Month: January 2019

Telling him what he wants to hear

by digby

Here’s yet another poll showing Trump’s approval rating really is falling:

The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows the 35-day partial government shutdown took a toll on Trump’s overall performance ratings. While presidential approval has fluctuated only slightly throughout Trump’s two years in office, he neared his lowest marks this month, slipping from December.

Here’s how the nation assesses Trump’s performance:

The poll finds 34 percent of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, compared with 65 percent who disapprove.

Trump’s current approval rating nears the lowest measured in an AP-NORC poll since he took office. Still, Trump has seen remarkable stability in his ratings throughout his presidency, with his approval falling in a narrow range across most polls, from the mid-30s to the mid-40s.

In December, 42 percent expressed approval of Trump, while 56 percent disapproved.

Meanwhile, his courtiers are still telling him that his clothes are just beautiful:

President Donald Trump’s political team has concluded that shutting down the government hasn’t damaged his 2020 prospects — if anything, they’re convinced it’s bolstered his standing in key electoral battlegrounds.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale commissioned a survey taken during the final days of the shutdown that was conducted by respected GOP pollsters Neil Newhouse and Robert Blizzard. The poll, surveying 10 GOP-leaning House districts that Democrats won in the 2018 midterms, found that a plurality of voters blamed Trump for the shutdown. But a plurality of voters also supported his push for a border wall.

Trump is expected to be briefed on the new numbers on Monday evening, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Here’s the funny part:

Isenstadt, in turn, was given their full write-up of the poll and posted it online for everyone to see. The weird thing about it is that while it would be pretty easy to fake a poll and stuff it full of good news for Trump, they didn’t. They just took a poll that’s full of bad news for Trump — like that his approval rating is probably 13 points underwater nationally and he’s less popular than Democratic House incumbents who are holding down Trump-voting districts — and wrote it up as if it’s good news for Trump.
What the RNC polled and what it said

Instead of conducting a valid survey of national opinion, Newhouse and Blizzard polled 10 House districts. Not 10 random House districts or 10 representative House districts, but 10 districts that Trump won in 2016 but that are represented in the House today by a Democrat — MN-7, NY-2, SC-1, NY-11, OK-5, PA-8, ME-2, VA-7, NY-3, and NY-19.

This is an interesting thing to look at, but the relevant context is Trump won these 10 districts by an average of 12 points in the context of losing the national popular vote by 2 points. In other words, this swath of America is about 14 points Trumpier than the national average.

And what did they find?

Trump’s approval rating is 49 to 48 percent

Voters say they support Trump’s policies by a 54 to 43 percent margin

“By way of comparison, the average approval score for the Democratic Members of Congress in these districts is 35%-20%.”

So, putting this through the 14-point translator, we get the conclusion that Trump’s policies are unpopular nationally and that his favorable rating is probably -13 nationally. It’s true that -13 is a little bit better than the -15 he’s at in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, but it’s well within the range of other results. In other words, there’s no special good news here.

In fact, the only genuinely new finding this poll offers is its look at the popularity of 10 House Democrats who’ve been given the difficult job of trying to hold down seats that are much redder than the national average. And the news here is good for Democrats — the incumbent House members in these districts are popular. 

None of this is earth-shattering, but it does raise the question of why Trump’s staff seems to be trying to trick him.

There’s no question. Trump’s staff has learned that he won’t tolerate bad news so they’re not giving him any. He isn’t capable of learning and he can’t adjust his behavior so it’s no use anyway. It would only make him mad.
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Trump buggy whips
by Tom Sullivan

Economic pedants enjoy using buggy whips as an example of a technology that has simply run its course. But like pundits who still red-bait decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, supporters of the U.S. coal industry cannot let it go.

A German commission announced last weekend it would shut down “all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years” to keep its international commitments to reduce climate-warming CO2 emissions. The country recently had been lagging in reduction efforts, reported the Los Angeles Times:

“This is an historic accomplishment,” said Ronald Pofalla, chairman of the 28-member government commission, at a news conference in Berlin following a marathon 21-hour negotiating session that concluded at 6 a.m. Saturday. The breakthrough ended seven months of wrangling. “It was anything but a sure thing. But we did it,” Pofalla said. “There won’t be any more coal-burning plants in Germany by 2038.”

Environmentalists nonetheless staged a protest to demand a phase-out by 2030.

