Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Oh great

I’ve argued that he is more likely to take votes from Trump than Biden. But it appears that at this point in the cycle anyway, I’m wrong. He does take more from Biden. Dan Pfeiffer writes about it in his newsletter today:

Politico also reports that American Values 2024, a Super PAC supporting Kennedy Jr., has commissioned polling and is preparing for an independent bid.

While multiple polls demonstrated that the No Labels and West candidacies could hurt Biden, the initial speculation was that Kennedy would hurt Trump more. On its face, Kennedy Jr. has been running as MAGA’s favorite Democrat. He is a regular on Fox News and other MAGA media outlets, where he mostly attacks Biden, spouts anti-vax conspiracy theories, and toes the Trump line on Russia. If West pulls disaffected liberals from Biden, and the No Labels ticket is a place for Republicans and independents that disapprove of Biden, shouldn’t RFK Jr. take votes from Trump?

What the Polls Say

Most of the polling shows Kennedy Jr. getting  10% and 20% of the vote against Biden in the primary. The number generally decreased over the course of the year as people learned more about his disturbing views on a wide range of issues.

Kennedy Jr. has made zero effort to appeal to Democratic primary voters. Based on his rhetoric and schedule, it would be easy to assume he was actually running for the Republican nomination. The results of his approach can be seen in his approval rating. In a September Quinnipiac poll, Kennedy Jr.’s favorable rating is 32/35, with 31% who haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion. However, that number is driven by Republican support — 48% of Republicans view him favorably. Among Democrats, only 14% are favorable, while 57% hold unfavorable views.

It’s bad for Trump to have someone so adored by Republicans on the ballot, right?

Well, maybe not.

A new poll from Echelon Insights, a well-respected GOP polling firm, shows that a Kennedy Jr. independent bid hurts Biden more than Trump. In a two-way race, Trump is up three on Biden. Trump’s lead grows to four when Kennedy Jr. is added to the mix. One point is mostly statistical noise and nothing worth worrying about this far from the election. The more interesting data can be found in the crosstabs. Kennedy Jr. gets 14% in a three-way race. But more of those votes come from Democratic-leaning voters than Republicans.

Additionally, 13% of self-identified liberals and 16% of 2020 Biden voters support Robert Kennedy Jr. Only 9% of conservatives and 10% of Trump voters defect to RFK Jr.

Why Another MAGA Candidate Helps Trump (For Now)

These findings may be surprising given Kennedy Jr.’s MAGA credentials, but there are a few reasons why his candidacy deals less damage to Trump at the moment. First, many Republicans who approve of RFK Jr. are committed Trump voters. Therefore, they like RFK Jr.’s MAGA vibes but stick with Trump. Second, some Democrats and independents supporting Kennedy Jr. are unaware of his stances on vaccines and other issues. As Kennedy Jr. is further scrutinized, some of those voters should return to Biden. Finally, the biggest reason is that, as of right now, there are more Democrats unhappy with Biden than Republicans unhappy with Trump. As Democrats become more engaged with the race, that will change (if it doesn’t change, democracy is screwed).

You don’t need a decoder ring to see what is happening here. Steve Bannon reportedly encouraged Kennedy Jr. to run. Some of his biggest supporters are MAGA media personalities like Tucker Carlson. His campaign and Super PAC are being funded by Trump supporters. According to a report by ABC News:

The super PAC, which can support Kennedy with outside advertising and other spending but cannot directly coordinate with him, raised a total of $9.7 million through the end of June.

Almost all of that sum, 96%, came from two megadonors, one of them with a history of donating to Republicans: $5 million, more than 50% of the group’s total receipts for the first half of the year, was given by Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who previously gave more than $20 million to a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election cycle.

Encouraging third-party candidates has been part of Trump’s strategy since 2020, when Jared Kushner was reportedly involved in helping Kanye West. The original idea was for Kennedy Jr. to sow chaos in the Democratic Primary. Despite his famous name, he has been unsuccessful. Therefore, becoming an independent candidate to attack Biden from the Left on some issues (military spending) and the Right on others (immigration) is the logical next move for someone out to damage Biden. Kennedy Jr. can accumulate online attention and raise money to attack Biden — who could end up fighting a two-front war.

