Month: November 2021

With the first season of Foundation ready for streaming, psychohistorian Hari Seldon and The Mule are on my mind. During the Donald Trump administration, I likened His Would-be-Highness to The Mule, the mutant who appears on scene to disrupt Seldon’s plan to save the galaxy:

But in Foundation and Empire, a mutant known as the Mule begins conquering the planets of the Foundation. Selden’s mathematics could not predict the appearance of a single individual capable of disrupting his plan. Wikipedia describes the Mule as a “mentallic,” having the ability to “change the emotions of others, a power he used to first instill fear in the inhabitants of his conquered planets, then to make his enemies devoutly loyal to him.”

The challenge of our present Seldon Crisis is to somehow prevent our terrestrial Mule and his devoted, strapped followers from sending the United States (and Earth itself?) into a new dark age.

Axios:

“Defenders of democracy in America still have a slim window of opportunity to act. But time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching,” according to more than 150 top scholars of U.S. democracy in a new push to temporarily suspend the Senate filibuster and pass voting rights protections on a simple majority vote.

Democrats with no votes to spare in a 50-50 Senate already have their hands full trying to pass Biden’s Build Back Better human infrastructure plan with two rogue Democrats holding up the works. The filibuster rule the same two hold dear means it will take 60 votes for Democrats to pass the compromise Freedom to Vote Act over a Republican silent filibuster. At the very least, they must suspend the rule in this case.

If Democrats cannot pass the bill before the next election to thwart state laws passed in the wake of Trump’s Big Lie, the United States of America is in deep shit, say the scholars in more polite terms:

• “The partisan politicization of what has long been trustworthy, non-partisan administration of elections represents a clear and present threat to the future of electoral democracy in the United States.”
• Doing nothing would undermine free and fair elections and “likely result in an extended period of minority rule, which a majority of the country would reject as undemocratic and illegitimate,” the letter says.

We face this situation because a post-Civil War Congress failed to enshrine voting rights in 1890, say scholars in their letter:

Each branch of government has a role to play in protecting free and fair elections, but Congress’s responsibility looms largest. After the Civil War, when the path of American democracy was highly uncertain, Congress built the foundations of our modern democracy by passing two constitutional amendments and five pieces of legislation to protect the right of African Americans to vote. All were passed on party-line votes. But in 1890, the Senate failed to break a filibuster on a sixth piece of legislation: the Federal Elections Bill (also known as the Lodge Bill), which would have pushed back against voting rights violations in the South. The upshot of that critical vote was that southern states, in the absence of any federal supervision, were allowed to pursue the wholesale disenfranchisement of African Americans for the next 75 years. By a tiny margin in one branch of Congress, American democracy took a giant leap backwards.

(Note: At the time it was the Democratic Party that opposed voting rights. How times have changed.)

Reading between the lines, what the scholars suggest is that, should Congress fail once again to overcome this crisis of democracy, this extended period of minority rule would be Jim Crow 2.0. Except this one could extend far beyond the former Confederate states and perhaps for a second 75 years. That is, should the country survive in recognizable form that long.

I just don’t know what to say about this except it’s good to know that it isn’t only Americans who have lost their fucking minds:

A prosecutor in the northern Italian province of Bolzano has opened an investigation after one man died and several others landed in intensive care after they reportedly attended a COVID party to try to get sick.

The trend has taken hold in northern Italy, where people who don’t want to get vaccinated are trying to get COVID to acquire a Green Pass to work, go inside bars and restaurants, and ride public transportation. In Italy, proof of recovery is sufficient to get the coveted pass for six months.

The parties are being primarily held in the German-speaking region of South Tyrol along the border with Austria, which has some of the highest case numbers and lowest vaccine rates in all of Europe.

The region is set to become a “yellow zone” in Italy, according to the local health coordinator Patrick Franzoni. “There are young people, even of school age, who meet with positives and try to acquire the infection, not realizing that the virus is also dangerous in children and in young people,” he told a radio station. “There are long-term consequences and even the less elderly can end up in hospital.”

At the parties, the infected mingle, kiss, and hug the unvaccinated in order to spread the virus, Franzoni said, adding the infected person could face criminal charges for knowingly spreading the virus during a state of emergency, which Italy is under because of the pandemic. According to the initial investigation, some of the parties are being held in outdoor areas of bars, which are accessible without a Green Pass. There, an infected person will drink out of a glass or bottle of beer and pass it around to try to spread the virus. Other events are held in private homes. In one case, the infected person was bedridden and the guests are said to have gathered around the sickbed to try to breathe in the virus.

The man who died from COVID was an Austrian who regularly crossed the border to attend parties in Italy, Franzoni said.

The area has also seen a number of no-vax, no-mask parents giving do-it-yourself vaccines to children and faking their immunization card to get a Green Pass, which is required for everyone over the age of 12 in the country.

The number of cases along Italy’s northern border has tripled in the last month and the booster campaign has so far been limited to people over age 80 and those with compromised health. It is set to open to people 40 and over on Dec. 1.

One partygoer who ended up in the hospital told the Veneto Corriere newspaper that he regretted it, but still isn’t sure he believes he had COVID. “It was a serious mistake,” he told the paper, adding that he feels sure he only had pneumonia and that the doctors told him it was COVID to make him change his mind. “It’s only propaganda.”

How the human species managed to evolve is a miracle.

Lol:

Speaking to a Las Vegas news station in November, Donald Kirk Hartle described being “surprised” by the possibility that someone had stolen his dead wife’s mail-in ballot and used it to vote in the 2020 election. “That is pretty sickening to me, to be honest with you,” he told KLAS-TV.

But this week, the Nevada attorney general filed two charges of voter fraud against Mr. Hartle, 55, claiming that he was the one who forged his wife’s signature to vote with her ballot.

“Voter fraud is rare, but when it happens it undercuts trust in our election system and will not be tolerated by my office,” the attorney general, Aaron D. Ford, said in a statement on Thursday. “I want to stress that our office will pursue any credible allegations of voter fraud and will work to bring any offenders to justice.”

The announcement from Mr. Ford’s office comes months after waves of Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, falsely asserted that the 2020 election had been tainted by widespread voter fraud, including in Nevada, a state that Mr. Trump lost.

Mr. Hartle, a registered Republican, was charged with voting using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the attorney general’s office said in the statement. Each charge carries a prison sentence of up to four years and a fine of up to $5,000, the prosecutors said.

The criminal complaint did not explain how prosecutors came to the conclusion that Mr. Hartle had committed voter fraud. Questions sent to the office of Mr. Ford, a Democrat elected to the position in 2018, were not immediately responded to on Saturday.

David Chesnoff, a lawyer for Mr. Hartle, said in a statement that his client “looks forward to responding to the allegations in court.” Mr. Hartle is scheduled to appear in the Las Vegas Township Justice Court on Nov. 18.

The Nevada Republican Party had cited Mr. Hartle’s story as evidence of voting irregularities on Twitter last year, saying that Mr. Hartle “was surprised to find that his late wife Rosemarie, a Republican, cast a ballot in this years election despite having passed away” in 2017.

Since the announcement of the charges against Mr. Hartle, however, the party has not corrected the record, said Callum Ingram, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“The state Republican Party has been pretty quiet certainly on this case since the narrative got flipped on its head,” Dr. Ingram said in an interview on Saturday.

Mr. Hartle is the chief financial officer and treasurer of Ahern Rentals, according to his LinkedIn profile. The business rents out construction equipment and is a part of the Ahern Family of Companies. One of its businesses, Xtreme Manufacturing, was fined $3,000 in 2020 for hosting a Trump rally that did not comply with the state’s Covid regulations at the time, said Kathleen Richards, a spokeswoman for the city of Henderson, Nev.

Nevada was one of several states in November that was dealing with dubious claims of voter fraud after the presidential election.

The Nevada secretary of state, Barbara K. Cegavske, said in a document posted in December titled “Facts vs. Myths” that there was no evidence of large-scale voter fraud in the state.

You may recall watching Trump toadies Matt Schlapp and (former acting Director of National Intelligence!!!!) Ric Grenell selling this tripe at the time. It’s just … so perfect.

From Mother Jones:

Republicans are rigging elections for the next decade:

In Georgia, Republicans passed a new congressional map on Monday giving their party 64 percent of US House seats in a state Joe Biden won with 49.5 percent of the vote.

In Ohio, Republicans passed a new congressional map on November 18 giving their party at least 80 percent of seats in a state Donald Trump won with 53 percent of the vote.

In North Carolina, Republicans passed a new congressional map on November 4 giving their party between 71 to 78 percent of seats in a state Trump won with 49.9 percent of the vote.

In Texas, Republicans passed a new congressional map on October 18 giving their party 65 percent of seats in a state Trump won with 52 percent of the vote.

You get the idea. In state after state under GOP control, Republicans are passing extreme gerrymandered maps that will allow them to pick up enough seats to retake the House in 2022 and lock in control of state legislatures.

Read more.

Originally tweeted by Mother Jones (@MotherJones) on November 22, 2021.

Gerrymandering has been around since the beginning. But at some point there was a realization that they cannot be used for blatantly undemocratic purposes and the courts routinely stepped in to ensure they weren’t. Today, it’s up to the states themselves to do that and I’m going to guess that in most red states, these extreme redistricting schemes will be upheld.

We keep talking about upholding our democracy. But you have to ask yourself, what kind of democracy allows something like this in the first place?

It looks like Trump isn’t just trying to keep his behavior on January 6th under wraps, he doesn’t want anyone looking into his catastrophic handling of the pandemic:

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday asked his former trade adviser Peter Navarro to keep mum and “protect executive privilege” in the investigation by the “Communist Democrats” into his administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Navarro, former director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, was subpoenaed Thursday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis chaired by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.). The committee is looking into the Trump administration’s response to the deadly COVID-19 surge last year, months after Trump vowed it would quickly vanish.

“I’m telling Peter Navarro to protect executive privilege and not let these unhinged Democrats discredit our great accomplishments,” Trump said in a statement posted Saturday by aide Liz Harrington on her Twitter account. (Trump has been banned from Twitter.)

Trump called his administration’s response to COVID-19 “unprecedented and incredible,” even though more than 400,000 Americans died on his watch from the illness.

Navarro’s subpoena demands that he appear for a deposition Dec. 1 and hand over documents connected to the coronavirus response by Dec. 8, Bloomberg reported.

NEW!

President Donald J. Trump:

"The Communist Democrats are engaging in yet another Witch Hunt, this time going after my Administration’s unprecedented and incredible coronavirus response, despite the fact that, sadly, more Americans have died this year from Covid than in all pic.twitter.com/BqfC15eNY7

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) November 20, 2021

Navarro frequently spouted lies about the coronavirus and the administration. He insisted Trump’s demands to slow testing so COVID-19 cases wouldn’t look so bad were “tongue in cheek.” He has baselessly called the pandemic a “product of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Navarro:

pic.twitter.com/REhaJLFWo8

— In Trump Time (@InTrumpTime) November 20, 2021

There has already been dramatic testimony from members of the task force saying that Trump and his henchmen like Navarro and Scott Atlas were determined to downplay the crisis and virtually ignored it once the campaign got going in the summer.

Trump did a lot of terrible things during his notorious reign, not the least of which was his perpetuation of The Big Lie and inciting the storming of the Capitol on January 6th. But this was the worst, by a mile. He egged on resistance to masks and social distancing and created the atmosphere that has led his followers to reject vaccines all so that he could protect his re-election prospects. The result is three quarters of a million dead people. The man is a monster.

Eric is worried about prosecutors today. For some reason. pic.twitter.com/BtymmT2sL2

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 22, 2021

Well ….

The Trump Organization owns an office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan. In 2012, when the company was listing its assets for potential lenders, it said the building was worth $527 million —which would make it among the most valuable in New York.

But just a few months later, the Trump Organization told property tax officials that the entire 70-story building was worth less than a high-end Manhattan condo: just $16.7 million, according to newly released city records.

That was less than one-thirtieth the amount it had claimed the year before.

That property is now under scrutiny from the Manhattan district attorney and New York attorney general, along with several others like it for which the Trump Organization gave vastly different value estimates, according to public records and people familiar with their investigations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing inquiries.

After the indictment of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer this summer for income tax fraud, prosecutors now appear to be examining whether the company broke the law by providing low values to property tax officers, while using high ones to garner tax breaks or impress lenders.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has said she is considering a lawsuit, and prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have also convened a new grand jury, which could vote on criminal charges, according to the people familiar with the investigations.

Among the other properties under scrutiny: former president Donald Trump’s California golf club, for which he valued the same parcel of land at $900,000 and $25 million depending on the intended audience, and an estate in suburban New York, for which Trump’s valuations ranged from $56 million up to $291 million. The valuations were all given in the five years before Trump won the presidency.

Prosecutors appear to have dug deeply into these properties, according to court papers and people familiar with the investigation. They have compiled reams of emails, planning documents and financial data, even seeking the initiation fees Trump charged golf club members as far back as a decade ago. In Los Angeles, they have asked for geology reports on the rock layers under Trump’s course — where the value was affected by a history of landslides.

They have also sought detailed records from two outside companies that worked with the Trump Organization to formulate these valuations: appraisal firm Cushman & Wakefield and law firm Morgan Lewis. In court filings, prosecutors have referred to emails in which they said Trump executives or a Morgan Lewis lawyer pushed appraisers to change their findings. Neither Morgan Lewis nor Cushman & Wakefield responded to questions.

Real estate appraisers said it was highly unusual for any property owner to give such widely different values for the same property during the same time period.

“This is way, way beyond anything that’s believable,” said Norm Miller, a professor of real estate finance at the University of San Diego who has appraised properties for 50 years. “I’ve never seen anything with a gap that extreme.”

But extreme is not the same as illegal. Legal experts said that if prosecutors wish to prove a crime, they will need to do more than simply prove Trump’s valuations were wrong.

“Is it an overly optimistic? Is it an enthusiastic perception?” said Robert Masters, a former top aide to the district attorney in Queens. “Does that make it a lie?”

Masters said prosecutors would probably need to show that the figures were wrong on purpose — falsified deliberately, with an intent to deceive a lender or the government. Masters said that may require a witness on the inside, who could explain the decision-making behind the numbers.

“Is there somebody there who can translate the books?” he said.

The Trump Organization declined to comment for this article. Trump’s political office did not respond to questions. In the past, Trump has said the New York investigations are a political attack by Democrats: “an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime.”

These are different potential crimes than the ones for which his CFO Allen Weisselberg was indicted. Those were about failing to claim perks as income. These are the crimes I think we all thought the authorities were investigating.

The article goes into much more detail about the rather insane discrepancies between the claims made for tax authorities and those made for bank loans. Apparently, this isn’t uncommon in the real estate business which seems very problematic but evidently, it’s just business as usual. The key to indicting Trump on any fraud charges will be proving that he had knowledge and intent. Of course he did — he bragged about not paying taxes in a presidential debate. But he’s always been pretty savvy about keeping some distance between himself personally and the crimes his company was committing.

Still, this can’t be good news. It’s quite clear that Trump was playing fast and loose with the law all his life, following in his daddy’s fraudulent footsteps. Having anyone look too closely at this stuff has to be making him and his spawn nervous.

Update — You can’t make this stuff up:

The Republican National Committee is paying some personal legal bills for former president Donald Trump, spending party funds to pay a lawyer representing Trump in investigations into his financial practices in New York, a party spokeswoman said Monday.

In October, the RNC made two payments totaling $121,670 to the law firm of Ronald Fischetti, a veteran defense attorney whom Trump hired in April. According to a person with direct knowledge of the payments, the requests came earlier this summer but were only voted on by the party’s executive committee in recent weeks.

Fischetti has been representing Trump as he faces investigations by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). There has been no indication that either investigation involves Trump’s time as president, or any of his political campaigns.

This is what the right wing was saying in the wake of what appears to be a feeling criminal plowing into a parade in Wisconsin last night:

If you’re looking around right now and you’re rightfully horrified by the state of things in your country, you should know that proactive measures are going to be needed if you want this to stop.

The Right must become active. You cannot “live and let live” your way out of this.

-Run for school board
-Run for DA
-Run for city council
-Run for state legislature
-Run for sheriff
-Train with your weapons
-Boycott every corporation who hates you
-Stop sending your children to communist training camps posing as “universities”
-Make babies

-If your pastor uses words like “white privilege”, walk out and never return
-Do not hire communists. Do not associate with them.
-Fire anyone with a “Biden” sticker on their car
-Doxx people who doxx people
-Embrace cancel culture. Ruin the lives of people trying to ruin yours

-Never defend yourself against communist attacks on your character. Answer “Nazi” with “Pedophile”. Always offense. Always.
-Never let them use your values against you. “Jesus wouldn’t want what you’re doing!” Laugh at this.

Above all, embrace the struggle. Learn to enjoy it. We have decades of cultural combat ahead of us. You will not be alive to see final victory. It took them 100 years to get here. So put that out of your mind.

Embrace the struggle.

That’s all.

Originally tweeted by Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) on November 21, 2021.

That was retweeted by top Trumper and January 6th organizer Katrina Pierson last night. Jesse Kelly’s twitter bio reads:

Host of ‘I’m Right’ on The First. Host of the nationally syndicated Jesse Kelly Show. Anti-Communist. Community college credits.

Eric Boehlert’s newsletter today makes a very good point. The biggest story in America right now is the rise of violent threats and rhetoric from the Republican party. That twitter stream above is full of violent innuendo and it’s polite compares to a lot of the stuff that makes the rounds on social media. They have guns and they want to use them. And the media is clearly not prepared to deal with that.

First the good news. The New York Times recently ran an important piece about the rising specter of violence within mainstream Republican Party circles. The article was noteworthy not only because it spotlighted the frightening instances of violent rhetoric and actions the conservative movement is eagerly unleashing in America, but because the Times used clear and concise language to tell the story.

Temporarily shedding the lazy Both Sides blanket that so many newsrooms use when forced to acknowledge how reckless today’s GOP has become, the Times piece didn’t waste time trying to camouflage the trend. “From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party,” the daily reported unequivocally. “The most animated Republican voters increasingly see themselves as participants in a struggle, if not a kind of holy war, to preserve their idea of American culture and their place in society.”

That’s the good news — some mainstream media outlets are using succinct language while addressing the most important political story in America today. Honestly, it’s one of the most crucial unfolding stories in the country’s history as the Trump-led GOP fuels an unprecedented, multi-pronged assault on U.S. democracy and gleefully flashes the threat of overt violence in the process.

That’s the bad news, and it’s spreading. “I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that’s happened now,” Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America told the Times.

Political hostility is not new to America. The country was rocked by violence clashes, for instance, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the anti-war movement fractured off into more militant factions. But never did leaders of the Democratic Party or members of Congress overtly endorse political violence the way today’s Republican Party does, as it continues to actively whitewash the deadly January insurrection, which is now glorified by Fox News.

Democrats never used their considerable political muscle to try to demolish free and fair elections in America. That’s not true for today’s Republican Party, as it actively mainstreams the looming menace of hostility by fanning the flames of civil unrest, including last week celebrating an underage vigilante killer, Kyle Rittenhouse.

After he was acquitted on murder charges, at least three House Republicans said they wanted the gunman to be their intern, including Rep. Madison Cawthorn who urged his followers to “be armed and dangerous,” while posting a message celebrating Rittenhouse’s acquittal.

“Hard to describe how chilling it is to see members of the GOP and open white supremacists come together to celebrate a vigilante killing two people and getting away with it,” Cassie Miller, an extremism researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, tweeted.

The flashpoints of Republicans and conservatives promoting political violence have become ceaseless, to the point of frightening normalization. After Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) tweeted an anime video altered to show him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and swinging two swords at President Joe Biden, virtually the entire Republican Party rallied to Gosar’s side when he faced a formal House rebuke for his violent, dehumanizing outburst.

Despite the GOP’s nearly universal support, Politico insisted the episode highlighted the “fringe” side of the party, while the Beltway media outlet Punch Bowl reduced the threatening, unnerving Gosar chapter to Democrats and Republicans just not trusting each other.

The violent virus is spreading to the grassroots level. Polls suggest that as many as 21 million Americans think that the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency. In Kansas, anti-vaxxers showed up to municipal meetings wearing yellow stars, suggesting they had equal footing with Jewish victims of the Holocaust. White nationalist members of The Proud Boys are showing up at local school board meetings, to lend a menacing air to the proceedings.

At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man asked local leaders when he could start killing Democrats. “When do we get to use the guns?” he said as the audience applauded.When Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) voted in favor of the recent infrastructure bill to help rebuild roads across the country she was inundated with death threats. One man told her, “I pray to God that if you’ve got any children, they die in your face.”

The welcome Times piece last week on GOP violence stood in contrast to a wave of vague, worthless reporting we’ve seen this year about how “Americans” are angry, without pinpointing the obvious source of the unbridled, incoherent wrath.

“Americans are angry about … everything. Is that bad?” read a recent Christian Science Monitor headline. The piece equated right-wing, anti-mask parents storming local school board meetings and issuing death threats with social justice activists taking to the streets to protest police brutality. Those two things aren’t remotely similar.

Support PRESS RUN

Two prominent conservative voices have finally decided they’ve had enough and quit their gigs at Fox News.

Stephen Hayes, author of “The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America,” and Jonah Goldberg of “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change” fame announced that they resigned from the flagship right-wing network over “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s fraudulent “documentary” about January 6th. I guess everyone has their breaking point, although it’s kind of hard to believe it was Carlson’s scurrilous project that did it rather than the event itself.

Considering their body of work, however, I suppose the news about Goldberg and Hayes is not too surprising. Goldberg told Ben Smith of the New York Times that “they had stayed on at Fox News as long they did because of a sense from conversations at Fox that, after Mr. Trump’s defeat, the network would try to recover some of its independence and, as he put it, ‘right the ship.'” Apparently, they were under the inexplicable impression that Fox wanted to change course — which is kind of hilarious. After all, their biggest star, Tucker Carlson, has been pushing increasingly extremist rhetoric and philosophy on his show for months.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp runs Fox News, spoke to shareholders last week and pointedly said that Donald Trump should get over the 2020 election — which didn’t stop Trump from appearing on the network on Sunday night to whine about the 2020 election. Neither does it seem that Murdoch is taking any action to rein in top talent like Carlson whose “Patriot Purge” just adds fuel to the Big Lie. As Bloomberg’s Timothy O’Brien observed, perhaps the patriarch has actually handed over those reins to his son, Lachlan, who seems to be simpatico with the Fox flamethrowers and has backed Carlson to the hilt throughout his descent into far-right extremism.

Murdoch isn’t the only one who wants to have it both ways.

I wrote about Chris Christie’s rather pathetic attempt to carve out a “middle lane” for himself in a GOP primary, extolling Trump’s allegedly super-impressive accomplishments while trying to distance himself from the Big Lie. He’s also working hard to stay in the good graces of the Fox flamethrowers, so he winds up on the opposite side of people like Hayes and Goldberg. Watching Chris Christie walk that tightrope is not a pretty picture.

Meanwhile, we have a bunch of Republican governors who met this past week for their annual confab toasting their newest member, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, while, according to Jonathan Martin of the NY Times, meeting furtively behind the scenes to privately gripe about Donald Trump’s “cancel culture.” They were referring, of course, to his penchant for gleefully bringing the hammer down on any Republican who looks at him sideways.

The head of the Republican Governors Association, Steve Ducey of Arizona, pledged to all the incumbents up for reelection in 2022 that the group would back them regardless of Trump’s endorsement, which is probably not all that reassuring. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that has the Youngkin victory putting Trump on the defensive since Youngkin didn’t openly embrace the former president, Trump sees the Republican victory in Virginia as a personal vindication:

Mr. Youngkin’s success in a campaign in which his Democratic opponent relentlessly linked him to Mr. Trump has emboldened the former president to further tighten his grip on the party, one whose base remains deeply loyal to him.

Those poor GOP governors all thought it would show him that he needs to stay on the down low so the party can win. Naturally, Trump took the opposite lesson. And now he’s feeling his oats:

Moving beyond the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him this year, Mr. Trump is now threatening to unseat lawmakers who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He taunts Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as an “old crow” on a near-daily basis, while demanding that Mr. McConnell be removed from his leadership post. And, most alarming to the clubby cadre of Republican governors, Mr. Trump has already endorsed two challengers against incumbent governors and is threatening to unseat others.

For all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over the Democrats’ chances in 2022, the desperate grasping at straws taking place among Republicans as they head into another election season with Donald Trump dominating their party is a story that should not be ignored. As Jonathan Martin quipped on Twitter:

The whole RGA meeting-Trump vengeance campaign is a nice metaphor for the GOP:

Hogan aside, old guard determined to throw on lanyard + sport coat, have a cocktail to celebrate @GlennYoungkin —while averting gaze from the Maga tank division rolling up Camelback to the Biltmore

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) November 21, 2021

And needless to say, the MAGA army is already gathering on the battlefield for 2024.

The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas attended the same meeting and reports that one of Trump’s former advisers has a plan to make Trump back down: Teach him about Adlai Stevenson. “I think that would resonate. Trump hates losers,” the former advisor told Nicolas that he plans to explain to Trump that if he loses in 2024 he would be like Stevenson, one of history’s serial losers.

That’s the plan. I’m not kidding. 

Apparently, some people on this planet have not yet discovered that Trump doesn’t believe he lost in 2020 and will never admit to losing anything ever. He believes that he can create his own reality, simply by saying what he wants people to believe over and over again. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who you’d think would know better, told Nicholas, “I don’t think he wants to risk losing twice. Once, you can argue about the outcome. Twice, it becomes a repudiation.” Actually, the twice impeached president who made a spectacle of himself on the world stage, played politics with a deadly pandemic, left the economy a smoldering wreck and incited a violent insurrection was rightfully repudiated in no uncertain terms by a majority of voters. The fact that he’ll probably be given a mulligan after that dreadful performance is a sad comment on the Republican Party.

I suppose it’s good news that two more Trump skeptics have finally reached their limit and walked away from Fox News. And yes it’s a positive step that some Republican governors and other officials are criticizing Trump among themselves. But let’s not pretend that this is some kind of trend. We just watched the entire GOP House caucus gather in support of a violent., white nationalist nut, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, and then Trump immediately endorsed him for re-election. It’s obvious which way the wind is blowing. 

Salon

On the theme of which political team is working to make people’s lives better, Steve Benen considers House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s floor speech from Thursday night into Friday. Much of it was bonkers, as TPM noted. But Benen wants to seriously consider MCarthy’s attempt at a Reaganism:

“This isn’t an image of a thriving nation. It’s the image of a country that is clearly on the wrong track. Are we better off today than we were 10 months ago? No.”

Benen offers, you know, actual metrics:

Ten months ago, the unemployment rate was 6.3 percent. Now, it’s 4.6 percent. Ten months ago, the public saw a report that the economy had just lost over 300,000 jobs the previous month. Now, job growth is soaring and is on pace to create nearly 7 millions this year.

What’s more, the U.S. economic recovery is strong, we’re the only advanced economy on the planet to have a higher GDP now than before the pandemic began.

Ten months ago, Covid-19 infections were vastly worse, as were hospitalizations and fatalities. Ten months ago, a tiny percentage of the population had been vaccinated.

Ten months ago, the United States fell short of a peaceful transition of power for the first time in its history. Ten months ago, the United States still had thousands of troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan. Ten months ago, the United States’ international standing and credibility was in desperate need of improvement.

Indeed, the world’s opinion of the U.S. was up “significantly” by spring. By October, Gallup’s Rating World Leaders  poll finding of 49% for Joe Biden tied “the previous record high set under former President Barack Obama” after hitting record lows under Donald Trump’s presidency.

While infrastructure money is in the pipeline, it could take months before people’s pocketbooks sense the impact of the $1 trillion in federal spending. “Shovel-ready,” a term popularized in 2009 for projects funded by Barack Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, was more marketing than reality. Only a fraction of that funding went to transportation infrastructure projects By 2010, Obama admitted, “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” But signs posted along highways at least reminded voters Washington was working to improve their commutes.

And today? McCarthy would have voters believe him rather than their lyin’ eyes, the data, the normalizing, the vaccinations, and the job growth. The general fractiousness of our politics may take longer to improve than for annual inflation stop eroding the 4.9% growth in average earnings over the past year.

Even so, McCarthy’s lame attempt to evoke Reaganism after Trump and the GOP put the final nails in its coffin was particularly pathetic.

Congressman, I was old enough in 1980 to vote for Ronald Reagan (I didn’t). Congressman, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

UPDATE: Minutes ago.

CNBC: per JP Morgan analyst, "I think we see the best holiday season of our careers." pic.twitter.com/fZJyKhgjND

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) November 22, 2021

“[O]ur political parties are not even in the same business anymore,” begins E.J. Dionne. Only one is in the business of governing: the Democrats. And the other?

The Republican enterprise is devoted to stoking anger and social resentment, not to enacting legislation. Democrats may take an eternity to do it, but they actually want to pass bills, create programs and spotlight day-to-day concerns (child care, health care) that government can plausibly address.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was still nursing his strained vocal chords after his marathon babble-fest Thursday night when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listed some of the features in the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill just before its passage. Specifically, lowering the cost of insulin, reducing child-care costs, “universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year old in America,” “high-quality home health care.”

Building roads and bridges and expanding broadband to rural communities was in the infrastructure bill President Biden signed earlier this month. The Trump administration marketed “infrastructure week” with signature Trump hollow rhetoric until it became a running joke. He delivered nothing after four years. Democrats delivered in Biden’s first.

Trump’s focus was on his crowd size and ratings. Democrats’ is on improving American’s lives.

The difference could not be starker, Dionne writes:

If politics is defined as nothing but the one big culture war that so many Republicans embrace, the practical work of government becomes a mere sideshow. One result: Any Republican willing to work with Democrats to solve particular problems (say, collapsing bridges) becomes a traitor in the only conflict that matters.

While a recent Pew poll finds Republican subgroups “Faith and Flag Conservatives” and “Committed Conservatives” broadly conservative, about a quarter of Republicans, the “Populist Right,” are immigration hard-liners, but “highly critical of the economic system.” Republicans need their base focused on the culture war and away from economic debates that could loosen the party’s hold on them.

The widest point of fracture continues to be racial injustice:

Pew found that among “the four Republican-oriented typology groups, no more than about a quarter say a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic background; by comparison, no fewer than about three-quarters of any Democratic group say a lot more needs to be done to achieve this goal.”

This gulf on one of the central questions facing our nation suggests that, for now at least, Republicans have a powerful interest in keeping a politics of resentment alive. The angry divisions over Friday’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case — and the facts of the case itself — are the latest example of why the country needs less of this kind of politics, not more.

The MAGA squad on Capitol Hill sees waging culture war as the very point of holding political office: stoking anger, provoking fights, “owning the libs,” and advancing conspiracy theories. The Democrats’ “Squad” is working to advance legislation that actually addresses people’s needs.

The differences could not be more stark. Whatever Democrats’ political failings, and with the most conservative members of the caucus a drag on passing needed sweeping change, the arc of the party’s legislative history may be long but bends toward progress.

Granted, whatever progress is politically achievable will never be enough for the leftmost activists. Their cup is always half empty, and Democrats forever failing to live up to expectations. But that is in itself proof the major parties are not, as lazily alleged, two sides of the same coin, and proof of a difference between Democrats and Republicans that the leftiest of the left deny exists. Democrats have the power to disappoint them. Republicans cannot.

It might be useful if on the left we dropped the conspiracy theory that when Democrats fail to live up to progressive dreams — the Manchins and Sinemas nothwithstanding — it is because its leaders are as obeissant to their corporate overlords as Republicans and actually want to fail. Take a step back and think about that one a moment.