Month: December 2018

The GOP’s chaos strategy

by digby

Ron Brownstein focuses on some very important Trump voters. And they aren’t the usual suspects:

The critical last layer of Donald Trump’s support in 2016 came from voters uncertain that he belonged in the White House. Now he appears determined to test how much chaos they will absorb before concluding they made the wrong decision.

For all the talk about the solidity of Trump’s base, it’s easy to forget how many voters expressed ambivalence even as they selected him over Hillary Clinton. Fully one-fourth of voters who backed Trump said they did not believe he had the temperament to succeed as president, according to an Election Day exit poll conducted by Edison Research. That number rose to about three in 10 among both the independents and the college-educated whites who backed Trump, according to previously unpublished data provided to me by Edison.

Yet even as they expressed hesitation about the future president, those voters were still willing to take a risk on him, either because they disliked Clinton or wanted change or preferred to disrupt the political system. Some may have thought Trump would moderate his behavior in office.

It’s an understatement to say Trump has dashed those hopes. Instead, he has continued to shatter norms of presidential behavior in every possible direction. Allies and opponents alike usually attribute Trump’s volatility to personal factors: an impulsive and mercurial personality that lashes back at any perceived affront, seemingly without much thought about the long-term implications and with a reluctance to take advice or consider evidence.

But after two years, it’s also clear that Trump sees strategic value in violating presidential norms. He’s shown that he believes he benefits from immersing all of those around him in constant unpredictability. Probably even more important, he sees barreling through the informal guardrails that have constrained previous presidents as a way of signaling to his core supporters that he will go to any length to defend their interests. From that perspective, the more establishment voices condemn his behavior, the more he signals to his base that he’s fighting for them by any means necessary.

Until the midterm elections, it was common for Trump critics to lament that he paid little price for these excesses. But the November results showed, in a quantifiable way, that Trump’s belligerent and erratic behavior does carry a cost. Democrats won 40 seats in the House—and carried the national House popular vote by a larger margin than the GOP did in its 1994 or 2010 landslides—even though unemployment was below 4 percent and two-thirds of voters described the economy as either excellent or good. A performance that weak for the president’s party should not be possible with an economy that strong. But both independents and college-educated white voters, two groups that expressed widespread doubt about Trump’s temperament from the outset, broke solidly for Democrats last month after narrowly tilting toward him in 2016.

Rather than taking that shift as a sign to reconsider his course, Trump has doubled down on disorder since Election Day. He approaches the New Year engulfed in three distinct crises, all of which he ignited with his own actions.

Trump has precipitated a diplomatic crisis by abruptly announcing his intention to withdraw American forces from Syria. That triggered the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, which reinforced the initial tremor over the sudden reversal with a powerful aftershock.

Trump has precipitated a governing crisis by forcing a partial federal shutdown through his demand for $5 billion in funding for his border wall—an ultimatum that the administration itself only a few days earlier acknowledged could not win 60 votes in the Senate.

And he’s instigated a financial-market crisis through the shutdown, his saber-rattling on trade with China, and his repeated Twitter attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell—with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin providing the aftershocks in this case through his amateurish efforts to calm the markets last weekend.

He points out that Trump’s supporters believe he will win all those fights but argues that the risk is that these crises are allmelting into one another and this group of voters only sees chaos. As he puts it, “arguing for any individual policy in this environment may be like trying to identify a single wave in a flood tide.”

And there are more crises looming, not the least of which is the ongoing Mueller probe which seems to be picking up steam.And yet, as Brownstein notes, even as the financial markets are reacting to the chaos, the Republicans in congress are staying thecourse which means there is likely to be even more chaos in the offing. His party is almost guaranteeing it, which makes me wonder if they aren’t making the calculation that this chaos is the only way they can successfully cheat their way into power.

That seems to be be the Russian propaganda strategy. Why not join up and double their efforts? The questions is whether that 25% of Trump voters who really don’t like that will stay the course.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

Here’s what happens when there’s no regulation

by digby

People just have to wreck everything:

The federal government’s partial shutdown has granted outdoorsy travelers free access to national parks that usually charge up to $30 per carload. And with that freedom, some locals say, has come a surge in scofflaw activity and a ticklish toilet situation, especially at Joshua Tree National Park.