In the end, RFK Jr. may pull more from Trump, as Nate Silver has argued. He may have no impact at all. The campaign will change between now and next fall. Getting on the ballot is not easy or cheap, and Kennedy Jr. is unpredictable. But as of right now — his candidacy could represent another potential challenge for a President with no margin of error.

It’s literal insanity. But as someone who went through 2000 and had massive arguments with Nader voters (when the stakes were even lower) I am not sanguine that Kennedy isn’t going to appeal to people who don’t understand that their desire to either make a point about the political system by voting for someone who represents their disdain or voting for someone who is more perfect on an issue they care about will actually make the opposite point and empower someone who is invariably even more hostile to the issues they care about. It’s an age-old argument in American which has a system that leads it to maintain a two party system whether we like it or not.

Obviously, the stakes have never been higher than they are now. Not even close. Look at what the Republicans are doing in congress just this week. Look at what their standard bearer is saying outside the courtroom in New York as he stands trial for fraud. We are in deep deep trouble and we don’t have the luxury of empty gestures.

God help us if we can’t persuade every person who isn’t captured by the MAGA cult to vote Democratic this time.

Did Lincoln lose his soul or save a nation?

And you don’t need to win over 100 percent of the people on the other side or on any side. In a democracy, what you need is a majority. — NPR’s Steve Inskeep to Anand Giridharadas at The.Ink

Aggressive gerrymandering by GOP-led legislatures means in many places it takes much more than a simple majority to win power. Otherwise, Inskeep is correct. What Democrats must do in such places is shave the other side’s vote margins.

That’s doable. Non-Democrats are not monolithic, nor are Trump supporters, as John Russell of The Holler found in Erie, Pennnsylvania. Democrats campaigning conservatively by avoiding all contact with such voters won’t cut it. Nor will giving potential allies the side-eye when they move in our direction. The left is too liberal with sticks and way too stingy with carrots.

Inskeep (“Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America“) makes a case for political frenemies in conversation with Giridharadas:

I don’t know if you’ve read Frank Foer’s new book on the Biden presidency. It’s called The Last Politician, and it struck me that, on a completely different topic, it was presenting this idea that’s kind of similar to yours. The idea is that Biden, in Foer’s telling, is someone whose gift is this now despised art of politics, of making deals, of talking to people you don’t like, of being able to hold your nose with ugly compromises. And that idea has gotten demeaned in our time. Part of what Foer’s arguing is that, actually, in a moment of anti-democratic threat, that behavior, while maybe crass and all those things we associate it with, is crucial; it’s actually what holds societies together. I wonder if you feel like you are making a similar case but drawing on a 19th century example for the 21st century?

I think there is a similarity there, and the common thread is this: if you think that there is a minority of people who endanger the country, you need to be the one to assemble a majority to outnumber them. If you’re going to defeat someone you think is doing something terrible, and also keep a democracy, you have to build a majority. And that might mean that you have to deal with people that you disagree with on some things, or many things, or even most things, but you find enough common cause that you can work with them on something.

You write in the beginning of the book that Lincoln has been sacralized, much in the way that folks like Martin Luther King are sacralized and all kinds of heroes are sacralized, so that we lose the texture of how they actually operated in the down and dirty reality of political life. Can you give us some examples of Lincoln’s lower-order behaviors and maneuvering and machinations that illustrate this kind of politicking that you’re trying to redeem?

We want Lincoln to be a heroic, unifying figure. And he ought to be; he is in many ways a unifying figure and a great democratic figure, but we overlook the things that he did that led to his accomplishments. And one of the toughest ones was his effort to win the votes of people who hated immigrants: so-called Know-Nothings in the 1850s.

This was a huge movement, it attracted a lot of support, it included a lot of Lincoln’s own political friends in the state of Illinois, it included a lot of voters in important parts of the state of Illinois, and Lincoln hated the ideology that was being expressed. There’s a quote in the book, from a letter to his friend, where Lincoln says, I’m not a Know-Nothing, that is certain, I despise their views as much as I despise slavery, and if they ever get into power, I would rather move to a country where they make no pretense of loving liberty, such as Russia.

