Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

What the physical violence in the US Congress portends

Philip Bump takes a look at the possible meaning of GOP officials resorting to threats and physical violence this week on Capitol Hill.

It is probably not terribly useful to draw sweeping conclusions from Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s demand Tuesday that a witness at a Senate hearing stand up and fight him. Mullin’s background is atypical for a senator, including a brief stint about 15 years ago during which he did mixed-martial arts fighting. The witness, meanwhile, was the head of the Teamsters union; his willingness to goad Mullin (R-Okla.) into the challenge was probably also atypical for someone appearing on Capitol Hill.

We might also be cautious about the weird, probably overheated interaction between Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), also on Tuesday, in which the latter accuses the former of elbowing him. Or the scuffle in January when the Republican Party was trying to elect McCarthy speaker in the first place. These were all isolated incidents, explainable in isolated contexts.

But there’s an undeniable thread that links them, an acceptance, however slight, of the idea that physical violence has a place in the resolution of disputes. Should this pattern continue — or accelerate — it would mirror other countries in which democracy is eroding. Including, at one point, the United States.

The question of the extent to which Americans accept political violence in general has been lingering for years now. The riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, crystallized those questions, given that it was an overt collapse of a democratic process — the 2020 presidential contest — into a violent effort by supporters of Donald Trump to help him retain power.

In its recently released measure of support for democracy in the United States, PRRI published data evaluating the extent to which Americans believed that violence might be a viable mechanism for affecting change. A third of Republicans indicated that “patriots” might need to resort to violence to right the national ship, up since 2021. But that sentiment also was up among Democrats and overall.

[…]

American University professor Thomas Zeitzoff, who studies political violence, recently released a book titled “Nasty Politics,” evaluating the extent to which countries use “nasty” political tools (from aggressive language to outright violence) to deploy or secure power. For the book, he looked at New York Times articles since the 1850s to determine how often the paper reported stories that indicated the use of nasty political tactics in the United States.

There was a surge at the time of the Civil War (the first vertical shading area below) and again at the time of Trump’s election in 2016.

Markwayne Mullin cited that surge in congressional violence before the civil war as a precedent (he actually said “presence”) to excuse his grotesque behavior.

[…]

In the Civil War era, outright violence was common on Capitol Hill. In her 2018 book “The Field of Blood,” Yale University professor Joanne Freeman tracked the number of violent incidents in Congress in the years before and after that conflict.

“In those times, … armed groups of Northern and Southern congressmen engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the House floor. Angry about rights violated and needs denied, and worried about the degradation of their section of the Union, they defended their interests with threats, fists and weapons,” she wrote. “When that fighting became endemic and congressmen strapped on knives and guns before heading to the Capitol every morning — when they didn’t trust the institution of Congress or even their colleagues to protect their persons — it meant something.”

“It meant extreme polarization and the breakdown of debate. It meant the scoring of parliamentary rules and political norms to the point of abandonment. It meant that structures of government and the bonds of Union were eroding in real time,” Freeman continued. “In short, it meant the collapse of our national civic structure to the point of crisis. The nation didn’t slip into disunion; it fought its way into it, even in Congress.”

The United States is hovering near a transitional point. The Varieties of Democracy project of the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute measures national support for the values of liberal democracy, including free and fair elections. In recent years, the United States’ measure of liberal democracy has slipped (albeit subtly). That corresponds to an increase in anti-pluralistic sentiment, within the Republican Party in particular.

[…]

In researching this article, I remembered that YouGov had, for years, slotted Trump’s tweets as president into its poll questions. It suddenly struck me that I didn’t remember seeing how Americans had responded to perhaps Trump’s most notorious social media post, the one in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, in which he encouraged his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. The day would feature a big protest, he said, that would “be wild.”

Tread carefully or go for it?

Pick your metaphor. Whistling past a graveyard. Tiptoeing through a minefield. Every day feels like the country is doing a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. And we know what happened to them.

The question of Donald Trump’s qualification for any elected office is a hot potato neither the courts nor election officials nor Congress want to touch.

Hayes Brown writes:

Efforts to block former President Donald Trump from being on the ballot next year have yet to score a major win in court. Nobody in power seems willing to decide whether the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause disqualifies him from returning to the White House. Instead, judges and state officials have either pawned off that decision to someone else or determined that there will be some other, better time to make a judgment.

