Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep — Neville Chamberlain

How’d that work out? As you no doubt recall, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia the next day.

For decades, the Republicans accused the Democrats of being Neville Chamberlains every time they suggested that the right’s bellicose saber rattling was over the top. They are still saber-rattling — against our allies like Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland, as we have seen during the Trump transition. Trump seems to have decided that threats of territorial expansion and invasion is going to be a cornerstone of his new administration.

But when it comes to Russia, the GOP has become Neville Chamberlain on steroids:

Rep. Ryan Zinke responds to Russia allegedly downing another passenger jet by suggesting Ukraine pledging to not join NATO and handing over Crimea to Russia would be "a good start" for negotiations to end Putin's war on Ukraine pic.twitter.com/iJl5DG1Nb7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 26, 2024

Accountability is only for people the Republicans don’t like. For his friends, (like Vladimir Putin) no act of provocation and violence is worthy of condemnation. It’s always a reason for Putin’s enemies to capitulate and give him whatever he wants.

What could go wrong?

There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2024

Interesting, no? Trump and his tech bro buddies need labor so it’s important that we make sure they can immigrate. I guess all the construction, agriculture, hospitality jobs that are currently filled by the foreigners Trump plans to deport are going to be filled by what? Prison labor? We have less that 4% unemployment. Who’s going to do it?

Musk doesn’t care about any of that, of course. He went on to explain:

“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

MAGA fans were confused and upset. According to TNR, this one went viral:

“There are over 330 million people in America. Surely, there must be enough among them to build your ultimate team?Why would you deny real Americans that opportunity by bringing foreigners here?”

There were dozens and dozens of similar replies, many people arguing and obviously upset that the richest man in the world can’t find a way to train or otherwise make Real Americans the beneficiaries of silicon valley profits.

Musk was having none of it:

It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE.

If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE.

End of story.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2024

He means, “if you want me and my rich pals to win.” And that is a very old right wing conservative talking point. It’s called “trickle down” and it is antithetical to the alleged populism fuelling MAGA. Who’s going to tell them?

This could get very interesting if someone can put puppet president Donald Trump on the spot over this. A lot of those MAGA followers on Twitter don’t seem to think that Musk and his tech-bro buds are special and should be allowed to have special dispensation from the foreigner purge of America.

At some point some of them are going to realize that Musk is an immigrant himself.

Update — Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted this:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 

The party that rejects vaccines, climate change, higher education and expertise of all kinds is leading that charge? Lol! Drink more bleach (and raw milk) America!

Yes, we have all accepted the horrific results of the November election, But that doesn’t mean January 6th won’t be a shitshow. The following was tweeted by right wing reporter Chad Pergram:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Failing to Elect a House Speaker Quickly

The problem has been percolating for a while.

It’s been subterranean. Lurking underneath the surface. Not necessarily perceptible.

Except to those who follow Congress closely.

But the issue gurgled to the top since the House stumbled badly trying to avert a government shutdown last week.

To wit:

Congress spasmed between a staggering, 1,500-page spending bill. Then defeated a narrow, 116-page bill – which President-elect Trump endorsed. Things got worse when the House only commandeered a scant 174 yeas for the Trump-supported bill and 38 Republicans voted nay. Circumstances grew even more dire when the House actually voted to avert a holiday government shutdown – but passed the bill with more Democrats (196) than Republicans (170). 34 GOPers voted nay.

It was long likely that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., might face a problem winning the Speaker’s gavel immediately when the new Congress convenes at noon et on January 3. Congressional experts knew that Johnson could be in trouble once the contours of the reed-thin House majority came into focus weeks after the November election. This could blossom into a full-blown crisis for Johnson – and House Republicans –when the Speaker’s vote commences a little after 1 pm et next Friday. 

 Johnson emerges bruised from last week’s government funding donnybrook. Anywhere from four to ten Republicans could oppose Johnson in the Speaker’s race.

Here’s the math:

The House clocks in at 434 members with one vacancy. That’s thanks to former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. He resigned his position for this Congress a few weeks ago. Even though Gaetz won re-election in November, his resignation letter – read on the floor of the House – signaled he did not plan to serve in the new Congress which begins in January.