At Joshua Tree, Death Valley and Channel Islands national parks — all within 220 miles of Los Angeles — conditions vary as widely as the geography.

All three parks are open, and their lodgings and campgrounds are open, as are other services generally run by park concessionaire companies. But all visitor centers and many restrooms are closed and many other services have been disrupted, including bathroom maintenance and trash collection.

Those conditions pose a particular peril in Joshua Tree, locals say, because these are some of the busiest days of the year.

Rangers at Joshua Tree counted 284,398 visitors in December 2017, most in the second half of the month. Since the federal government’s partial shutdown began on Dec. 22, new arrivals are free to ignore the usual entrance fee of $30 per car.

The park’s visitor centers, water filling stations and dump stations are also closed as part of the shutdown. But its trails, campgrounds and waterless toilets, also known as vault toilets, remain open, even though there are no federal employees to maintain them.

That situation — and the multiplying trash — has spurred volunteerism, but it also has many locals nervous.

“I’ve gone through 500 rolls of toilet paper,” said Rand Abbott, a Joshua Tree rock-climber and volunteer who started restocking park toilets on Saturday, the first full day of the shutdown.

“And I’ve been emptying all the trash cans that are there and putting bags in. And then I’ve been giving out trash bags to people. I’ve probably put 60 hours in.”

Abbott, a 54-year-old Marine Corps veteran and paraplegic who is well known in the climbing community, said he has also been trying to talk visitors out of illegal fires, illegal parking, littering and other forbidden activities.

Some comply right away, but “70% of the people I’m running into are extremely rude,” Abbott said. “Yesterday, I had my life threatened two times. It’s crazy in there right now.”

Joe De Luca, a sales associate at Nomad Ventures in downtown Joshua Tree, agreed.

“It’s a free-for-all in there. Absolutely ridiculous,” De Luca said.

Besides the toilets and trash, he cited breakdowns in the campground reservation system, illegal camping practices and visitors stringing Christmas lights from delicate Joshua trees that they are supposed to leave untouched.

In the shop, De Luca said, he and colleagues are emphasizing leave-no-trace practices and recommending WAG bags — “a bag that you go to the bathroom in [and carry out] for sensitive areas where there are no bathrooms.”

De Luca thinks “the park needs to shut their gates.”

“We’re seeing so much damage. New Year’s is coming up and that’s going to be crazy.”

This is, of course, the responsibility of the humans who perpetrate the acts. But it’s also why we have a government. In order to protect the society for the greater good there needs to be some regulations that require people not to behave like primitive beasts.

By the way, this is what will happen on a permanent basis if the anti-regulatory, anti-environment right wing zealots have their way. Huzzah.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

They wanted change and they got it

by digby

I guess if you don’t care about what kind of change he brought, Trump has been a massive success. Jonathan Lemire posted this bracing analysis:

In Trump’s Washington, facts are less relevant. Insults and highly personal attacks are increasingly employed by members of both parties. The White House press briefing is all but gone, international summits are optional, the arts are an afterthought and everything — including inherently nonpartisan institutions and investigations — is suddenly political.

Taking a wrecking ball to decorum and institutions, Trump has changed, in ways both subtle and profound, how Washington works and how it is viewed by the rest of the nation and world.

“He’s dynamited the institution of the presidency,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. “He doesn’t see himself as being part of a long litany of presidents who will hand a baton to a successor. Instead, he uses the presidency as an extension of his own personality.”

Is this a one-president aberration? Or has the White House forever changed? Whether the trends will outlast Trump’s presidency is a question that won’t be answered until there is a new occupant in the Oval Office, but Brinkley predicts “no future president will model themselves on him.”

There was a time, many accelerated news cycles ago, when there was speculation, stoked by the candidate himself, that Trump would abandon the bluster of his campaign and become “more presidential” once he took office.

No one says that anymore.

Trump himself believes his unpredictability is what holds Americans’ attention and fuels his success.

“I have these stupid teleprompters. You don’t mind that I haven’t used them all night, do you?” Trump asked the crowd at a June rally in South Carolina. “Every once in a while I look at it, I mean, it’s so boring, we don’t want it. America’s back, bigger, and better, and stronger than ever.”

Indeed, Trump brought to the White House the same fact-challenged, convention-defying style that got him elected. From his first days in office, Trump pushed falsehoods about the size of the inaugural crowd and unfounded allegations about millions of illegal voters. He has not let up since.

The inaccuracies have been big and small: Trump repeatedly claimed in 2018 that he passed the biggest tax cut in history (he didn’t), that the U.S. economy is the best in history (it’s not) and that his Supreme Court choice Brett Kavanaugh finished atop his class at Yale Law School (the school doesn’t rank students). Just last week, after making an abrupt, unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, Trump tweeted that Russia was “not happy” about the decision. Hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had cheered the move.

The cumulative effect has been to diminish the authority with which White House pronouncements are received.

When a federal report on climate change was released last month, showing an increasing impact, a White House statement cast doubt on its findings and suggested, erroneously, that a significant number of scientists doubted the phenomenon. That drew derision from a broad swath of the scientific community. The White House distributed a doctored video of an encounter between a CNN reporter and an intern, exaggerating the contact made by the journalist and damaging the administration’s credibility. Similarly, when Trump threatened to shut down the southern border, most of Washington just shrugged and dismissed the threat as so much bluster.

The White House press briefing, once a daily opportunity for the public to hear the president’s views scrutinized, has all but vanished. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has held just one briefing in December and it clocked in at a scant 15 minutes.

Now, the primary form of communication from the White House comes 280 characters at a time, as Trump’s Twitter bursts set off cellphone alerts across Washington, sometimes taking even federal agencies and congressional allies by surprise. His decision last week to announce a withdrawal of troops from Syria left congressional Republicans complaining bitterly that they were not consulted or advised. And, despite counsel from his own party, he moved to shut down the government over the lack of money for a border wall, his signature campaign promise.

“The challenge is that Trump is like a quarterback who doesn’t call a play and simply snaps the ball and expects his teammates to react,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A Trump ally, Gingrich said he approves of only 80 percent of the president’s tweets but believes his unique style has made him impervious to criticism after he pulled out of multinational agreements in favor of deregulation and sovereignty, moves that fulfilled campaign pledges yet drew global derision.

“The thing you have to ask yourself about Trump is: Could he, in fact, be as disruptive as he is in the ways that his base wants but be more traditional on tactical things?” Gingrich said. “Or can you not have one without the other?”

Who cares? Why should the president of the United States cater exclusively to his base to the detriment of the rest of the country? That’s not the job. He is not doing the job. He’s not doing any job. He’s in so far over his head that he’s just lurching about, splashing wildly trying not to drown. The man has no clue how to swim and he never did. Daddy jumped in and saved him the past but daddy is dead.

I dn’t know if the country will ever be the same. But the immediate danger for all of us is whether or not he’s transformed the world in such a destructive way that it will bring catastrophe:

He has eschewed sweeping diplomacy in favor of transactional relationships. He has strained longtime alliances — including with Canada, of all places — and befriended global strongmen. He has skipped summits, including a gathering in Asia in November, that have long been fixtures on presidential itineraries. And world leaders have taken to heart that flattery, pageantry, golf and maybe some business at a Trump-owned hotel are the pathway to a good relationship with the president.

Think about that last bit. If that isn’t impeachable I can’t imagine what is. But then we are increasingly seeing Republican officials and other right wing luminaries indicate that there would be nothing wrong with the president secretly conspiring with foreign countries to sabotage their rivals and enact policies to reward foreign leaders for their help.

That’s where we are. That’s what we are dealing with. It’s hard to imagine that he culd possibly be re-elected but let’s just say that we don’t seem to be on an equal playing field. They have given themselves quite a handicap these days what with the vote suppression and foreign infiltration in the electoral system. I would never take anything for granted.

Don’t kid yourself. He could be re-elected.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

There’s always another rightwing billionaire

by digby

… but there’s one less weirdo among them meddling in politics these days:

Robert Mercer, the publicity-shy hedge fund tycoon whose backing of Donald Trump earned him unwelcome fame, is stepping back into the shadows.

Mercer, 72, and his family spent just $2.9 million influencing federal elections this year, less than a third of their outlay in either 2016, when the last presidential election took place, or 2014, the year of the last midterms, according to Federal Election Commission data gathered through late December.

Combined with the demise of Mercer’s political-data firm, Cambridge Analytica, and the break with former adviser Stephen Bannon, the decline in spending suggests Mercer’s importance in conservative politics may be waning. According to two people who have worked closely with the family, Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, 45, were dismayed by the notoriety their role in Trump’s victory brought. Spokesmen for Robert and Rebekah Mercer declined to comment.

“They are very private,” said Dan Eberhart, an Arizona oil and gas investor who has backed many of the same Republican causes. “That is a negative on them getting more involved.”

Aw, what a shame. Apparently, some of the people they disdain fought back:

The past two years have seen liberal protesters march on Robert Mercer’s mansion on Long Island, New York; pressure university endowments to pull money from his hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies LLC; and demand that the American Museum of Natural History strip Rebekah Mercer of her board seat. The elder Mercer stepped down from leading Renaissance last year, although he remains a senior researcher there.

Rebekah is still active in charitable work and everyone suspects they are secretly funneling money to conservative causes via dark money donations. They will certainly find a way to follow their hate.

But this episode shows one good reason why transparency in politics, particularly money, is so important. These people love to have outsize influence on public policy but they don’t want to be held accountable for it.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

Gravitas? Don’t make me laugh

by digby

Lol lol.

Trump. Gravitas. In the same sentence.

The article posits that Republicans think Trump will fare better against a lefty wonk because they allegedly share certain philosophical traits about isolationism and populism so the Trump voters in those all-important midwest states will stick with him. They say they hope to run against Warren (because she reminds people of Hillary — guess why) Sanders or Booker and most fear O’Rourke and Biden because they either inspire the youth or have a way with the white working class.

Whatever. Number one, I never assume that political strategists are being honest with reporters in these pieces. Their job is to try to psych out the opposition. So, basically, who cares what they say?

Second, this entire genre, at this point in the game, is tiresome and stupid. We have a year to see what these people have got. Events often intervene to change the dynamic and people you don’t expect emerge and the big stars often crash and burn. (Scott Walker, ladies and gentlemen?) So everyone needs to relax and let this unfold.

However, we don’t have to wait to understand exactly what the Democrats are up against in Donald Trump. There has been no “periodic tendency to diminish the presidency.” The cretinous monster has demonstrated every single day for two years that he is 100% unfit for the job in every way.

Gravitas. You’ve got to be kidding me.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

The fringe is now the mainstream
by Tom Sullivan

The sitting president’s obsession with a border wall has come to resemble President George W. Bush’s fascination with tax cuts. Tax cuts are the cure for whatever ails ya. Reducing taxes would grow the economy, create jobs, and “make the pie higher,” per one of his most famous Bushisms. When those things didn’t manifest, it simply meant we needed another tax cut. Come to think of it, Republicans still believe that.

For Donald Trump, whatever the problem: more wall.

“Time to get tough on Border Security. Build the Wall!” Trump tweeted after a California police officer was shot and killed during a traffic stop early Wednesday. The Stanislaus County sheriff’s department believes the suspect to be in the U.S. illegally. If that guess proves wrong, it won’t matter. Trump will call again for the wall.

With a quarter of the federal government shut down over funding for a 2,000-mile horizontal Trump Tower, Democrats preparing to take control of the U.S. House next week see no need to cut one of Trump’s infamous deals, Politico reports:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top lieutenants are considering several options that would refuse Trump the $5 billion he’s demanded for the wall and send hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal employees back to work, according to senior Democratic sources.

While the strategy is fluid, House Democrats hope to pass a funding bill shortly after members are sworn in. They believe that would put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to follow suit. And they’re confident that their political leverage will only increase the longer the shutdown lasts — a notion that some GOP leaders privately agree with.

Part of the problem is the lack of gestalt for “wall.” What constitutes “a wall, a fence, whatever“? Trump himself cannot say, writes Eric Levitz, since he cannot explain expressly what it is for:

Of course, the president has offered many dishonest rationales for his signature policy idea. He’s posited the wall as a means of keeping large numbers of Central Americans from seeking asylum in the United States, blocking dangerous narcotics from entering the country, and reducing illegal border crossings.