The result is a rapidly shrinking window for that decision to be made. And, based on the standard in a ruling issued in Michigan on Tuesday, we might not know the answer until after all the votes have been cast on Election Day next year. It might be after the presidential electors have met and submitted their ballots. It might come down to Congress on Jan. 6, 2025, to decide whether Trump is even eligible to become president.

Earlier this year, legal scholars, including prominent conservatives, came out in support of the idea that Trump is constitutionally ineligible for office and that it fell to election officials to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. (That section bars from federal and state office anyone who previously swore to support the Constitution but then had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”) Since then, much of the energy from democracy activists and lawyers has focused on convincing secretaries of state of the argument, but they’ve met with either hesitancy or outright rejection from officials. At best, as in the case of Michigan’s Jocelyn Benson, there has been an openness to acting — provided, that is, that a court rules whether Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol triggered the insurrection clause.

But one of the cases seeking such a ruling fell short on Tuesday. Judge James Robert Redford rightfully noted in his decision that Michigan state law doesn’t provide for the secretary of state to block a party from naming a primary candidate. The Minnesota Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion last week, finding that the question of whether Trump could appear on the general election ballot wasn’t “ripe” or “about to occur.”

Because there has been no primary in Minnesota and Trump is not the official candidate for the Republican Party. Yet. The court brought in a basin and washed its hands.

The Minnesota court didn’t close the door on another challenge later. But as my colleague Jordan Rubin noted, Redford suggested that even the general election might not be enough to warrant the courts’ intervening. Instead, Redford said, the whole thing might be a “political question” best left to the people or their elected representatives. The judge further noted that the Constitution’s 12th and 20th Amendments directly deal with the election of the president and the vice president and that both of them give that role to Congress.

It’s worth pausing here to take a step back and note that technically it’s the Electoral College that votes for president. And though the drafters of the Constitution foresaw electors as independent, well-respected members of the community who would adjudicate the candidates’ qualifications, that’s not how it has played out. Each state generally assigns its electoral votes based on who won the popular vote, which is reflected in partisan slates of Electoral College members. Those slates then vote for their parties’ chosen candidates, and those votes are then transmitted to Congress to be counted.

Congress amended the Electoral Count Reform Act  to prevent the kinds of electoral vote scheming for which Trump and his alleged accomplices face criminal charges.

Even Trump appealing any 14th Amendment ruling against him to the U.S. Supreme Court might not result in a final decision. The court could dismiss it as a nonjusticiable political question “beyond the reach of the federal courts,” as it did in Rucho v. Common Cause. They washed their hands too. That’s not so say the conservative majority would, but it could, as Brown notes.

WWCD: What would Congress do on January 6, 2025 if Trump won?

Bear in mind that this would be taking place in a world where Trump has won not only the GOP nomination but also the general election. While many of the pending cases may hope to reach the Supreme Court for a ruling ahead of the election, it’s possible that the conservative justices would also punt while citing the “political question” doctrine. If that’s the case, it’s difficult to see this as not being one of the biggest questions for members of Congress on the campaign trail leading up to 2024: “Will you vote to disqualify Donald Trump on Jan. 6?”

That’s exactly the kind of chaos that organizers hoped to prevent in trying to prevent Trump from being a candidate at all. Because, unlike his coup attempt, Congress in this case would be fulfilling its constitutional duty if it were to disqualify Trump when it counts electoral votes. It would be an act of delayed justice after the Senate acquitted him in his second impeachment trial and lost the accompanying chance to bar him from holding future office. At the time, the argument from Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell was that the courts would be the one to hold him accountable, a deeply ironic sentiment given the courts’ insistence that it’s a matter for Congress.

And yet, in a very real sense, it can’t be ignored that disqualifying Trump this way would be Congress’ doing exactly what Trump has, in his projection, accused Democrats of doing: trying to reverse the results of an election. The fact that Trump was most likely never eligible wouldn’t matter. The Republican Party, in allowing him to run and making him its nominee, will have known this was a possibility but will still support his cries that the whole system is rigged. And if we are forced to spend the next 14 months in suspense, it will only increase the chances that, when faced with this monumental decision, Congress will falter.

There’s not enough antacid in all the drugstores for this.

What happens when you gut the liberal arts

Finally: an explanation for how the United States of America could elect an under-educated, grandiose, narcissist reality TV star to the presidency. Social media (especially TikTok) is a digital Petri dish for breeding them. This TikTok freak show is completely nuts.