Following the 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, Germany decided it would shutter all of its nuclear plants. Twelve of 19 have closed to date, the Times reports.

The plan to eliminate coal-burning plants as well as nuclear means that Germany will be counting on renewable energy to provide 65% to 80% of the country’s power by 2040. Last year, renewables overtook coal as the leading source and now account for 41% of the country’s electricity

And what of Team USA? The sitting president prefers buggy whips. Donald Trump believes in the heavy industries of his youth, writes Catherine Rampell. “To Trump, any difficulties such sectors face are national tragedies whose reversal demands re-rigging the rest of the economy, regardless of cost,” Rampell writes in the Washington Post. Plus, he needs to placate blue-collar supporters in coal-mining states.

Trump blames the decline of coal on regulation. He has rolled back regulations on CO2 emissions, on coal ash disposal, and on mercury emissions. His Department of Energy last week announced $38 million in new funding aimed at keeping online the sort of coal-fired plants Germany is closing. All for naught, Rampell explains:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistical agency within the Energy Department, just released its annual energy outlook. Lo and behold, it forecasts a 21 percent decline in coal production over the next 20 years. Astoundingly, as the Financial Times points out, that’s an even steeper decline than the agency estimated a mere two years ago — which was back when President Barack Obama’s big, bad, coal-killing Clean Power Plan was still expected to go into effect.

Coal’s main challenge is not regulation, but competition from newer technologies. Hydraulic fracturing technologies have improved. Natural gas is a cheaper alternative to coal, one other nations may soon exploit, advises Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago. Solar and wind power per megawatt-hour are both already cheaper than coal. Prices continue to fall for renewables while the cost of coal-fired electricity has not moved since 2017. Coal-fired plants are no longer competitive, with 15 percent of capacity projected for retirement between 2018 and 2024.

Donald Trump “struggles to understand why he can’t turn back the clock,” Rampell concludes. That doesn’t mean he cannot fantasize.

As always, a lie.
The actual data here on how
"a year after Trump slapped tariffs on imported steel, the U.S. steel industry is not thriving. It is reeling. Steel prices have fallen back to pre-tariff levels. Employment is stagnant" and stock prices fell:https://t.co/UjJCp5nm2D— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) January 28, 2019

People in coal (and steel) country are losing jobs and a way of life to changing technology, not just to climate change. Maybe they would be better off if the president were more help finding them a new one.

5,000 troops to Colombia?

by digby

New sanctions were imposed today on Venezuelan oil which should be a big help to the people. Here’s Bolton:

President Donald Trump is leaving open the possibility of a U.S. military intervention to protect opposition leader Juan Guaidó, members of the nation’s assembly and American diplomatic personnel, national security adviser John Bolton said Monday.

“The president has made it clear that all options are on the table,” Bolton told reporters in the White House briefing room.

Venezuela’s government is embroiled in a power struggle after Guaidó declared President Nicolás Maduro illegitimate last week under a provision of the nation’s Constitution. The Trump administration has recognized Guaidó as the leader of the country.

Bolton and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who also appeared at the briefing, announced that the U.S. would impose new sanctions on PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, as a means of putting more pressure on Maduro’s regime.

“We also today call on the Venezuelan military and security forces to accept the peaceful, democratic and constitutional transfer of power,” Bolton said.

Maduro has so far refused to schedule new elections to resolve the dispute over who is the legitimate leader of the country.

But check this out:

So this notepad that National Security Advisor John Bolton was holding today at the White House briefing on Venezuela says:

"Afghanistan -> Welcome the Talks. 5,000 troops to Colombia."

If confirmed this would be a pretty terrible OPSEC breach.https://t.co/KS0Issfvps pic.twitter.com/IOrSprG567— Rao Komar (@RaoKomar747) January 28, 2019

hookay fine.

The state of our union is weak

by digby

Pelosi invited trump to give his big speech now that he’s had his time out and he’s promising to be a good boy. We know he’ll tell the world that he’s the greatest leader the world has ever known and the number of his accomplishments is unprecedented.

Nobody’s buying it:

That’s from the NBC/WSJ poll.