This is the breakdown when the Congress starts: 219 Republicans to 214 Democrats.

President-elect Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., remains in the House for now. So does Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. Mr. Trump tapped her to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. That’s pending Senate confirmation – perhaps in late January or early February. Once Waltz and Stefanik resign, the GOP majority dwindles to 217-214.

But the Speaker’s election on January 3 poses a special challenge. Here’s the bar for Johnson – or any one else: The Speaker of the House must win an outright majority of all Members casting ballots for someone by name. In other words, the person with the most votes does not win. That’s what happened repeatedly to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., when he routinely outpolled House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., for Speaker to begin this Congress in January 2023. But it took days for McCarthy to cross the proper threshold.

More on that in a moment. 

So let’s crunch the math for Mike Johnson. If there are 219 Republicans and four vote for someone besides him – and all Democrats cast ballots for Jeffries, the tally is 215-214. But there’s no Speaker. No one attained an outright majority of all Members casting ballots for someone by name. 218 is the magic number if all 434 Members vote.

By rule, this paralyzes the House. The House absolutely, unequivocally, cannot do anything until it elects a Speaker. Period.

The House can’t swear-in Members. Technically, they’re still Representatives-elect. Only after the House chooses its Speaker does he or she in turn swear-in the membership.

The House certainly can’t pass legislation. It can’t form committees. It’s frozen in a parliamentary paralysis until it elects a Speaker.

Now, I hope you’re sitting down for the next part.

This also means that the House cannot certify the results of the Electoral College, making President-elect Trump the 47th President of the United States on January 6.

The failure to elect a Speaker compels the House to vote over and over….

And over.. and.. over..

Until it finally taps someone.

McCarthy’s election incinerated 15 ballots over five days two years ago.

The House settled into a Congressional cryogenic freeze for three weeks after Members ousted McCarthy in October of 2023. It burned through two Speaker candidates off the floor – House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., – and one candidate on the floor: Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

So you see the problem. 

Consider for a moment that prior to last year, the House never went to a second ballot to select a Speaker since Speaker Frederick Gillett, R-Mass., in 1923.

It took 63 ballots before the House finally settled on Speaker Howell Cobb, D-Ga., in 1849.

But that’s nothing. The longest Speaker’s election consumed two months before the House elected Speaker Nathaniel Banks, R-Mass., in 1856 – on the 133rd ballot.

So anything which elongates this into a collision with January 6th- the statutory day to certify the election results and now one of the most ignominious days in American history – is dangerous.

To be clear: there is no dispute that President-elect Trump won the election. There is no anticipation of a repeat of a riot at the Capitol like four years ago. But a failure to certify the Electoral College on the day it’s supposed to be completed – especially after the 2021 experience – is playing with fire. Such a scenario would again reveal another, never-before-considered vulnerability in the fragile American political system. 

On January 6, the House and Senate are supposed to meet in a Joint Session of Congress to tabulate and certify the electoral votes. Any disputes over a state’s slate of electoral votes compels the House and Senate to then debate and vote separately on those results. The election is not final until the Joint Session concludes and the Vice President – in this case Vice President Harris in her capacity as President of the Senate – announces a victor.

Congress is not required to certify the Electoral College on the calendar day of January 6. There is actually some leeway to wrap things up. In 2021, the Electoral College wasn’t certified until around 3:52 am et on January 7. It only becomes a major problem if this drags on through noon et on January 20. That’s when the Constitution prescribes that the President-elect take the oath of office.

What happens if the Electoral College isn’t sorted out by January 20? Well, President Biden is done. So he’s gone. The same with Harris. Next in the presidential line of succession is the Speaker of the House. Well, there’s no Speaker. So who becomes President? 

Well, there is at that moment a President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the most senior member of the majority party. He or she is 4th in line to the Presidency. At this moment, the President Pro Tempore is Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. But Republicans claim control of the chamber in early January. And unlike the House if it’s stymied over a Speaker, the Senate is functioning. That means 91-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, becomes Senate President Tempore. Grassley has served in the Senate since 1981.