The Wrap:

The Guardian made the unusual move Wednesday to delete a 21-year-old letter written by Osama bin Laden from their site after several TikTokers urged followers to read the al Qaeda leader’s missive, causing “Letter to America” to go viral on the social media platform.

Guardian readers are now met with the message, “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American people,’ as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.”

In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for the U.K. outlet said, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”

[…]

The TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins, in which she told her nearly 12 million followers, “I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read ‘Letter to America,’ I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now.”

Responses from fellow TikTokers include “my eyes have been opened.” Another user who shared the letter wrote, wrote, “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) wonders how AI (via social media, implied) might serve the propaganda agendas of autocrats and terrorists.

Weaponized on behalf of autocrats and terrorists (overlapping categories), rather than on behalf of peace and democracy. https://t.co/canx3aFmry

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) November 16, 2023

I blame the dismissal of liberal arts as a waste of time and education dollars. What good is it if it doesn’t translate into a money-making career? Right now in North Carolina, Republican lawmakers are working to undermine state-supported colleges and divert funding to more trade schools. Nothing wrong with trade schools, but their focus is on breeding a pool of workers to support the economy, not on raising an electorate responsible for preserving a democratic republic. Or reading Alexander Hamilton.

If I read Ms. Adkins’ LinkedIn right, the self-employed “Content Creator” majored in marketing.

Best line: "You can make a video about it so people can gasp and shit their pants about how edgy it is"

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) November 16, 2023

A hundred years later, they still want to root around in your medicine cabinet

Trump is running ads taking credit for Roe v. Wade being overturned: I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve this message pic.twitter.com/831fQSIrhb

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 14, 2023

Trump wants to have it both ways in the election but I have no doubt that he will take revenge on the abortion rights movement the moment he gets into office. Here’s how he might do it:

The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say.

While Republicans disagree about whether to pursue a national abortion ban that would face long odds in Congress, a GOP president may be able to unilaterally curb access to medication abortion across the country using an obscure 19th-century law.

At issue is the meaning of the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the mailing of “obscene” material like pornography, as well as abortion drugs and contraception. While the law has been cut down over the years, the abortion provision remained but was ignored while Roe v. Wade was in place.

Medication abortion usually involves the use of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, and accounts for more than half of abortions in the U.S.

The Heritage Foundation, which has proposed detailed policies for a potential GOP administration, argues that Comstock “unambiguously prohibits mailing abortion drugs” and says the next administration should “enforce federal law against providers and distributors of [abortion] pills.”

The Biden administration disagrees with this interpretation. A Justice Department memo issued last year contends that the law doesn’t prohibit mailing abortion drugs when the sender expects them to be used lawfully.

A new administration could easily change that interpretation, experts say, and not just restrict patients from receiving pills at home — but also stop pharmacies and health care providers from getting shipments.

“If Trump were elected, not only would I not be surprised, but I would expect the administration to direct DOJ to overturn its guidance on the Comstock Act and rule that shipping mifepristone through the U.S. Postal Service is a violation of that statute,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown Law professor who supports abortion rights.

This “would create a significant impediment to access to the most common, safest and most effective method of getting an abortion,” Gostin added.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on its thinking about the Comstock Act.

They outsource their thinking on things like this to the Heritage Foundation. If Heritage wants it, Heritage will have it.

This is already on the menu in a major lawsuit anyway:

The Comstock Act is also invoked in a closely watched lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone — in which Baptist is the lead counsel — which could reach the Supreme Court this term.

That lawsuit also argues that Comstock makes mailing abortion drugs illegal in the first place. However, that argument received little attention in lower courts, so the Supreme Court may not consider it.

Abortion rights advocates argue that interpreting Comstock so literally is ignoring its context and legal precedent.

They would almost certainly sue to block a DOJ policy change, leaving it to the courts — and possibly the Supreme Court — to decide.

“It’s tailor-made for a Supreme Court that considers itself textualist,” said Mary Ziegler, a UC Davis law professor and legal historian. “There’s a plausible argument that the language of the statute is unambiguous.”

Taking the statute so literally could have much broader implications for abortion, she added, extending to all forms of the procedure and even prohibiting it under circumstances like endangerment to the life of the pregnant person.

Ziegler said abortion rights supporters likely haven’t put much focus on Comstock to avoid legitimizing GOP arguments as courts consider the legality of mifepristone.

“I think it’s a fear that taking the Comstock Act too seriously would make it more likely that the Supreme Court will take it seriously,” she said

I hope they’re working on it behind the scenes just in case. Keep in mind that Comstock was also used to prevent women from obtaining birth control. The far right religious nuts like the man who is second in line to the presidency are all-in on that too:

AT THE LOUISIANA Right to Life Forum on Nov. 15, 2013, Mike Johnson — still lawyer, and not yet a public official — spoke about his efforts challenging the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate, a provision of the Affordable Care Act that required employers to provide birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. 

In his view, Johnson explained, certain types of birth control are methods of abortion.

“Everybody asks us all the time: ‘Why do you guys care so much? The HHS mandate it’s really just about contraception, sterilization. … What’s the big deal? Well, those are abortifacients,” Johnson says. “The morning after pill, as we know, is an abortifacient.”

Neither sterilization or emergency contraception medications like Plan B, are abortifacients. Both are forms of birth control that prevent a pregnancy from occurring, but do not end an existing pregnancy. A representative for Johnson, now the speaker of the House of Representatives, did not respond to an inquiry about whether Johnson still believes those forms of birth control are “abortifacients.”

Johnson is known for being among the most anti-abortion lawmakers in Congress, and for railing against the use of “abortion as a form of birth control” before he was in office. But his statements and actions suggest he does not see much difference between abortion as a form of birth control and birth control as a form of birth control. 

As a lawyer, Johnson worked on multiple cases representing plaintiffs who refused to dispense, counsel, or provide emergency contraception, which they considered to be abortion-inducing drugs. And as a congressman, Johnson has repeatedly voted against efforts to expand, fund, or protect access to birth control and other family planning services — including for members of the military. 

While a certain, largely female segment of the Republican party has undertaken efforts to expand access to birth control in the wake of Dobbs, Johnson has not joined those efforts. 

Judge Luttig tweet this today, writing, “Prophetic words from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington in 1792 — as apt and timely today as they were over 230 years ago.”

“A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country can surely never be brought to [monarchy], but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues.

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security. 

Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. 

When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—  when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—  it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”” 

Sounds kind of familiar. Huh.

Philip Bump took a deep dive into Trump (and Barr’s) successful effort to turn Russia’s manipulation of him into a “fake news” story. There’s a lot there and I can only excerpt a piece of it. But you can read the whole thing with this link:

Out there in the broader world, the “Russia collusion hoax” skeptics are abundant, if not a plurality of the public. There has perhaps been no sales pitch offered by Donald Trump that has paid larger dividends than his immediate, long-standing push to cast any questions about Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign as the deranged rantings of weirdo liberals. He’s inculcated an immediate, visceral reaction from members of his base as well as Americans more broadly that when they hear “Russia” in the context of “Trump,” they should dismiss what follows as false and defamatory.

This reaction has provided him an enormous amount of space to avoid very serious questions about the ways in which Russia worked to his benefit while he was in office — and may continue to do so.

There is news on this front. On Monday, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) brought charges of treason against Oleksandr Dubinsky, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament. Dubinsky is accused of helping Russia to spread “fakes about the alleged interference of Ukrainian high-ranking officials” in the United States’ 2020 presidential elections, according to a Post translation of the charges.

Dubinsky has long been an ally of another Ukrainian politician, Andriy Derkach. The SBU accused Derkach last year of having provided assistance to Russia during its expanded invasion of Ukraine.

Derkach and Dubinsky have been linked to Russian intelligence efforts by the U.S. government, as well. In September 2020, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Derkach for having “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day.” Dubinsky was sanctioned as part of that effort in January 2021, before Trump left office. Last December, Derkach was indicted by the Justice Department.

You probably picked up on the theme here: that Derkach and Dubinsky were involved in efforts to spread false information with the aim of affecting the 2020 election. Those efforts directly involved Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. They are also interwoven with the ongoing effort by Republicans to impugn President Biden, though the line between driving and leveraging doubt about Biden is often blurry.

BY this time you certainly know the story of corrupt prosecutor Viktor Shokin being ousted at the behest at the entire western world and the Republicans trying to claim that Biden did it to protect his son even though Shokin wasn’t investigating him. And you also knowby now that Shokin, who is a real snake,began chatting up Rudy Giuliani pushing the story that Biden pushed him out because of Hunter even though it never made any sense. All this is what precipitated Trump’s “perfect call” demanding the announcement of an investigation into Biden and his first impeachment.