This is from the new Monmouth poll:

President Trump’s State of the Union address was initially scheduled to be delivered this week, but was postponed by the shutdown. While he is likely to give his administration a glowing review when he does deliver it, less than half of the public feels that the current state of the union is either very (13%) Monmouth University Polling Institute 01/28/19 or somewhat (35%) strong. Another 27% say it is not too strong and 22% say it is not strong at all. The 48% who currently feel the state of the union is at least somewhat strong is down from 55% who said the same in January 2018. The decline of confidence in the state of the union over the past year cuts across all partisan groups – going from 76% to 71% among Republicans, from 52% to 44% among independents, and from 42% to 34% among Democrats.

He’s making America weak again.

In case you were wondering, though, his brainwashed cult is sticking with him, though:

I don’t know what to say about these people anymore. They worship the guy and it seems nothing he does will change their minds. What I can’t figure out is why he doesn’t take advantage of that and just say, “We don’t need a wall anymore. I’ve solved the immigration problem. It’s over, I won.” They would obviously buy it and he could just move on.

He is so politically inept that he keeps trying to please a base that clearly thinks he’s a God and can do no wrong. Why bother?

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Remember when Republicans used to blather about restoring “honor and dignity” to the White House?

by digby

What a lowlife:

When President Trump brings senators, New York friends or other guests to the Oval Office, he occasionally opens a door near his desk summoning them to follow. Flashing a grin, he wants his friends to see where Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky reportedly began their sexual encounters.

“We’ve remodeled it since then,” he said on a tour in December, said a person with direct knowledge of the event. In a visit in 2017, Trump told a TV anchor, “I’m told this is where Bill and Monica . . .” — stopping himself from going further, according to “Team of Vipers,” a new book by former White House aide Cliff Sims that The Washington Post obtained before its publication Tuesday.

Three other people who have embarked on a tour with Trump said he made similar comments regarding the former president and White House intern, laughing and making facial expressions. The subject often leads to lengthy, sometimes crass conversations, aides said.

There’s more:

The president has also claimed to guests, without evidence, that his private dining room off the Oval Office was in “rough shape” and had a hole in the wall when he came into the West Wing and that President Barack Obama used it to watch sports, according to two White House officials and two other people who have heard him discuss the dining room. “He just sat in here and watched basketball all day,” Trump told a recent group, before saying he upgraded Obama’s smaller TV to a sprawling, flat-screen one, the four people said.

View this post on Instagram

The first photograph is looking down the short hallway from the Oval Office to President Obama’s private dining room (he’s in the midst of his weekly lunch with Vice President Biden). Comrade Minus claims that when he came into office, the dining room was in “rough shape and had a hole in the wall” (see Josh Dawsey’s article in The Washington Post). “He (Obama) just sat in here and watched basketball all day,” according to minus. Click through the pictures to see what President Obama actually did in the dining room with a variety of people: he had lunch. If you spot the hole in the wall, you win a free trip to visit the medieval concrete wall in Mexico.A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jan 28, 2019 at 6:36am PST

Meanwhile:

President Donald Trump is “very pissed off” and “really hopping mad” at former aide Cliff Sims’ new book that reveals firsthand the chaos and infighting that is ever present in his White House, according to several current and former White House officials.

Trump is asking aides: “Who is this guy? Why is he writing this book? He wasn’t even in meetings,” the sources said. He also dismissively refers to Sims — who served until last May as director of White House message strategy and a special assistant to the president —as “the videographer” because he also helped Trump with the weekly video and radio addresses, according to three current and former White House officials.
[…]
But it is unclear how the impulsive Trump might react after the kickoff of Sims’ official media tour, which began early Monday with an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The View.” Sims is also slated to appear on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” tonight.

Although Trump insists Sims — an Alabama native who previously worked on the Trump 2016 campaign – was never in his inner circle, he “feels duped by a guy who he trusted,” said a person close to the White House.

In the book, Sims described how he worked with Trump to create what Sims calls an “enemies list” of suspected leakers. Sims “creates a list of leakers which turns out to be the people he doesn’t like, and the guy who makes the list turns out to be the million-dollar leaker,” said a current White House official. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that Sims had received a seven-figure advance for the book, a fact that the New York Times first reported in November.

The person close to the White House also noted that: “The president’s been warned about lots of hires that shouldn’t have happened, and he’s still hired them.”

The White House had no public complaint when Sims departed last year. In a statement to an Alabama news outlet, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said: “Cliff Sims was a valuable member of President Trump’s team on the campaign and for 15 months in the White House. I worked with him on both and he is talented, smart, and worked hard for the President. We hated to see him resign from the White House, but know he will continue to be a loyal supporter for the President and impactful for him in the future.”

But now Sims’ book has united many former and current White House officials in casting out Sims from Trump-world.

The former official said that Sims often attended White House meetings uninvited, and that his former colleagues now believe he was in effect covertly reporting on them for a future book.

Sims and the White House both declined to comment.

Sims’ friends inside and outside the White House responded to the mounting criticism of him by saying it comes from people “panicking” over how the books portrays them and “protecting themselves,” as one current senior White House official put it.

Sims was “with the president quite often alone” and played an important role on the messaging for a 2017 tax reform bill, said the official.

“The president’s close relationship with Sims wasn’t a secret to anyone in the building,” another former administration official added.

Some of Sims’ critics say they have distrusted him since the administration’s early days. During Trump’s first year in office, Trump’s then- chief of staff, Reince Priebus, had to “drag” Sims up to the White House counsel’s office after he was suspected of leaking, according to a current White House official and a person close to the White House.

He promised that he wuld hire the best people.

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Equality is right around the corner

by digby

Ok, this is just nuts:

In its December report examining educational opportunities, life expectancy, pay equity and other factors, the World Economic Forum predicted that it would take 202 years for gender parity to be reached in the workplace. That is significantly more than the estimate of 170 years in 2016.

That’s from a story about how men in powerful positions refusing to mentor women because they allegedly believe they face too much legal exposure.

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My Salon column this morning:

Over the past few months there’s been a lot of chatter about former New York mayor and multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg throwing his hat into the ring for president. If he does run, he reportedly plans to do so in the Democratic Party, as an alternative to all the crazy progressives. Good luck with that.

On Sunday, we got confirmation that yet another multibillionaire is seriously considering a run: Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks.

What in the world are these people thinking? After two years of Donald Trump, do either of these men really think the nation is yearning for another wealthy businessman in the White House? I realize that this idea of “running the country like a business” has been a popular trope for many years, but one might have thought the current disastrous experiment would have provided considerable evidence of what a fatuous idea that is. From Trump to Jared Kushner to Rex Tillerson to Wilbur Ross to Steve Mnuchin and beyond, the private sector folks in government haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory.

Sure, people may wish to claim that those particular titans of industry are substandard examples. But seriously, why should we assume that? Many of them came from large and successful companies where they were highly respected. Tillerson ran ExxonMobil, which makes Starbucks look like a corner grocery store by comparison. Ross was a hugely successful investor, known for buying and restructuring failed companies in major industries and selling them for a profit.

Yet both of these high-powered business geniuses have been completely flummoxed by their impetuous and incompetent boss and evidently had no clue how to deal with the media, the political opposition or even the Republican Party which currently mainlines chaos for its political lifeblood.

The Washington Post’s Helaine Olen wrote about Schultz a few months ago when his name first bubbled up as a possible candidate. As she points out, CEOs have no experience with the give and take of democracy:

The appeal is that this one person has top-down control. In their just-published book, “CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life,” Peter Bloom and Carl Rhodes point out that the idea of a CEO politician is ultimately about private rule, not public responsiveness. CEOs take advice but generally don’t need to actually listen to it. They do not govern by consensus. And satisfying shareholders (the vast majority of whom represent business interests or affluent individuals) or other company investors on a quarterly basis is a far cry from running a government. The common good is a discretionary concept. An unprofitable or unpopular latte line can be unceremoniously jettisoned, and a profitable one can be promoted, no matter how unhealthy.

Frankly, between the three members of the billionaire boys’ club — Trump, Bloomberg and Schultz — I think Schultz may be the worst. He is plotting his run as a “centrist independent” rather than competing within either of the two parties. His stated rationale is “not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics.”

Yes, he’s one of those guys. You know the ones. The kind who think that political disagreements are just a bunch of petty squabbles over nothing and all it will take to fix it is for some macho daddy figure to “knock some heads together” and “get the job done.”

Schultz claims that Trump isn’t qualified, but if that’s the case, then neither is he. At least Bloomberg was the mayor of the largest city in the nation. Schultz has even less experience in politics than Trump did when he ran. After all, Trump had dabbled in presidential politics before, running an aborted campaign on the Reform Party ticket in 2000. Schultz’s main foray into politics consisted of having Starbucks baristas write “come together” on cups to encourage bipartisanship.

If there is a model for Howard Schultz’s politics it would be former Sen. Joe Lieberman, whom Schultz reportedly pushed hard as a possible running mate for John McCain in 2008. For all you kids reading this at home, Lieberman is a onetime conservative Democrat turned independent, and a moral scold. His final act in politics, pretty much, was to tank the public option in the Affordable Care Act to spite the liberals who wanted it.

This bipartisan “Kumbaya” stuff could not be more out of step with today’s politics. or more naive about the nature of the two parties and the people they represent. But like Trump, who declared that “I alone can fix it,” Schultz seems convinced that he is capable of singlehandedly turning back the clock to a time when the two parties were far less polarized. Even Trump wasn’t fool enough to think he could do that by running as an Independent.

The last month should have proved to everyone the value of specific political skills and experience. For the first time since Donald Trump was elected, we have seen professional political leaders who understand how the system works put the brakes on this runaway administration. It was an ugly situation, with the president essentially holding government workers hostage to get his way — and then being forced to accept that his zero-sum negotiating style is not how government works.

Led by a seasoned politician, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats used their institutional power to demonstrate to the president that he is not the CEO of the U.S. government and that he shares power with the Congress. It was a hard lesson for him to learn, and he may need further schooling yet.

Trump is a special case, but the problem is much larger than just him. It’s also the Republican Party, which has consistently grown more and more extreme over the past couple of decades. The idea that a neophyte like Schultz could convene a Latte Summit and make everyone “come together” is laughable.

Of course, he’s extremely unlikely to win, or even to get very far. Third-party candidates never do. But they can act as spoilers, and the professional consensus is that if Schultz puts his massive fortune to work on this quixotic misadventure, he could end up sabotaging the Democrats’ chance of unseating Trump:

This is from Democratic political operative Howard Wolfson:

This is from Democratic political operative Howard Wolfson:

I have seen enough data over many years to know that anyone running for POTUS as an independent will split the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote. The stakes couldn’t be higher. We can not afford the risk of spoiler politics that result in Trump’s re-election.

— howard wolfson (@howiewolf) January 28, 2019

And from political analyst Larry Sabato:

I listened carefully to @HowardSchultz on @60Minutes . He is far closer to the Democratic Party than the GOP, and is incredibly naive to think he won’t drain far more D votes than R ones.

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 28, 2019

Someone convinced @HowardSchultz that 40% of the electorate is “Independent”. In fact, that’s just a popular cover label for hidden partisans, who are quite loyal to their hidden party. True independents are few and far between in this highly partisan era.

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 28, 2019

What do you bet that the GOP and the Russians will do everything possible to surreptitiously promote @HowardSchultz among Democratic constituencies, to drain the maximum number of votes from the D POTUS nominee?

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 28, 2019

Republican political strategist Mike Murphy:

Very Impressive guy but the Indy route is a chimera… a fun and exiting ego ride but you lose. And running as center/left Indy in 2020 just splits anti-Trump vote and helps… yup. Schultz should have guts to try primaries. https://t.co/tAbIoOlk0P

— Mike Murphy (@murphymike) January 28, 2019

I think America has had enough of the “outsider businessman,” whether it’s Howard Schultz or Donald Trump. It’s going to take a massive effort just to get government back up and running properly, much less moving forward again. Schultz needs to leave politics to people who know what they’re doing. America can’t afford another four years of the Donald Trump amateur hour.
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The cost of doing business
by Tom Sullivan

Image via OpenSecrets, Center for Responsive Politics.

Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

The gospel might as well have been speaking about getting into the House of Representatives. The New York Times traced the paths by which every member of the 116th Congress got there and found that even though the U.S. officially has no royalty,

… Congress is made up of people who have credentials and experiences vastly different from those of most citizens. Unofficially, considering education, career, family background and personal wealth, it seems that America has a ruling class — or at least a limited number of ways to enter the halls of power.

But you knew that. Still, the interactive graphic is eye-opening. It tracks the few key waypoints through which congresscritters pass on their way to Capitol Hill. College to law school to lobbying or activism to local government, etc. Lawyers are “staggeringly overrepresented,” naturally (or unnaturally). There are a few others paths to power, but few mirror the lives of the common people whom federal lawmakers will represent. Much like the framers, really — mostly successful, white-collar professionals.

“The rosy notion that lawmakers from business and professional backgrounds want what is best for everyone is seriously out of line with the realities of legislative decision-making in the United States,” wrote Nicholas Carnes, a Duke professor of public policy, in his book “White-Collar Government.”

There’s something else one notices about the types of people able to run for office at the state level. For the most part, they can afford to serve:

But drawing politicians from local governments and state legislatures also gives an edge to people who can afford to take those jobs. In some states, those positions don’t pay enough to live on. New Hampshire’s legislature, for example, pays just $200 per two-year term. As a result, state politicians are often “local economic elites and corporate titans,” said Jake Grumbach, a researcher at Princeton.

We speak often about getting money out of politics, yet if we want legislating to be less of a hobby for the rich, it’s not just campaigning where the field needs leveling. Few can afford to be away from homes and jobs to set up apartments in the state capitol and live there all week without plenty of cash of their own. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the rare case, for example, of someone who got there without a well-padded bank account. It can cost money to take these gigs, at the state level anyway.

One more thing about running for federal office that favors the already well-connected is the cost of running and the need for a network of connections able to fund a race. Lawyers have an advantage in early fundraising, the Times notes, having access to ready-made networks of affluent acquaintances the less elite do not. Small-dollar online fundraising can offset that advantage, but requires a team with specialized skills to launch early enough for a candidate to be competitive.

At a conference I attended a year ago, a campaign veteran schooling first-time candidates bluntly told them it would cost a minimum of $3 million dollars to flip a House seat. One candidate balked, insisting that’s not the way democracy is supposed to work. On principle, he insisted he would do it on a shoestring.

The non-lawyer lost on a $238,000 shoestring. It sucks. But for now, this is the reality. In rough numbers and no particular order, this is what a selection of successful Democrats spent to flip seats in 2018 (via Open Secrets):

Jennifer Wexton (D) spent $6 million to turn out Barbara Comstock in Virginia
Jared Golden (D) spent $5.6 million flip a House seat in Maine
Lucy McBath (D) spent $2.5 million in Georgia (to defeat less-than-a-term GA-6 incumbent Karen Handel)
Harley Rouda raised $8 million to turn out Dana Rohrabacher in California
Abigail Spanberger (D) spent $7 million to unseat Dave Brat in Virginia
Sharice Davids (D) spent $4.7 million to win in Kansas
Jason Crow (D) spent $5.6 million to win in Colorado
Dean Phillips (D) spent $6.1 million to win in Minnesota

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her NY-14 seat in the primary against an entrenched incumbent Democrat and still spent $1.6 million through the cycle (via Open Secrets again). J. D. Scholten ran for Congress in 2018 against Rep. Steve King of Iowa and outspent him by $2.2 million and still lost. But by only 3.4 percent. Pretty good for a Democrat in northwest Iowa. The last Democrat lost by 23 points.

People are begging him to stop losing. But he doesn’t know how.


by digby

This piece by Sarah Binder at the Washington Post Monkey Cage analyzes the shutdown dynamics from the political science perspective and it’s fascinating. For better or worse, we are in a polarized political environment and that means policies are going to be enacted in a different way than there were before. Democrats have been fighting this for the last 25 years, refusing to admit what was happening before their eyes as the two parties realigned and the Republicans decided to adopt a scorched earth strategy. They seem to finally be adapting (at least most of them.)

Anyway, here’s the breakdown of what just happened and what Binder thinks is probably going to happen going forward:

1. Polarized parties playing a blame game

Today’s highly competitive and polarized parties can’t typically make deals by looking for areas of agreement. Such ideological sweet spots to anchor a deal are just too rare on most issues — especially one as polarizing as immigration.

Instead of searching for common ground, the parties play a blame game. Each party blames the other for unpopular policies while trying to dodge blame themselves. A party wins by successfully pinning more blame on the other party. The game ends only when one party decides that the costs to its reputation of refusing to fold are greater than the benefits of continuing to wage war.

That explains why this government shutdown — as well as closures in 1995 and 2013 — ended with one party claiming victory and the other getting little in return. In 2013, Republicans promised to block bills to fund the government until Democrats agreed to defund the Affordable Care Act. Observers pinned the blame on the GOP for the stalemate, and Democrats essentially got what they wanted at the bargaining table, including funding for Obamacare. In contrast, the short-lived shutdown last February over Democrats’ demands on behalf of “dreamers” (beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program) lasted just a few days because Democrats quickly folded when they realized public opinion was against them.

2. The public calls the shots

In a televised Oval Office meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in December, Trump famously said he would shoulder the blame for a government shutdown if the Democrats refused to fund a border wall. “I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.” Of course, the president did try to blame the Democrats, calling them captive to their radical base, soft on borders and crime, and indifferent to the humanitarian crisis brewing on the border.

But as Trump learned, a president doesn’t determine who wins or loses a blame game. That’s for the public to decide. As political scientist E.E. Schattschneider argued decades ago, “the spectators are an integral part of the situation, for, as likely as not, the audience determines the outcome of the fight.” In other words, politicians win messaging wars by securing broad public support for their positions.

This time, Democrats decisively won the messaging war. Polls overwhelmingly signaled that the public blamed Trump, not the Democrats, for the pain caused by the shutdown. Hardship stories of government employees working without pay, slowdowns at airports, degradation of iconic national parks and a lack of empathy from the Trump administration pushed the public to blame the president and the GOP. No surprise then — except in the Oval Office — that Senate Republican unity cracked while Democrats remained united behind their party leaders. What’s more, because he shouldered the most blame, Trump saw his approval slip roughly three points over the course of the shutdown.

Having lost the messaging battle, it’s no surprise that Trump failed to secure any money for the border wall. As in past shutdowns, the party perceived to be on the right side of public opinion faced little pressure to concede anything at the bargaining table.

3. What’s next?

Trump is an extremely weak position. Today’s turn of events only confirms what lawmakers have long suspected. As political scientist Matt Glassman argues, Trump repeatedly backs down from his public positions. Building on Richard Neustadt’s classic work on presidential power, that’s a problem for the president going forward. The players expect that, with enough pressure, the president will again back down.

What’s more, the president has already waved the white flag on funding a wall. Trump today threatened that if Congress won’t pony up $5 billion for a wall, he’ll declare a national emergency and try to build the wall without legislative authority. Many expect such a move to wind up in the courts or be delayed by foot-dragging as the military or Army Corps of Engineers looks for funds they can divert for a wall. Because few expect that ploy to work, lawmakers have little incentive to find ways to meet the president’s demand.

Finally, eyes will be on the House and Senate lawmakers assigned to negotiate a deal. But stay focused on Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). In polarized times, nothing big gets done without support of the party chiefs. Trump will always be a wild card, but neither political party wants to see the government shut down again, and Republicans, especially, are unlikely to want to shoulder such blame all over again.

I think number 2 is key. Public opinion counts more than ever. And Trump is on the wrong side of it on nearly every issue. There is very little incentive for Democrats to ever allow him a victory, especially since he’s under tremendous pressure from his scandals and his entire “mystique” rested on the idea that he was the greatest negotiator in the world. He promised them there would be so much winning they’d beg him to stop. People are begging him to stop losing. But he doesn’t know how.

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Somebody needs to have a chat with Tom Brokaw

by digby

panel (except Hugh) responds to Tom pic.twitter.com/d1O2W6kg6I— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 27, 2019

This was just awful:

CHUCK TODD:

The problem is in Wyoming and in South Dakota, they think they need a wall. And in Texas and in Arizona, they don’t.

TOM BROKAW:

I know.

CHUCK TODD:

Right? Like it’s —

TOM BROKAW:

And a lot of this, we don’t want to talk about. But the fact is, on the Republican side, a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary, important, new constituent in American politics, Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats. Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, “Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies.” I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.

I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities. And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.

“Brown babies”

“Intermarriage”

“Assimilation”

Jesus.

I don’t know who he’s hanging around with but they are among the most racist of the right wing. Even my racist relatives aren’t complaining about “brown babies.” In fact, there are quite a few “brown babies” in out family these days, and I don’t think we’re unique in that. The “intermarriage” trope is a real throwback.

I do hear about the speaking English thing but that’s just the old ignorance. Most Latinx immigrants learn English and their kids sure as hell do. These people don’t know any immigrants and listen to Fox news and Rush all day so they think this is true. They are the ones “codified” (I think he means cloistered?) in their little bubbles not the immigrants who have to go out and work around anglos and other native-born Americans all day long. They believe a lot of things that aren’t true.

But what in the hell is Tom Brokaw’s excuse?