And yet he realizes in 1858, when he’s running for Senate, that if he’s going to have even a chance of winning, he needs to attract some of these people into his coalition. And he reaches out to Joseph Gillespie, an old friend of his, who’d become a Know-Nothing leader, and says, I need votes in your state senate district. I need votes from your supporters to have any chance of winning. Will you help me? And Gillespie does. Now, I want to add that Lincoln tried to keep his integrity. As far as I can tell, from the records that exist, he talked to these crowds only about their common aversion to slavery. He never has a whisper, even a word, where he hints that he might like their Know-Nothing ideology.

But he was still taking this morally perilous choice to build the anti-slavery coalition. That’s a hard call. Are we entirely comfortable knowing that Abraham Lincoln, the guy in the Lincoln Memorial, was on a stage with a nativist leader a couple of times? It’s kind of uncomfortable, but it was part of building the Republican Party that ended up bringing about an enormous social change in this country.

Russell found areas of common agreement with MAGAs he met in Erie. The right is not monolithic. Out in red counties, accentuating areas of positive agreement (as the song goes) has potential for shaving the GOP’s margins enough to win a majority, at least in state or congressional district races (2006). Our frenemies don’t have to check off every ideological box. Just enough to vote with us and win us power to make change.

Inskeep says, “the challenge is not to be friends with everybody, it is to assemble a majority of people who will respect your humanity, who will uphold your rights. Or who will at least a little bit support your side of the argument, as much as you can do today, as much as you can do in the next election.” That involves “in some cases risking yourself to find alliances.”

Anat Shenker-Osorio (profiled in Giridharadas’ “The Persuaders“) tells students at Berkeley (timestamp 3:09), “In advocacy … you can choose to be right or you can choose to win.” The left loves being right. Shenker-Osorio doesn’t care.

“If I can get you to do the thing I need you to do and you still think climate change is fake,” she says, “then that’s a problem for you and the person who dropped you on your head. But it’s not a problem for me.”

I’m also in this for the win.

What Republicans did and what it really means

A lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill have no use for Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and the seven others from the Republican caucus whose votes the other day sank Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. MAGA reactionaries lobbing grenades at Democrats is one thing. Lobbing them into the Republican caucus is quite another.

As predicted, Republicans are trying to pin McCarthy’s ouster on Democrats. Reality check: It was Gaetz’s resolution. His alone. For reasons including his initiating an impeachment inquiry against President Biden and his reversal on condemning Donald Trump for precipitating a violent insurrection, Democrats saw no benefit in bailing out McCarthy.

Now comes the aftermath. Giving McCarthy the boot is not a good look either for Republicans or for the U.S.A. as a whole. After a quick review of the week’s events and Donald Trump’s “burn-the-house-down” antics at his New York trial, Peter Baker (take with a grain of salt) writes that the foundations of our democracy appear shaky both to scholars and average Americans. Also, foreign adversaries are watching closely:

Robert M. Gates, the longtime Republican national security official who served as defense secretary for both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, warned in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine last week titled “The Dysfunctional Superpower” that both Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China were interpreting America’s troubles in perilous ways.

Both leaders, he wrote, are convinced that democracies like the United States “are past their prime and have entered an irreversible decline,” evident in their growing isolationism, political polarization and domestic conflict. “Dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable,” Mr. Gates wrote, “practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets — with potentially catastrophic effects.”

And that was before the meltdown in the House of the past few days. In an email on Wednesday, Mr. Gates wrote, “The events of the last couple of days have only underscored how real is the dysfunction.”

Washington Post:

“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University tells the Washington Post. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”

Congress arrived at this point for myriad reasons, all of which build on one another, scholars say: Social media and cable news incentivized politicians to perform for the camera, not for their constituents. Aggressive gerrymandering created deeply partisan districts where representation is decided in primary contests, not general elections. Weakened political parties became captive to their loudest and most extreme members.

Taken together, those factors handed a small number of lawmakers the power to throw one of the three branches of government into disarray and, for now, paralysis.

The eight GOP members behind McCarthy’s loss (all from safely drawn GOP districts) represent just 1.8% of the country and an extreme minority. Yet here we are. The House can conduct no business until a replacement is elected. And another funding deadline looms.

“If American democracy is already suffering and weak from various maladies, this unruly crisis in the House is just going to kick it a little further in that direction,” said Alex Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. “You are taking a set of institutions and you are weakening them and then pointing to their weakness.”

That has been the conservative playbook for decades. Brand democratic governance as dysfunctional, get elected, then set about proving it through legislative sabotage. The rise of multicultural democracy has further incentivized sabotage by reactionaries who see their democratic routes to power narrowing. Facing an unfavorable strategic position, their inclination is to throw over the chess board.

As disconcerting as the events of the past few weeks have been, more worrying is what might come next. History has shown that government dysfunction can be a prelude to the erasure of democracy altogether, with authoritarianism rising in its place, said Harvard’s Ziblatt [“Tyranny of the Minority”].

“What precedes a democratic breakdown is political stalemate and extreme dysfunction where there’s a sense that nothing can get done,” Ziblatt said. “When governments can’t respond in genuine crises, it has a delegitimizing effect, and it reinforces the sense among citizens that we have to resort to other means.”

MAGAs resorted once on Jan. 6. If Trump sees the inside of a jail cell or rages himself red-faced into a coronary (like Andrew Breitbart), they’ll resort again.

Donald Trump on Day 3 of his civil fraud trial, which he is voluntarily attending:

“But I’m here, stuck here. And I can’t … I’d rather be right now in Iowa. I’d rather be in New Hampshire, or South Carolina, or Ohio, or a lot of other places. But I’m stuck here.” pic.twitter.com/EEQJNM5A20

— The Recount (@therecount) October 4, 2023

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in the winter of 1776. May God help us get through this one.

Yet another example of right wing arrested development

CNN:

Kevin McCarthy was behind interim Speaker Patrick McHenry’s move to kick former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer out of their office spaces, two Republican sources told CNN.

GOP Rep. Garret Graves told reporters on Wednesday that McCarthy is getting the office that McHenry has ordered her to vacate.

“Look the deal is that the office that Pelosi is in right now is the office of the preceding speaker. Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats determined that they wanted a new … speaker, and it’s Kevin McCarthy. So, he’s getting the office,” he said.

Sources close to Pelosi and Hoyer say it was retaliation for Democrats siding against McCarthy in voting to vacate the speaker’s chair Tuesday. The unofficial offices are located near the House floor.

McCarthy and McHenry’s did not respond to requests for comment.

Graves then put the blame on Democrats for voting McCarthy out of office.

“I don’t know what they’re complaining about,” Graves said. “They created this situation.

“I don’t know what they’re complaining about,” Graves said. “They created this situation.”

It’s the Democrats’ fault for not saving McCarthy from his own caucus. I’ve heard some fatuous BS in my day but that really takes the cake. The whole party is like a bunch of juvenile delinquents.

I have to ask, once again: lead in the water?

The House is in chaos? No biggie…

How Fox News’ favorite show shared the news that the House GOP had completely blown itself up:

The conservative panelists of The Five, much like the bulk of the GOP, focused most of their ire on Gaetz while arguing that House Republicans had actually accomplished quite a bit under McCarthy in his nine-month tenure.

Noting that former President Donald Trump complained on social media that “Republicans are always fighting among themselves” rather than “fighting the radical left Democrats who are destroying our country,” Jeanine Pirro declared that she was “furious” over McCarthy’s removal.

“Now what we’ve got is total chaos when the Republicans are playing out their infighting on national television in a historic way instead of fighting Joe Biden’s policies,” she exclaimed. “The one time we are up in virtually every metric as it relates to the Biden administration, you’ve got the Republicans going out there and showing how dysfunctional they are as Matt Gaetz engages in fundraising.”

At the same time, she insisted that “they have done a lot in Congress” and “got lots of bills passed,” blaming the Senate for not wanting to vote on the House’s legislation. “They’ve done a lot in terms of oversight,” she added.

“This is the crazy thing, Democrats who hate the MAGA Republicans are joining with them to oust Speaker McCarthy,” Pirro sighed. “This is like the devil is in the middle of all of this chaos and Donald Trump is right. Why are Republicans fighting with each other like this?!”

While Pirro expressed fury over the political chaos in the House, her colleague Greg Gutfeld suggested that it didn’t really matter in the end and was not relevant to the network’s viewers.

Pointing out that Gaetz justified pushing for McCarthy’s removal because he “broke promises,” Gutfeld waved off those grievances as much ado about nothing.

“So who’s telling the truth? I don’t know,” he proclaimed. “I’m not sure that I care because I’m with Trump on this. We’re talking about this instead of the border, instead of crime, instead of inflation.”

Grumbling that Republicans “are doing this” instead of focusing on actual issues, Gutfeld then signaled to Fox News viewers that they shouldn’t care about the removal of the House Speaker.

“It’s a historic event, but it’s one of the few historic events that I don’t care about,” he said. “This has no effect on our viewers. Does it make our streets safer? No. Does it make our borders real again? No. Does it make our gas prices go down? No. It’s just sound and fury signifying incompetence.”

Shortly after this segment on The Five aired, a former Fox News employee texted the following observation to The Daily Beast.

“Yeah because we know Gutfeld would say the same thing if Pelosi had been ousted by the House progressives,” the ex-staffer said. “It’s a tired, cynical talking point to gaslight viewers to say if it doesn’t affect him, they should feel the same. No one has more contempt for Fox’s viewers then their own hosts.”

This is what The Five was really interested in yesterday:

I’m not even sure how to caption this pic.twitter.com/cqJe2y7887

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 3, 2023

She must have looked very closely at those dick pics. Very, very closely.

I enjoy reading the right wing apostates these days because in some ways they see certain aspect s of our politics more clearly than my own long-time allies. Maybe it’s because it’s newer to them to see this perspective or maybe it’s because some of my own allies are still mired in ancient, and currently irrelevant, internecine beefs.

This piece by JV Last at the Bulwark isn’t exactly a new insight to many of us but it’s refreshingly sharp and very, very accurate:

Imagine that it was the Democrats yesterday. Imagine that Pramila Jayapal and Cori Bush had forced Nancy Pelosi out of the speaker’s chair.

What would the reaction have been?

Dems in Disarray!

Let me channel it for you:

Democrats are controlled by their far-left who are totally out of touch with mainstream voters. This is why you got Trump the first time. White working-class voters see that Democrats have no interest in their real lives because they’re captive to progressive radicals. Republicans are going to crush them in 2024 and it will be Democrats’ own fault when Trump returns to power.

Sound about right? Did I miss anything?

Yet when Matt Gaetz holds the Republican majority hostage in the House and forces the ejection of the speaker because he made a deal to avoid a government shutdown the reaction is more along the lines of . . .

Hell’s bells Martha, this is unfortunate. Going to be a lot of chaos. But, you know, that’s how Republicans are. Oh well.

So raise your hand if you think Republicans will pay an electoral price for this debacle. Or if you think that this instance of Republicans’ failure to govern will cost Donald Trump any votes when he faces Joe Biden?

Please understand that this isn’t a complaint about media bias (though that’s real). It’s a complaint about voter bias. The public has asymmetric attitudes about Republicans and Democrats baked into their worldview.

And this asymmetry is creating a danger for democracy.

2. If Biden Had Done It

Now imagine that Joe Biden said the following words:

Just arrived at the Witch Hunt Trial taking place in the very badly failing (so sadly!) State of New York, where people and companies are fleeing by the thousands. Corrupt Attorney General, Letitia James, is a big reason for this. . . . I am not even entitled, under any circumstances, to a JURY. This Witch Hunt cannot be allowed to continue. It is Election Interference and the start of Communism right here in America!