Giuliani was undeterred, however, and kept working this angle, thirstily drinking up every bit of disinformation Russia friendly Ukrainians were giving him.

In October 2020, there was another “disinformation” allegation: the publication of elements of Hunter Biden’s laptop after the owner of the Delaware computer store had given them to Giuliani.

It is known that there was information from Hunter Biden floating around as early as the spring of 2019. Time reported that multiple people in Ukraine had been approached about emails and photos involving Hunter Biden in that time period. Giuliani’s aide Lev Parnas wrote in a letter to House investigators that he’d been approached about digital material belonging to Hunter Biden in June 2019, information allegedly stolen from Biden’s laptop by Russian intelligence and Zlochevsky allies during a trip Biden made to Kazakhstan. (Parnas, it’s worth noting, is himself not an entirely reliable narrator.)

Given the Russian effort in 2016 to affect the presidential election by releasing information stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, the laptop story was quickly identified as a possible similar effort. No evidence has emerged to suggest that it demonstrably wasn’t the result of Hunter Biden abandoning his laptop, with the FBI first taking possession of its contents in late 2019. It is nonetheless noteworthy that Giuliani, having been offered material stolen by Russian actors from Hunter Biden’s laptop in June 2019, ended up in possession of material from Hunter Biden’s laptop in August 2020. Trump, of course, has been eager to present questions about the laptop’s authenticity as further evidence that no valid questions about Russia exist.

This brings us to the through line that Trump demands we ignore, this surfeit of post-2016 activity in which information potentially damaging to Joe Biden has however-tenuous connections to Russian disinformation efforts. Giuliani chatting with Dubinsky and Derkach. The alleged offer of Hunter Biden material is known to be circulating in Ukraine. Questions about the information presented by the confidential informant. Trump has been so effective at poisoning any question about Russia’s effort that questions about what is intended often simply aren’t asked.

In May of this year, Derkach leaked recordings of several calls, including ones between Biden and Ukraine’s former president centered on Shokin. This came after Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) had raised questions about the bribery claims made to the informant — claims that included an allegation that Zlochevsky was in possession of recordings of calls involving himself and Joe Biden.

Despite Derkach already having been penalized as a Russian agent and charged with federal crimes, OAN ran a segment that month hyping the recordings as inculpatory. Giuliani was interviewed to offer his thoughts.

“Russia, Russia, Russia” he cries and the press corps shrugs its collecting shoulders and moves as quickly as possible away from anything to do with it. But there’s a huge story there.

I know it’s mean to say it, but it’s important to acknowledge.

Jill Filipovic writes about “that which cannot be mentioned” in her great newsletter today. It has to be said:

One basic rule of being a person who opines on politics is that you are not allowed to disrespect voters. Voters, you are supposed to say, are very smart and thoughtful people; it is the politicians who are bad, who do not deliver, who do not give them what they want or need. If politicians behaved differently, then voters — good people, rational people — would respond accordingly….

But also, a lot of people are stupid, paranoid, incompetent and irrational.

I know, this is a very disrespectful thing to say (“deplorable” would have been more polite). And there are of course some Trump voters who are perfectly kind of their neighbors and I am sure are, in many contexts, utterly decent people. There are some Trump voters who aren’t cult loyalist but normie Republicans who want normie Republican things, like tax breaks for the rich, unfettered capitalism, and women forced into submission. But can we just be honest and say that in a nation of hundreds of millions of people, some significant proportion of those who have latched onto an obvious pathological narcissist are not, in fact, smart, competent, rational people? And that assuming they are — assuming that Democrats just need the right policies or at least the right messaging — is a fool’s errand?

Elections are won two ways: Turnout and persuasion. And generally, you need both. Clearly there are a number of voters who can be persuaded, which is why Joe Biden currently sits in the White House. Democrats should try to persuade them by emphasizing issues that are winners — abortion, for one — and tying Trump and the GOP directly to the demise of abortion rights in the US, and the potential for a federal abortion ban.

Democrats should also realize that for a significant number of Trump supporters, Trump’s appeal has virtually nothing to do with policy: He could hand out free abortion pills on Fifth Avenue and while he’d definitely lose the support of some anti-abortion groups, his base would stick with him. He could probably also stand on Fifth Avenue and execute women who had abortions and many members of his base (including many “pro-lifers”) would still vote for him. Point being, the idea that all or even most voters care about policy above all, or even policy at all, is false. A lot of voters care about vibes. They care about their own disregulated emotions, and if they’re mad, then they want someone or something to punch — an immigrant, a woman who does what she wants, a city-dweller who thinks they’re better, a drag queen who doesn’t seem appropriately ashamed, someone who they either blame for their problems or find different and therefore disgusting. Look, these are people who believe Hillary Clinton is smuggling child sex slaves in Wayfair cabinets for imprisonment in the basement of a pizza parlor. Why do we continue with the fiction that there’s intelligent life below the surface?

The beauty of the American system is that every adult citizen, including irrational dummies, gets to vote. The reality of the American system, of course, is that lots of people don’t actually get to vote, mostly because conservative politicians are always trying to shrink the pool of potential Democratic voters. But either way, you don’t actually have to be tethered to reality, or have any tangible goal other than making others suffer, to cast a ballot in the US. That’s an absolutely terrible system, but it sure beats all the other options.

The job of Democrats is to try to persuade swing voters and moderate Republican voters, without falling for the fiction that there’s some critical mass of Trump supporters who will go our way if only we appeal to their better, rational selves. A lot of people don’t have better, rational selves (including, for the record, a number of people on the left). At some point, Donald Trump is going to die, these voters will be scattered and adrift, and the Republican Party will need to reorganize itself, and boy will that be interesting to watch. In the meantime, though, some of them are persuadable, and most of them are sticking with Dear Leader. Democrats should focus on getting their own voters to the ballot box, and convincing the small number of convincables that Trump is exactly who he seems like he is.

Democrats shouldn’t insult Trump voters (please, Democratic politicians, don’t emulate this newsletter). But Democrats can also ignore a lot of them. Instead, speak to the people who have clung to a shred of sanity. Point it out when Trump literally pulls from the Hitler playbook. Point out that he killed Roe v. Wade (“I was able to kill Roe v. Wade” –Donald J. Trump). Point out that he’s a criminal and a con man and he cuts taxes for the wealthiest and, in his personal and political life, leaves everyone else with the bill. When Biden’s age and health inevitably comes up, point out that Trump is also old as hell, and unlike Biden he’s on a diet of Big Macs and demented rage. Hope that sways enough voters to reelect Biden. But don’t waste time worrying about what deep down policy desire makes all of these voters love Trump so much. The answer is right there.

I think I always knew this but the pandemic really brought it home. Still, I’ve been very surprised by the scale of it. I never thought there were so many who were impervious to reality.

The Republican Party has viciously turned on itself

You know how it is when toddlers get tired. They get cranky. They cry and they pout and sometimes they even try to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get their way. When this happens you know it’s time to give them a bottle and put them to bed. When they get older there can be the problem of how to handle an unruly teenager, defiant and hostile, challenging every rule and boundary and refusing to acknowledge any authority. Sometimes it’s enough to take away the car keys and ground them for a while but in other cases, intense therapy or even military school, as in the case of young Donald Trump, is seen as the only way to get through to them.

But what do you do when elected officials suddenly start behaving like screaming toddlers and teenage bullies in the halls of congress? Is there any authority that can step in and quiet the tantrums? And when this increasingly anti-social behavior is happening in the shadow of a party leader and presidential candidate who exalts violence and cruelty, can we really just chalk it up to frustration and fatigue?

That question was asked repeatedly when all hell broke loose on both ends of congress yesterday and nobody knows the answer. This isn’t the usual partisan sniping. Something disturbing and bizarre is happening within the Republican Party, which has now viciously turned on itself. Here are some of the incidents that took place just yesterday.

On the over grown toddler front we have House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer who has been appearing on every right wing media outlet fulminating about the “Biden Crime family” and waving around a $200,000 check repaying a personal loan from Biden’s brother as if it’s a smoking gun. (It is not.) At a hearing on Tuesday morning, Comer had a complete meltdown when confronted with the fact that he himself had engaged in some big money loans back and forth to his own brother that appeared to feature some very shady dealings.

He got so agitated that he called the Rep. Jared Moskowitz, R-Fl., who was dressed in a blue suit … a smurf:

Comer flips out when he gets confronted on the loan to his brother by Moskowitz pic.twitter.com/LO5YqqZtdQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 14, 2023

It could have been worse. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., failed in her privileged resolution to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday, due to eight Republicans voting with all the Democrats to refer the matter to committee which is how it’s supposed to be done. One of the Republican members, Californian Darryl Issa, was asked about it and he said that Greene “lacks the maturity and the experience to understand what she was asking for” prompting Greene to tweet a meme of former President Trump saying, “She said he’s a p‑‑-‑y.”  Then she embellished it with another post saying “we all know what he’s lacking…” with emojis of tennis balls.

But let’s give her a few points for restraint. Unlike some of her colleagues at least she didn’t threaten anyone or resort to physical violence.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett was giving an interview to an NPR reporter when he suddenly lunged forward and exclaimed that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy had elbowed him in the back. A chase ensued with Burchett running after McCarthy demanding to know why he did it which McCarthy denied, later telling reporters, “if I’d wanted to hit him, he’d know it.”

News — Rep. Tim Burchett accuses Kevin McCarthy of a "sucker punch" to the kidneys and describes heated scene as he chased the former speaker down the hallway.

Said he's the type of the guy who as a kid would "hide behind his mama's skirt."
McCarthy denies it was intentional pic.twitter.com/fBvOUxMb5z

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 14, 2023

We were later reminded of a passage in former Congressman Adam Kinsinger’s book in which he claimed that McCarthy, always surrounded by his security guards,purposefully shoulder checked him hard when he passed him in the hallways. Who knew MyKevin was such a physical brute?

Naturally, Florida bomb thrower Matt Gaetz had to get in on the act and he filed an ethics complaint against his nemesis McCarthy for elbowing Burchett. (This was obviously in retaliation for an interview in which McCarthy slammed the “crazy 8” that defenestrated him, specifically mentioning the ethics complaints still pending against Gaetz.)

We have come to expect the House to be more than a little bit fractious lately and there have been whispers about physical threats being bandied about ever since the Speaker battle began. But yesterday the Senate got a little piece of that hot bully boy action for itself. Sen. Markwayne Mullin the freshman Senator from Oklahoma, has been trash talking with Teamster President Sean O’Brien on twitter over O’Brien referring to him as a “greedy CEO.” At a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Mullin challenged him to a fight right on the Senate floor:

.@SenMullin (R-OK) challenges Teamster President Sean O'Brian to fight during a Senate hearing on cooperate greed. Chairman @BernieSanders tried multiple times to reclaim order and asked the Senator to direct a question to the witness. pic.twitter.com/C7PAXicoD2

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 14, 2023

That actually went on for some minutes and it didn’t get any better. Mullin made the rounds of all the right wing cable shows and explained that there is nothing wrong with what he did because there’s “presence” for it:

Question: Are there any actual senate rules— could you guys go bare knuckle?

Mullin: We looked into the rules. You used to be able to cane. Andrew Jackson challenged 9 guys to a duel.. And so at the end of the day, there is presence for it pic.twitter.com/zznZbVYtHH

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 14, 2023

In an interesting coincidence, Mullin had an earlier altercation with Rep. Burchett over the McCarthy vote and kicked him out of his daily workout group. According to The Hill:

Burchett confirmed that he was booted from the early-morning workout, saying the senator “berated” and “yelled at him” until he left — which Mullin denied — and that Mullin’s friendship with McCarthy was the main reason.

The bad blood within the party is boiling over.

The conventional wisdom among the beltway wags is that everyone is simply exhausted and are at their breaking point. But why are they so tired? We aren’t in a great depression or a world war. The pandemic is no longer a crisis and these people didn’t care about it anyway. This is all of their own making. They’re upset because they can’t always get their way so they’re staging an institutional tantrum.

It’s easy to laugh and make fun of the clown show but this is actually very serious. The phenomenon has been growing slowly for years as extremists accumulated power and began to make unrealistic demands on the system. Donald Trump exacerbated the problem with his personal character flaws and lack of understanding or respect for democracy itself and now the party is fully engaged in a war with everyone in the country including itself.

The good news is that in spite of all this drama, they did manage to pass a short term Continuing Resolution without spending cuts and temporarily avoid a government shutdown. It only happened because the MAGA extremists decided they would not hold their new speaker to the standard they held McCarthy and allowed him to pass it with Democratic votes. But Matt Gaetz has made it clear he’s on borrowed time. It’s hard to see how this ends well. For any of us.

Salon

Benefits from Biden’s infrastructure bill sinking in

Voters’ choice next year is not just between preserving our experiment in government of, by, and for the people or creeping fascism. It’s also a choice of whether to improve Americans’ lives today and for our children’s future or to squander more energy and treasure on playground brawls, revenge, and punching down.

Is returning to middle school any mature adult’s idea of “great”?

Navigator this morning finds what Americans prefer:

• Two in three Americans continue to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law two years after it was signed into law by President Biden. 
• Most elements of the infrastructure law are even more popular than the law itself, particularly replacing and upgrading water pipes, building and repairing roads, and upgrading and repairing electric power grids. 

More:

By a 43-point margin, Americans continue to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation that President Biden signed into law two years ago today. When asked about a new infrastructure plan that would “improve roads and bridges, expand power infrastructure, increase passenger and rail access, and improve water infrastructure,” 65 percent of Americans support this legislation with only 22 percent opposed. The legislation earns strong support across partisanship, including nine in ten Democrats (net +84; 89 percent support – 5 percent oppose), a majority of independents (net +27; 52 percent support – 25 percent oppose), and two in five Republicans (net +2; 43 percent support – 41 percent oppose).

Despite a souring national environment over the last two years, this is consistent with Navigator’s November 2021 survey conducted just after Biden signed the legislation into law (net +40; 65 percent support – 25 percent oppose). Support is particularly high among Black Americans (78 percent), those living in households with a union member (73 percent), and those who are over the age of 65 (72 percent).

Sadly, some Americans peaked in middle school.

Not even pretending

Speaker Mike Johnson did it. He passed a stopgap spending measure through the House meant to prevent a government shutdown on Friday. With Democrats’ help. With all but two House Democrats. With more Democrats than Republicans. Now as it heads to the Senate, we await the MAGA fallout in the House.

The Washington Post and CNN will give you the bill’s details.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reacted to Johnson’s accomplishment and its potential blowback on “The Late Show.”

“I’m sure Mr. Johnson is very … smart,” she began ironically, because “the previous guy was driven out with torches and pitchforks.”

“We all know how this ends. This is not a party that is trying to govern.”

Minutes before Rachel Maddow walked out on our stage, we got word that the House passed Speaker Mike Johnson's bill to fund the government into the new year. Here's how @maddow reacted.#Colbert pic.twitter.com/BNwj4jVm4z

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 15, 2023

The two parties are doing two very different things. So now we are going to keep the government open. It is because the Democrats came to the rescue and said that we should. But this is the Republican Party still not even wanting to keep the government going because they don’t believe that governance is what we need in this country. They believe we want a strongman form of government under a guy who just says what he wants and it happens. And the stakes are really high right now.

Republicans prove her point

Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lost the speakership over the same sort of bill. But the hard right seems willing to cut the new guy (Johnson) a little slack. For now. Maybe it’s because they were too busy busting each other’s chops, figuratively and literally.

“Are The Republican Men Okay?” asks TPM. McCarthy allegedly threw an elbow at fellow Republican Tim Burchett of Tennessee (TPM):

It seems that McCarthy shoved or threw an elbow at Burchett. Burchett initially tried to respond jokingly, but when McCarthy ignored him, he yelled: “Hey Kevin, you got any guts!?” Burchett then ran down the hallway to catch him, his tan coat flapping, to confront McCarthy again. McCarthy denied touching him and Burchett called him a “jerk.”

McCarthy respnded to questions, saying, “If I hit somebody, they would know it. If I kidney punched someone, they would be on the ground.”

MAGA Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed an ethics complaint:

NEW: Gaetz files an ethics complaint against McCarthy over Burchett shove pic.twitter.com/s6U8cHsTPX

— Mica Soellner (@MicaSoellnerDC) November 14, 2023

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as you may have heard, had to stop a fight from breaking out in a Senate committee:

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin @SenMullin just stood up and tried to fight labor leader Sean O'Brien @TeamsterSOB at a Senate Help Committee hearing after reading his tweet where O'Brien says he'd take him "any time, any place." pic.twitter.com/8oiPSNZJV8

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 14, 2023

Finally:

Apparently, in a moment of irritation at a House Oversight Committee hearing this afternoon, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) called Rep. Jared Moskowitz (R-FL) a “smurf.”

“You look like a Smurf, here, just going around and all this stuff,” Comer shot at Moskowitz, who was wearing a blue suit and blue tie today.

“Gargamel was very angry today,” Moskowitz shot back on Twitter.

I don’t think the encounter deserves more unpacking than that, but here’s a more thorough breakdown if you care to ingest a bit more bleach this evening.

Watch the exchange here, if you dare.

TPM’s Nicole Lafond responds, “Something’s in the water.”

It’s not anything resembling adult behavior.