But building a giant wall across the southern border is not a rational policy solution to any of those (putative) problems. The migrant caravans that Trump loves to demonize don’t aim to sneak across unguarded borderlands. Rather, they tend to march (in conspicuously large numbers) right up to heavily guarded ports of entry because they believe they have legal grounds for seeking asylum in the U.S. Reforming domestic and international laws on the rights of asylum seekers — and/or devising some kind of “Marshall Plan for the Northern Triangle” — would be plausible responses to Trump’s stated concerns on “caravans.” Stacking concrete in the desert is not.

What the wall was for was getting Trump elected, for setting himself apart from the party apparatchiks sharing the stage with him during early Republican debates, for showing white nationalists among the GOP base who would be tougher on non-natives than his fellow contestants. That’s how he sees the presidency. It’s a game show he has to win. For himself, not for anyone else.

Levtiz adds:

But the point of Trump’s wall has always been symbolic. The policy was “designed” to give visceral expression to the far right’s xenophobia — and thus, to trigger the libs, flummox the “cucks,” and authenticate Trump’s solidarity with the GOP’s perennially betrayed nativist contingent. The wall is meant to serve as a monument to red America’s triumph in one front of the culture wars. As such, the wall can never be realized through a grand, bipartisan bargain.

A majority of Americans may believe Trump is to blame for the government shutdown, but they are not the Americans Trump fears. Trump needs the wall to hang onto the core 35 percent of his base for reelection. What keeps him from backing down, Eugene Robinson insists, is not principle or determination, “It’s simple fear.”

Former Wall Street Journal op-ed editor and Weekly Standard contributor Max Boot told David Corn he left the Republican Party when he realized to his horror there were far more racists among the GOP’s base than he in his pundit’s bunker had thought. There was once a difference between Republicans’ campaign rhetoric and how Republicans actually governed, Boot thought. They would blow dog whistles to rally their voters, then not really deliver on the “white-power agenda” they teased to get elected:

Trump exploited that, because he has no compunctions about doing in office the kind of things that previous Republican standard-bearers only hinted at on the campaign trail. And he is tapping into frustration in ranks with what they see as being RINOs, as Republicans in Name Only. What I think they mean by that is candidates who did not deliver on the kind of racist, xenophobic, white-power agenda that a lot of Republicans would actually like to see. Before Donald Trump, the Republican Party was a majority conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe.

There are enough anti-Trumpers left for a dinner party, but not for a political party, Boot admits. He’d stayed in his lane and blocked out the craziness until the country elected Trump.

Trump’s white nationalist party, the Democracy Optional Party, Donald’s Own Party wants its wall. He dares not make them angry at him. He sold them on wall. They want wall.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Need something lighter tomorrow?

by digby

I know food is the last thing you want to think about right now but keep this thought for when you’re trying to figure out what to do with the last of the leftover turkey —make this Yucatán soup called sopa de lima. Maybe save some for your New Year’s day hangover. It’s tangy, it’s spicy and it’s muy sabroso.

INGREDIENTS
2  tablespoons vegetable oil
1  cup diced onion
1  cup diced celery
1  cup diced carrot
½  teaspoon cumin seed
½  teaspoon coriander seed
½  teaspoon black peppercorns
6  garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1  cinnamon stick, 2 inches long
 Cayenne
2  teaspoons salt, or to taste
8  cups unsalted turkey or chicken broth
 Vegetable oil for frying (about 1 cup)
4  corn tortillas, at least a day old, cut in 1/2-inch strips
4 to 6  cups cooked turkey meat, shredded
1 or 2  firm-ripe avocados
6  scallions, chopped
2  jalapeños, thinly sliced
1  small bunch cilantro, leaves and tender stems, roughly chopped
 Lime wedges

Heat vegetable oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, celery and carrot and let soften, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.

Toast the cumin, coriander and peppercorns in a small dry skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant, about 1 minute, then grind in a spice mill or mortar. Add the ground spices to the pot, along with the garlic, cinnamon, a pinch of cayenne and salt.

Add the broth and bring to a boil, then reduce to a brisk simmer. Cook for 15 minutes, then taste for salt and adjust. Keep hot, covered, over very low heat.

Pour vegetable oil to a depth of 1/2 inch into a wide skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot and looks wavy, add the tortilla strips and fry until barely colored, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove with tongs and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle lightly with salt. (The oil may be strained and saved for future frying.)