If the House is still frittering away time, trying to elect a Speaker on January 20, Grassley likely becomes “Acting President.”

I write “likely” because this gets into some serious, extra-Constitutional turf. These are unprecedented scenarios. Strange lands never visited in the American political experience.

And it all hinges on Mike Johnson – or frankly, someone else – wrapping up the Speaker’s vote with dispatch on January 3. Any interregnum like the past two Speaker’s elections begins establishing challenging historical precedents.

But frankly, it’s unclear if the House can avoid such contretemps.

It’s about the math. And once again, balancing that parliamentary equation is tenuous at best. 

They’ll probably come around, just so that Trump isn’t embarrassed, right? Right?????

I honestly don’t know. These backbenchers are completely nuts. They might not care.

She’s Ba-aack

The Hill this morning:

Former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson on Thursday launched a bid for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), jumping into a crowded field of candidates vying to rebuild the party after its general election losses last month. 

Well, I do agree with this:

In fact, it’s important that we recognize the psychological and emotional dimensions of Trump’s appeal. We need to understand it to create the energy to counter it. MAGA is a distinctly 21^st century political movement and it will not be defeated by a 20^th century tool kit. Data analysis, fundraising, field organizing, and beefed-up technology – while all are important – will not be enough to prepare the way for Democratic victory in 2024 and beyond.

Ignore for a moment that 2024 is all but over. Williamson is older than I am, and I would never pitch myself as a leader for a new generation. With her campaign record, winning the DNC chair would take a miracle. Maybe a full course in miracles. Turns out she has written a manifesto too.

Policy doesn’t drive voting behavior

There are many changes Democrats might and should undertake going forward. Not because of Donald Trump. Because of Democrats. Among them, replacing their gerontocracy with younger leaders with 21st-century media skills. But we’ve been over that. Another is finding a work-around for conservative media dominance. While Democrats’ branding and message discipline is slowly improving, no amount of narrative brilliance will penetrate the public mind until they’ve addressed their “when a tree falls in the forest” problem.

It is an idée fixe on the left that politics is about kitchen-table issues and policies. So many post-mortem criticisms explain Donald Trump’s November win as Kamala Harris focusing too little on this or too much on that. Focusing too much on this group and not enough on another, as though minor tweaks (more attention to the critic’s complaint) might have changed the outcome.

Typical is a Jacobin article floated yesterday on a lefty listserv: “No, Economic Populism Did Not Lose This Election.” Economic populism works, the authors argue. Populism is popular. Polls show it. Studies show it across “a variety of statistical specifications, and accounting for an array of district characteristics,” etc.

So why did Harris lose? Because her campaign was insufficiently populist. Because she was insufficiently populist. And Joe Biden too. While his Build Back Better plans started out that way, “the policies that ultimately passed — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — while steps in the right direction, were simply not ambitious enough to demonstrate that the party is serious about delivering for the working class.” Etc. And “Biden was simply not capable of connecting with the people to convey his economic vision.”

The critique triggered a memory of something Rick Perlstein observed about conservatives almost 20 years ago while presenting at a Princeton University conference, “The Conservative Movement: Its Past, Present, and Future.” The event featured a roster of conservative luminaries and one liberal turd in their punchbowl: Perlstein. Conservatives, he argued, debate whether this or that figure claiming the mantle is or is not a “real” conservative. He later wrote (emphasis mine):

In conservative intellectual discourse there is no such thing as a bad conservative. Conservatism never fails. It is only failed. One guy will get up, at a conference like this, and say conservatism, in its proper conception, is 33 1/3 percent this, 33 1/3 percent that, 33 1/3 percent the other thing. Another rises to declaim that the proper admixture is 50-25-25.

It is, among other things, a strategy of psychological innocence. If the first guy turns out to be someone you would not care to be associated with, you have an easy, Platonic, out: with his crazy 33-33-33 formula–well, maybe he’s a Republican. Or a neocon, or a paleo. He’s certainly not a conservative. The structure holds whether it’s William Kristol calling out Pat Buchanan, or Pat Buchanan calling out William Kristol.

