Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

This piece in The Atlantic takes a look at the election results with a fresh eye:

Five days after last month’s election, Senator Chris Murphy rendered a damning verdict on his party’s performance. “That was a cataclysm,” the Connecticut Democrat wrote on X. “Electoral map wipeout.” Donald Trump had won both the popular vote and the biggest Electoral College victory—312 to 226—for any Republican since 1988; Democrats had lost their Senate majority and appeared unlikely to retake the House. The Democratic Party had lost touch with far too many American voters, Murphy concluded: “We are beyond small fixes.”

Other prominent Democrats saw a similarly sweeping repudiation of the party’s brand. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in a statement issued less than 24 hours after the polls closed. At the time of those reactions, millions of votes had yet to be counted, and several of the nation’s closest House races remained uncalled. Now a clearer picture of the election has emerged, complicating the debate over whether Democrats need to reinvent themselves—and whether voters really abandoned them at all.

Trump’s popular-vote margin has shrunk to about 1.5 percent—one of the tightest in the past half century—and because some votes went to third-party and independent candidates, he’ll fall just short of winning a majority of the vote nationwide. Compared with incumbent governments elsewhere in the world, Democrats’ losses were modest. And in the House, they gained a seat, leaving the GOP with the second-smallest majority in history. A trio of Republican vacancies expected early next year will make passing Trump’s agenda even more difficult, and Democrats are in a strong position to recapture the chamber in the midterm elections, when the incumbent party typically struggles.

The final results are prompting some in the party to push back against the doom-and-gloom diagnoses of Murphy, Sanders, and others who say the Democratic brand is in tatters and needs an overhaul. “If the Democratic brand was fundamentally broken and needed to be thrown out, this election would have been a complete blowout. And it was not. It was way too close,” Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of Swing Left, a Democratic organizing group, told me. Another Democrat, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, put it this way: “We lost an election. We didn’t lose the country.”

As is usual after a Democratic loss to the Republicans, many on the left insist that the problem was that the party was too far to the right and the centrists all insist that the party was too far to the left. There is worry on all counts about the loss of the working class and white voters (and the erosion among voters of color) as well as pressure to change direction on everything from abortion to immigration to LGBTQ rights.

If you’re like me, this whole crypto craze is somewhat mystifying. And I really don’t understand the necessity for it. Paul Krugman at his Substack has the answer: crime.

The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.

He goes on to point out that this is actually the opposite of what the whole Bitcoin revolution was supposed to do which was eliminate the need for banks:

What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.

He goes into the fundamentals of crypto and discusses the only positive aspect of it which is that it may end up being the digital equivalent of gold which underlies the value of money in a purely symbolic way. But who needs it? What’s not working with the current system? Obviously speculators are just seeing the possibility of a big windfall hopefully before the whole thing crashes in which case they’ll probably get a big government bail out.

But the real necessity, as it turns out, is for crime. Having to launder big piles of hundred dollar bills is very cumbersome. He writes:

I don’t know how many people know this, but the great bulk of U.S. currency in circulation, at least in terms of value, consists of $100 bills:

But while the sheer value of $100 bills in circulation suggests that there are still plenty of tax evaders and drug dealers with safes full of cash, banknotes are an awkward medium for really large-scale criminal activity. True, $1 million in $100 bills only weighs 22 pounds; but a million isn’t that much money nowadays. When Bashar al-Assad sent $250 million to Moscow in the form of $100 and 500-euro notes, the cargo weighed two tons.

Enter crypto. British authorities recently broke up a big money-laundering scheme involving exactly the villains you’d expect:

Presumably not everyone in crypto is participating, even unknowingly, in criminal activity. But the use of crypto for money laundering appears to be rising rapidly. And if I were running a bank, I’d be reluctant to host a bank account belonging to someone who might be involved in unsavory activities.

And guess what?

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s choice for Commerce secretary, has close ties to Tether, the company that is at the heart of the scheme the UK just uncovered and is rumored to play a large role in money laundering in general.

Huh. It certainly appears that the new administration may be considering making life easier for criminals. Would you be surprised?

As Tom mentioned this morning in this excellent piece, it sure feels as if whatever resistance there was to Trump during the past 8 years is evaporating. Most of those who haven’t decided to jump on the MAGA bandwagon just don’t want to hear about it. CNN reported yesterday that its latest poll shows that 72% of those polled say they’re paying little to no attention to Trump-related news.

I wrote about one early bright spot in all this a while back: the Blue State Governors. At the moment they seem to be the only ones showing a willingness to fight. Rolling Stone took a deep dive into their plans:

Among governors, [Illinois Governor] Pritzker has been out in front — positioning himself as the blue-state anti-Trump. The Hyatt hotel heir is a billionaire himself, worth nearly $4 billion, which counts as fuck-you money in an age when opposing Trump can carry significant costs, from increased security to the risk of retaliatory litigation, or “lawfare.”

In November, Pritzker launched a new organization, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, that seeks to unify state-based opposition to Trump’s agenda. Unveiled with co-chair Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, GSD is built for “pushing back against increasing threats of autocracy,” Pritzker says. Polis expanded on the group’s purpose in an interview with Rolling Stone: “We’re all facing a potential onslaught; let’s pool together so we can share a common response.”

That “onslaught” includes Trump threats to revoke funding from states that don’t follow his reactionary agenda on erasing transgender identity from public education, or to block federal disaster aid from states that don’t loosen environmental protections. Safeguarding residents from ICE is also a priority. “We won’t cooperate with any federal efforts — especially illegal federal efforts that separate families — to deport hardworking, de facto Americans who’ve been here for decades,” Polis says. The group will also focus on “fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon,” Pritzker says — whether that’s local election boards or state courts.

The governors group has not unveiled a roster of member states, but Rolling Stone has learned that more than 20 are involved. The group’s advisory board includes a formidable, bipartisan brain trust of former governors — Deval Patrick (D-Mass.), Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kan.), Bill Weld (R-Mass.), and Arne Carlson (R-Minn.) — as well as former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

GSD is currently probing how states can lock down databases to prevent the Trump administration from tracking undocumented immigrants who have received state driver licenses, for example, or from targeting activists who are arrested while protesting. Behind the scenes, GSD has been prepping states for the fallout from Supreme Court rulings that have undermined federal regulatory agencies, says Julia Spiegel, a former aide to Newsom who is GSD’s top administrator. “Anything from clean air and water to safe medication is potentially under attack now,” she says. “What are states going to do to create the regulatory infrastructure if the federal government is no longer going to be able to do it? Governors are working together to address these big questions — to make sure their state institutions can protect and provide the things of daily life that matter to people most.”

GSD is modeled on the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, which saw Democratic governors unite in defense of reproductive rights after the reversal of Roe v. Wade. That included organizing bulk purchases of abortion drugs — negotiated at a discount by the state with the largest purchasing power, California. The alliance also developed legislation, for introduction by member states, to safeguard the privacy of women who travel for abortion care and that of the doctors who treat them.

At the press conference launching GSD, Pritzker emphasized the need to remain agile and “swiftly respond to emerging threats.” Pressed for details, he insisted that a proposal by Trump adviser Stephen Miller to deploy National Guard troops from Republican-led states inside “unfriendly” blue states, as part of a mass deportation regime, represented “exactly the kind of question that [GSD] would be considering.” Pritzker insisted that the proposal was illegal — and Illinois “would certainly not cooperate.”

The article goes into the work among activists to hold them to it and it sounds like some serious organizing is going on at the state level.

I truly hope this is true. If these Governors are willing to be the leaders of resistance to Trump then, thank God. And good for the activists too. Somebody needs to do it. The Washington Dems appear to be paralyzed at the moment.

Obviously, many of these governors are planning to run for president so it’s even more gratifying if they’ve decided that going up against MAGA and Donald Trump is good for them and good for the party. I can’t say that I’m hearing much of that from anyone else.

Go Govs!

It looks like Kash Patel isn’t the only one implementing the vengeance agenda and Russ Vought won’t be the only ones demanding total loyalty in the executive branch. Others are helping with the dirty work:

Staffers working for the DOGE duo, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have contacted some of Trump’s first-term cabinet secretaries and asked them to prepare two lists of people they served with: one for political appointees and the other for career officials. The listmakers are then to write an “A” by the names of those they believe Trump should bring back or keep, and a “B” by the names of those they think should be blacklisted or fired.

Of course, civil servants (the career officials) are typically protected from political raids at agencies, but Trump has vowed to use Schedule F, an executive order that would make them fireable—and these plans for mass layoffs will almost certainly wind up before the courts.

I would have thought those two would be huddled over spreadsheets and policy papers deciding the BIG QUESTION of how to slash a third of the government in the first year. Spending time figuring out which members of the last administration were disloyal to Dear Leader seems a bit trivial for the DOGE. But then Musk seems to be spending most of his time socializing at Mar-a-Lago so it’s hard to say what they’re really doing.

By the way, Musk isn’t content with meddling in American government. He’s got his sights set on the UK too. (And he’s hosting his own events at MAL, apparently.)

Farage is the face of Brexit which is very unpopular now. I wonder if Musk’s big bucks can get him over the top like they did Trump? Does his massive wealth make him believe he can take over the world? It kind of looks that way…

Nancy Mace says she is concerned that the drone sightings off NJ is either aliens from another planet or Russia/Iran/China searching for a missing nuclear warhead. pic.twitter.com/Uf6GiEm84v

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 17, 2024

These are elected GOP officials. They are not fake tweets.

How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb?

Lefties’ fondness for novelty goes only so far. Democrats are policy liberals (sort of) and campaign conservatives. Party culture is built around seniority and whose “turn” it is to move up the organizational ladder. There is ageism in that, but also resistance to generational change. (I wrote about our local changing of the guard a few years back.) That’s visible in real time in the contest for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee between Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.).

Politico:

House Democrats have solidified the generational shake-up at the top of their committees, after significant behind-the-scenes influence from both current and former leaders of the caucus.

The caucus faced tough races for the Agriculture, Oversight and Natural Resources Committees. Rep. Angie Craig (Minn.) won the nod for the top party spot on Agriculture, beating incumbent Rep. David Scott (Ga.), who’d faced long-standing questions about his health, and Rep. Jim Costa (Calif.). Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.) won the Oversight recommendation over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.). And Rep. Jared Huffman (Calif.) earned the nod for the Natural Resources Committee against Rep. Melanie Stansbury (N.M.) after Rep. Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) stepped down.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.) is also poised to take the top Democratic spot on the Judiciary Committee, though Steering will now take votes on uncontested panel spots on Tuesday.

AOC did not win the recommendation during a Monday meeting of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee (Axios):

What we’re hearing: Connolly defeated Ocasio-Cortez 34 to 27 on Monday, according to multiple lawmakers present.

• Ocasio-Cortez said after the vote that she will continue to contest the role when it goes to a vote of the full caucus.

Democrats’ interest in change goes only so far.

A friend observed pithily, post-election, “Any Dem leader or consultant who blames the party for turning a deaf ear to the working class, of being too elite, is not to be trusted. Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester lost their well-earned, populist seats to carpetbaggers, monied grifters.”

Yet Democrats who have spent long careers on Capitol Hill still insist the key to winning elections is more focus on kitchen table issues in a political era fueled by right-wing billionaires and the disinformation ecosystems they (not the RNC) constructed over decades. Nonetheless, “kitchen table issues” might as well be Democratic catechism in an age in which politics isn’t really politics anymore.

Democratic power-players in Raleigh two years ago lined up to reelect the incumbent state chair (a former state legislator). Under her tenure, Democrats left 40 percent of legislative seats uncontested. Democrats also lost two state supreme court seats. The new Republican majority swiftly overturned the previous court’s ruling establishing representative congressional districts and allowed the GOP-controlled legislature to draw three more congressional seats for Republicans. Yup, leading state Democrats wanted to reelect that chair over feisty 25-year-old Anderson Clayton, the eventual winner and soon media darling.

Wonder of wonders, David Graham wrote in The Atlantic on Nov. 7: Democrats Actually Had Quite a Good Night in North Carolina.

Organizers believe change has to come from the gound up. We changed the guard in our county almost 20 years ago. The guard changed in Raleigh two years ago. It’s only now changing on Capitol Hill. And at that, slowly.

Thank you sharing this Sanctuary of Sanity with us each day.
Happy Hollandaise!

They obey the call

How many times have “Twilight Zone” references popped into your head lately? These times are as surreal as they are threatening. Except there’s no Rod Serling to offer a pithy observation on the human condition or to offer a moral coda to each day’s news. For those among the uninfected, there is only a collective shaking of heads, a silent prayer, at the behavior of MAGA millions, titans of industry, and newsies genuflecting before the Great Orange Oz.

Witnessing this “Great Capitulation,” Michelle Goldberg writes:

Different people have different reasons for falling in line. Some may simply lack the stomach for a fight or feel, not unreasonably, that it’s futile. Our tech overlords, however liberal they once appeared, seem to welcome the new order. Many hated wokeness, resented the demands of newly uppity employees and chafed at attempts by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate crypto and A.I., two industries with the potential to cause deep and lasting social harm. There are C.E.O.s who got where they are by riding the zeitgeist; they can pivot easily from mouthing platitudes about racial equity to slapping on a red MAGA hat.

Are they really falling at his feet driven by calculated, economic self-interest? Or are they entranced by power, like the Eloi by the Morlocks’ sirens? Since the launch of this republic there have been among us those who wish to rule and freedom-and-liberty types who in their hearts yearn to be subjects. In Trumpism, both are having a moment. The situation is, at minimum, a dark signal of what lies ahead until (and if) American good sense resurfaces.

Goldberg sees it too:

Collectively, all these elite decisions to bow to Trump make it feel like the air is going out of the old liberal order. In its place will be something more ruthless and Nietzschean.

Gary Legum of Wonkette watched a Trump press conference on Monday and marvels at the reporters filing into Trump’s gilded lair (like the Eloi or ABC News) to be eaten:

Which brings us back to our original thought as we watched the media let Trump steamroll over it as he has for a decade. And that is how absurd it is that reporters still, still, after all this time, troop into these rooms with Trump like a bunch of lemmings, knowing they will be lied to, knowing they will be berated and threatened and insulted, and dutifully write it all down without standing up for themselves and their profession.

[…]

We watched four years of such scenes during Trump’s first term, and we find it unreal that we will be watching the same sorts of spectacles for another four. We can’t believe we get another four years of White House reporters scribbling down Trump’s rambling horseshit without noting that Trump has always rambled through every press conference and interview, and that 95 percent of the stuff he promises never happens.

Imagine if you will — and you won’t strain doing it — little Donny standing before the class, bullshitting his way through another oral report on a book he hasn’t read. He boldly utters vague generalities disconnected from the novel in his stubby fingers and, with the long experience of moneyed privilege, expects everyone listening to buy it like Trump Bibles or Eau de Trump.

Thank you sharing this Sanctuary of Sanity with us each day.
Happy Hollandaise!

Trump only cares about his agenda of deportation, revenge, tariffs and personal profits. He’s fine with Elon doing whatever as long as it doesn’t interfere with his own agenda. The Daily Beast reported in his last term that when pressed about the rising deficit, he would say:

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.

The episode illustrates the extent of the president’s ambivalence toward tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama.

But for those who have worked with Trump, it was par for the course. Several people close to the president, both within and outside his administration, confirmed that the national debt has never bothered him in a truly meaningful way, despite his public lip service. “I never once heard him talk about the debt,” one former senior White House official attested.

He never talked about it when he ran for reelection both times either. I have to believe that he’s appeasing his new best friend, the richest man in the world, but he really does not care about the debt because he knows that he’ll be out of office, possibly dead, if all these worst case scenarios come to pass (which they probably won’t.)

The Muskswamy commission is looking to recommend massive, unprecedented cuts to the entire government including the so-called entitlements. Many GOP members of Congress are excited at the prospect of finally getting that done. Whether that happens with that very tight margin in the House is another story. And there are people in his orbit absolutely determined to fire federal government workers (or force them out some other ways) and they may make some headway but it isn’t quite as easy as they think.

The one thing that gives me hope is Trump’s narcissism preventing him from caring enough to put any of his clout behind this stuff. It’s all about him and these are not his issues.

He wants his tax cuts to be extended and expanded because that puts money in his own pockets. He wants to put on a big deportation show although how extensive that will be is up in the air. He wants to use tariffs to bully and intimidate other countries but he’s too stupid to understand that they have power to do the same thing and it’s going to blow up in his face. If he succeeds in doing all these things the economic consequences will be extreme but I have a sneaking suspicion that his undeniable ability to lie and have people believe him will allow him to not go to the extremes on those issues and just say that he did. (“See, promises made promises kept and everything worked out fine!”) Our completely fragmented and ineffectual information ecosystem will allow him to get away with it.

As for his desire to get revenge on his enemies and profit from the presidency, I think he might just get that done, at least to some extent. Nobody cares about the corruption so he can just write himself checks from the US Treasury or steal the White House silver and get away with it. As for the vengeance agenda, I imagine his administration will do many things to make his enemies pay, from IRS audits to lawsuits to criminal investigations, costing his targets dearly. I don’t know if we will ever reach that “at long last sir, have you no decency” moment because I’m not sure our society is really concerned with decency at the moment.

But in the end, I do believe that his own ignorance, laziness and narcissism may be the tool that saves us. He’ll get his pet issues and steal massive sums of money. But I don’t think there is quite enough bandwidth in this rogues gallery of neo fascists, D-list pols and egomaniacs to get their agenda passed as well. I may very well be wrong, though. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The AP reports:

A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

[…]

Smirnov will get credit for the time he has served since his February arrest on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015.

Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.

[…]

No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president.

While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.

During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.

But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.

Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

Nobody seems to care that James Comer and the House Oversight Committee spent years pursuing this nonsense. They’ve moved on to haranguing Biden for pardoning Hunter so it’s all water under the bridge.