In a medium saucepan, heat the shredded turkey meat with a little of the hot soup. Divide the meat among 4 to 6 soup bowls and add a few slices of avocado to each. Ladle about 1 cup soup into each bowl, then garnish with tortilla strips, scallions, jalapeño slices, chopped cilantro and a generous squeeze of lime juice.

courtesy the NYT. 

You’re welcome.

cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Nobody really wants that stupid wall

by digby

Morning consult: President Donald Trump has spent much of the past month saying it’s imperative that Congress helps him build his proposed border wall with Mexico. But as lawmakers searched for a deal with the White House to avert a partial government shutdown, a new Morning Consult/Politico poll shows voters place wall funding at the bottom of a list of 10 actions they say should be a top priority for Congress.

Even Republicans don’t have it as their highest priority.

Most voters (53 percent) also said Trump did not do enough to avoid the shutdown, including 52 percent of independents and 22 percent of Republicans.

It’s not working for him:

Days into a partial government shutdown triggered by President Donald Trump’s demand for increased funding for his proposed wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, a new Morning Consult survey finds voters as bearish as ever on the president’s job performance.

In the Dec. 21-23 poll, which began surveying registered voters two hours before some government agencies shut down amid an impasse over wall funding, 39 percent of registered voters — including 80 percent of Republicans — approved of the president’s job performance, while 56 percent — including 90 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents — did not.

He doesn’t believe the polls and won’t take the advice of other Republicans in the congress. He’s watching Fox and listening to Ann Coulter and Mark Meadows.  He’s backed himself into a corner and it’s very difficult to see how he’s going to get out of it.

I can’t see the end game.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …



cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

Trump fatigue finally setting in?

by digby

Oh, my my my. I think this is an ominous sign for Trump world:

MSNBC ended the week of Dec. 21st with the #1 cable news ratings on television, beating Fox News for the first time in 17 years. For the Monday through Friday leading up to the Christmas holiday, MSNBC averaged 1.558 million total viewers, while Fox averaged 1.541 million and CNN averaged 975,000. It was the first time MSNBC finished first for a week since September 2000. It was also the fourth week in a row that MSNBC beat Fox News in the 8-11 p.m. primetime hours in both total viewers and the 25-54 news demo. The Rachel Maddow Show was the most-watched cable news program of the week with over 3.2 million total viewers (compared to about 2.3 million for Sean Hannity). The long-awaited MSNBC ratings victory comes amidst a coordinated advertiser boycott of Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News show after the host claimed immigrants make America “dirtier.”

I don’t know if this means fewer cultists are tuning in or if people who don’t usually watch cable news are tuning in to MSNBC. But something is changing, at least for the moment. Maybe Trump’s schtick is finaly getting old. Back in the day the Republican used to push the concept of “Clinton fatigue” which was defined as supporters getting tired of all the drama.

Clinton was an amateur compared to Trump when it comes to drama. The Republican ginned up many scandals but the administration still functioned at a high level and the world didn’t worry that the US was being run by an incompetent. This is very different.

Up until now, Trump’s supporters have been sticking with him come what may. But maybe his act is finally getting old. This would logically be a first sign of it. He’s a TV creature like no other.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year!

cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

QOTD: Dan Rather

by digby

Just a thought: Which should be considered more “marginal” – believing in Santa at age 7 or not believing in climate change at age 72?— Dan Rather (@DanRather) December 25, 2018

Good point.

By the way, the 7-year-old girl, named Collman Lloyd, had the last laugh:

After the president hung up the phone, Lloyd sat in her kitchen with her parents, her 10-year-old sister, her 5-year-old brother and a friend. She wondered about Trump’s family, and what his Christmas Eve plans were.

If she ever had the chance to talk to the president again, Lloyd said, she’d ask him about his family.

“Most people know this question. I would like to ask if he has any kids,” she said. “I’ve honestly never heard of them or seen any of them so I was wondering.”

That night, Lloyd and her siblings left iced sugar cookies and chocolate milk out for Santa. The next morning, they were gone, and under the tree was a wrapped gift with Lloyd’s name on it: a brand new American Girl doll.

Santa is real after all, Lloyd said.

Nobody believes the president. In this case, that’s a good thing.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year!

cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405