Or a critic at Jacobin or The New Republic or The Nation calling out Harris and Biden for not being a real populist or a real progressive. As Digby once observed, “‘Conservative’ is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives’ good graces. Until they aren’t. At which point they are liberals.” Per the horseshoe theory of politics, the same dynamic explains how the left accounts for its own failures and defends its political dogmas.

Read the room, people. Look who a majority of Americans just elected president again knowing all they know about him. Yet it is an idée fixe on the left that politics is about kitchen-table issues and pet policies. On TikTok, @legaldad confronted the notion directly: All the policy stances MAGA says it cares about, it doesn’t really care about. They’re not what drives voting behavior. Deeper urges do. Yes, some of them are economically tinged.

The same day, the Washington Post ran a story that Latino men flocked to Trump’s puffed-up image of success driven by the prosperity gospel:

“Kamala said, ‘Trump is for the rich, I fight for the poor.’ But I don’t want to be low-class — I hope that’s not a bad way to say it. But I don’t want to be there,” said Christian Pion, 31, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. He became a U.S. citizen last year, a decade after coming to the United States from the Dominican Republic, and cast his first presidential ballot for Trump. “God doesn’t want you to be poor.”

[…]

In the past half-century, driven by larger-than-life pastors, it has overtaken other more traditional theologies centered on God’s priority being poor and disenfranchised people, some experts said. This belief system, they said, helps explain what exit polls showed was a significant shift among Latino Christian voters to Trump, who they see as an uber-successful, strong and God-focused striver.

Policies that deliver tangible results matter. They instill confidence that government can be a force for good in people’s lives. But these days, policies don’t drive voter behavior as liberal intellectuals think they should. When Covid relief checks landed in people’s mailboxes with Trump’s name on them, voters credited Trump with delivering money that Congress appropriated. It wasn’t the policy that won him support so much as the marketing.

Do Democrats need to win back more of the working class? Sure. But in an identitarian era more than ever, nobody wants to be seen as poor. Populism may be popular in polling, but voting behavior is not economic policy-driven, if ever it was. So long as the left fails to question its political dogmas and address grittier structural issues and voters’ psychological drives, we’ll be seeing the same critiques Perlstein saw again and again, only on the left.

Merry Christmas from your once and future president. He’s just trying to bring us all together:

He takes every disgusting, imbecilic thing he does, anything that makes the decent half of the country sick to its stomach, and doubles down on it to own the libs.

Don’t ever let this become normal.

Update —

He reposted this. They just love this stuff.

🎄 Take a moment to watch this heartwarming Christmas video from President Biden.

A beautiful reminder of the normalcy, kindness, and decency his administration has brought.

We’re truly going to miss him. pic.twitter.com/Vn8ncxVadj

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) December 25, 2024

I usually put the original up on Christmas Day but I thought this was well done.

War is never over, unfortunately. But it could be…

The show was sponsored by @CocaCola who after seeing Charlie Brown on the 1965 cover of Time, asked about the possibility of sponsoring an hour-long animated holiday special. CBS and Coke only gave them $76,000. pic.twitter.com/goanheEMoc

— Danny Deraney (@DannyDeraney) December 9, 2024

Peanuts and MAD magazine formed me. I think it explains a lot …

I’m just leaving that classic bit up for a while for your enjoyment. It never gets old. But if you’re interested, please click over to this great piece by Jeff Maurer breaking down why it’s so great. An excerpt:

In my opinion, this is still funny after 38 years, which is remarkable. One reason why it perseveres might be because it’s all wit and no cheats: It’s not a song or an impression, there are no costumes or pop culture references or celebrity cameos. It’s just a fucking guy sitting in a chair talking — the only “cheat” is that the guy is Steve Martin

So: The writing is doing all the work. And the writing is an especially clean example of the three steps of sketch writing, which are: 1) Establish the game, 2) Heighten the game, and 3) Blow it out.

Read on for what he means by that. It’s fascinating.

And since we’re talking about comedy and since Hanukkah has begun, here’s another holiday comedy classic: