Government”
Yup, like I said -Monkey's paw- wish, a wish granted in a manner that makes the wisher regret ever having voiced it.
"
I agree entirely. Heck, Elons' Muskrats are like a monkeys paw wish granted to small government libertarians. Not only will a lot of what he's trying to pull likely fail in court- if/when he fishes up something important it's the small government libertarian banner he's waving so that's what the public will associate with this fiasco. And even if, by some miracle, the Muskrats manage not to stumble across one of the several major electrified rails buried in the stuff they're blithely rummaging through- everything they're doing will be reversible with the stroke of a pen and every minion they install will be dismissible in the same way they were installed.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
Ironically, I feel that McConnells' strategy for Obama would be way more useful if used by us against Trump.
On “Bull-DOGEing Government”
It seems to me that the Trumpian strategy, such as it is, is shambling into view now and it is, well, rather underwhelming as far as I can see.
"Same old, same old" seems to be the core of it. The GOP in congress is trying to slash spending on the poor then give tax cuts to the wealthy that eat up any such savings twice over. All while yapping disingenuously about the perils of debt.
The Trumpian innovations to this time dishonored republican strategy appear to be mostly vestigial:
-DOGE is going to barge around breaking things and making a great deal of noise in domestic matters.
-Trump is going to barge around breaking things and making a great deal of noise on foreign policy and trade matters.
For DOGE the point, if there is one at all, is to generate a lot of red meat for the base and then just mumble quietly and forget it all happened when the courts reverse it. There's definitely a degree of experimentation here: how much can court orders be ignored? How much damage can be made irreversible before the courts weigh in? How much red meat can be found that will please the base or even turn the heads of the low info voters (odds look good that the answer to the latter is "not much").
For the Trump stuff, who the fish knows. Is he just a puppet of the Chinese and Putin? Does he have any follow through at all? If he keeps cranking up the uncertainty what's he going to do when the market tanks (a note: keep hiking the uncertainty and the market -will- tank eventually. More even than freeeeeeedom, markets crave stability and predictability)?
For the opposition I have a grab bag of thoughts:
-Delegate: All this DOGE nonsense is likely illegal. The Dems don't have to directly litigate each matter. Every one of these arbitrary nonsensical cuts gores various peoples oxen- let them each litigate. The "Shock and Awe" idea is to overwhelm the Dems but the Dems don't have to personally engage each of these attacks. No amount of Shock and Awe will distract each disparate group of folks who're being screwed and they all have lawyers.
-The McConnell precedent seems both just and judicious at this point. Oppose. Ignore collegiality. The GOP is going to slink up to the Dems behind the scene and snivel "Oh we hate what Trump is doing, we hate these cuts, sign on to our tax cuts and we'll decrease the spending cuts by, oh, *eyelash flutter* maybe half? Then we don't have to be held hostage by the conflicting wings of our own contradictory mandates." Refuse. If the GOP wants to make these policies law make them do it with their own members alone. They have the power to do so in strictly numerical terms. Make them do it themselves. Absolutely no bipartisan cover.
-The preponderance of probability suggests that polite unyielding refusal will make the GOP push collapse. If it does then be ready to offer votes for a wildly different policy: Cage DOGE, muzzle Trump, either continue current funding/taxing levels or, if you really want to tackle the deficit then take all tax cuts off the table and add tax hikes instead. The deficit is actually a problem and a serious bipartisan effort to tackle it would be well timed in the economic cycle and would, strategically, be a good thing to do under a Republican President and trifecta.
-In the very unlikely event the GOP stands firm, slashes spending on the poor massively and cuts taxes then the next thing to do is filibuster. The Dems can't filibuster the tax cuts and spending cuts directly- no. But these cuts will absolutely crush, with both booted feet, huge right wing constituencies. Farmers. Rural voters. Business folk. There will be screaming. The normal Trump MO is to do something that hurts everyone and then rush targeted bailouts to favored constituencies. When his trade wars fished over farmers he rushed bailouts to them. In this scenario reconciliation will have been used up for the cuts. Block and filibuster every attempt at the bailouts Trump will inevitably try and reach for to soothe the people he's fished. Don't let him. Make them own this. And if they axe the filibuster to do it? Good riddance.
On “Beware: Promises Being Kept”
That's a curious new assertion- that Ukraine isn't getting the aid and it's being siphoned off elsewhere?
"
Part of the quandary is that, contra what the Trumpkins say, Putin has given no concrete indication he's interested in even stopping the war on terms that Trump is suggesting (an essential draw). He's still demanding a demilitarized Ukraine which, of course, the Ukrainians would never, ever, agree to even under threat of America cutting off all aid.
"
Which, obviously, they won't do.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
Yup, the joke of course being that Neocons have so beclowned themselves they don't bring any voters of significant numbers- so they're basically libertarians now. The Dems definitely wasted their effort trying to tout neocons support. I can see why they tried, of course, Haley showed such alluring numbers prior to bending the knee- it'd have only taken a fraction of those voters to work and, if it'd worked it, would have been so easy in coalition and policy terms but it didn't work. The lesson: don't listen to neocons, don't waste time on them.
"
Well let me turn it around- Obama was horrible? Why is it that moderate Republicans didn't vote for him. Oh, wait, some of them did vote for him which is why he beat Romneybot quite decisively.
And the base question remains ludicrous. And, yes, from a liberal standard Romney was the same semi-neocon, blatant republitarian motherfisher that ran the country into a ditch for eight years from 2000 to 2008. I mean, the a-historicness of the whole premise is somewhat insane- these guys drove you our of being a fishing libertarian- they were so bad, but after 4 years of Obama suddenly it would be incumbent on liberals to support Mitt fishin Romney of the House of vulture capitalists because if liberals didn't, ohhh the right will coalesce behind someone worse!
"
Jay, a point of order, what you're describing: "vote for our horrible guy or we'll nominate someone worse" is not compromise, that'd be what is more commonly known as extortion.
"
Okay, let's hear it. Name, let's say, five major things you vehemently disagree with the neocons about. Only one of them is allowed to be Trump related and at least two need to be about the Bush Era, 2000-2008.
"
Agreed entirely which was why I inquired in the first place.
"
I think the only way Iraq is the answer is if they didn't invade in the first place.
"
The answer to your first question, if we confined it to "something the Dems could have done" which seems to be your implicit assumption is something between "definitely not unless they could all collectively see the future" and "lol of course not what're you smoking?"
Yes, Trump was never big on the anti-gay thing and so basically represented an implicit point when the right conceded on SSM- they never admitted it of course and it was abandoned at the same time they were throwing a lot of other principles overboard so what can ya do?
Heh, you clearly didn't pay attention to the SSM issue much before the mid aughts. In the 90's a lot of the gay rights groups thought SSM was a terrible idea because it was "heteronormative".
"
I agree the supreme court would eventually have given way on SSM. When gays got equal rights to serve in the military under Obama's first term the gig was up and the social conservative route was starting*. I think a Romney victory would, possibly, have made the courts hesitate a bit longer on Obergefell than they did under an Obama victory.
And we agree Trump was going to happen. The dysfunction on the right was eventually going to summon Trump or someone like him and i don't think that Liberals were going to snap around on Immigration absolutism or on Free trade absent Trump happening.
But it seems like your point was strictly counterfactuals which is entirely fine; I appreciate you clarifying.
*It is interesting that, for all his stomping on Trans matters, neither Trump nor his social con eunuchs have made even gestures at going after SSM. It may be too soon to be sure, but I do suspect that it signifies the final waving of the white flag on SSM. Note, Jay vis a vis our previous discussion on the matter, that the right never did any "We were wrong about SSM" self examinations; they never overtly reversed their positions or pulled out their policy planks or did any of the repentance self flagellating self-examination stuff you think the left needs to do about DEI. They just... stopped emphasizing it and stopped talking about it.
"
You and me both but I got what I wanted which was to find out if this was simply an appeal to counterfactuals (it seems to be) or if there was any deeper meaning or implication (seems to not be the case) so I'm actually pretty content with the response I got.
"
Obama had two choices on the subject- consume his entire term punishing, persecuting and reversing W's atrocities or sort of mumble past them, stop doing them where possible and do other things. I don't think it speaks well of him that he chose not to do the former but it's very understandable that he looked at his historic mega-trifecta and said "I'm expected to squander this on Bush?!?!" and went for the ACA instead.
"
Counterfactuals are extremely hard to run, to put it mildly, would Pres Romneybot have had a Dem Senate in '12? Would the GOP have taken full control of Congress in '14?
I think the only thing we can say with any confidence is SSM would have been pushed back a few years and the Iran deal would have never occurred. Since I, and most liberals, consider both of those good policies obviously Romney would have been a terrible trade without even assuming his normal Republitarian tax cut nonsense would have been an awful trade for the gridlock that Obama had. There's also a non-zero chance that Romneybot sends boots in when Syria uses chemical weapons which would have been a W style clusterfish. Does Pres. Romneybot butterfly away Trump? Maybe in 16. Do I think Hillary would have beat him? If he beat Obama how on God(ess?)'s green earth would he have lost to Hillary??! Anything post 2016 is, frankly, nonsensical to even speculate on.
Like I said, the counterfactuals break down fast. Romney didn't narrowly lose to Obama, remember, he got pretty firmly walloped.
Which brings me back to the core question: were liberals incorrectly or unfairly unsupportive of Romney? Hahaha God(ess?) no! Would a world of a Romney presidency be a brighter one from a liberal point of view? No, not even if we assume only one term.
And would Romney have prevented Trump? I'd say absolutely not. Trump took over the GOP because of the gaping chasm between the GOP's ruling elite and their voters on tax policy, gov spending and immigration along with the shriveling of the social conservative movement that papered over it. Romney wouldn't have addressed any of those problems and, if anything, would have likely exacerbated them.
"
It could be just presentism and the fact that Ronal Regan was before my time but by the numbers for tax cuts, budgets exploded and horrific utterly useless wars embroiled in Bush W seems to have Ronny beat handily. I am not even sure how to balance Iran Contra against W's torture regime, but I feel that the latter is even more atrocious than the former.
"
I'd agree and you and I probably also find a certain bitter commonality in that we both think that Bush W still wears the feces caked crown of the most destructive American President for the welfare of the union in modern American history. Trump is horrible but for all his embarrassments, idiocies and flailing he hasn't come close to W yet in terms of material devastation to the American standing and welfare.
"
As far as I've seen from your writing style and your substantive positions the answer to that question would be: absolutely yes, always have been, my goodness how could you possibly think otherwise?
And I don't even use it pejoratively, it makes me feel like I'm in my 20's and 30's again when I read your stuff.
"
It's always bemusing when you return to this well and I just have to ask what your assertion is?
Like, was Romneybot treated unfairly when he ran in 2012? Any objective review at how Presidential candidates in the recent past were treated, especially on the left, would have to answer that question "no, not particularily". LIkewise are you suggesting it'd have been better for liberals if Romney had won in 2012? As in trading a term for Obama for 1-2 theoretical terms of Romney and the obvious rejoinder is "LOL of course not". So that, then, begs the question as to what your core assertion vis a vis Romney is?
"
I think it's really good for posterity that we host the neocon writers we host- it's always good to remember just how they used to argue and how they were; if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of why it is that Trump, of all people, was able to utterly defenestrated them out of their own party.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.