Or these words:

They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its “Country Threatening Treason.” . . . I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. . . . They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

Or these words:

Mark Milley . . . turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!

Imagine what the reaction would be. Again, let me channel it for you:

Holy shit, President Biden has gone insane. The cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office, immediately. This man has dementia and cannot be allowed to hold power. Shapiro, Whitmer, and Newsom should announce primary challenges this afternoon. America is in immediate danger.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that we’d have an Infinity-Alarm Fire because everyone in mainstream America would think that Biden was literally (and seriously) unfit for office because he’d become mentally defective.

Obviously, those are all things Trump has said just in the last two weeks.

And what has the reaction been? Let me tell you: Over the last four weeks Trump has opened up a small lead over Biden in the polling average.

I’ll just interject here that Romney opened a lead on Obama at roughly the same time in 2012. Same thing with Reagan in ’84. While every election is different, I think it pays not to panic when this happens. Remember, Joe Biden is an incumbent president with a good story to tell who is facing a candidate who is under 91 felony indictments and is certifiably insane. And he beat that same nutcase once already.

No, it shouldn’t even be close but we have a sick political culture and we just have to hope that it’s not terminal.

Again: I am bringing this up not to complain about The Media, but to point out that we have two systemic asymmetries at play in American politics right now.

The first is structural: The combination of polarization, population distribution, and the Electoral College has given the Republican party a large advantage in the Senate and presidential elections. Maybe this advantage is transitory; maybe it’s permanent. But it’s real and is probably worth at least 3 percentage points in the 2024 presidential contest.

The second is notional: The general public holds members of the two parties to very different standards.

Here are some complaints you hear about Joe Biden’s administration:

-Inflation is up: Then the government acts to stop inflation through a combination legislation (the Inflation Reduction Act) and raising interest rates.

-Prices haven’t deflated: With inflation waning, the complaint shifts from rising prices to the fact the prices have not gone down to pre-pandemic levels for select goods and services.

-Interest rates are high: As some prices of goods and services fall, the criticism shifts to complain about interest rates being higher—even though interest rate increases were one of the tools for blunting inflation.

You see how the complaints are always shifting, yes?

Meanwhile, Trump is just Trump. He talks about communism and witch hunts and executing people and it’s all just . . . you know, Trump Stuff.

Democrats think it’s bad, sure. Republicans actually like it. And the people in the middle? Well, go look at those polls. Seems to me that they’re pretty sanguine.

When it comes to the structural asymmetry, you can at least come up with theoretical reforms: Add states; move to a national popular vote; reform the Electoral College.

None of these are going to happen, obviously. They are fantasy politics because it is assumed that the government is too sclerotic to fix serious structural problems. And this assumption is almost certainly correct.

But you can’t even come up with a theoretical solution to the notional asymmetry—to the fact that Republicans can fail even the minimal organizing tasks of legislating and have a madman as the head of the party and yet still be perfectly viable as an electoral matter—while Democrats must play perfect baseball and never antagonize anyone other than their own base voters just to get close to parity.

There is no person or thing that caused this asymmetry. It’s like the growth of a glacier: a product of forces both environmental and particular, which work in ways that are complex, deep, and slow.

Either this asymmetry will eventually resolve on its own, or it won’t.

Democrats look at Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz and say, “How could they act like this?”

And the answer is: Because the voters let them. Not always and not every time. But often enough.

Their voters don’t just let them. They actively encourage them. They now see politics as a game in which their goal is to assert their dominance, period. With the arrival of Trump it’s become the defining characteristic of the party. GOP voters revel in it.

There’s quite a bit of punditry today suggesting that the Democrats did the wrong thing by failing to bail out McCarthy yesterday. Here is some important context as to why they voted in unity not to do it from a House staffer named Aaron Fritschner:

Pretty evident people don’t understand a key piece of House Dems’ thinking on McCarthy and governance of the House. The idea that we acted out of schadenfreude or pique with no thought to the legislative outlook is, of course, silly nonsense. Here’s what the takes are missing- 

On Saturday morning we had no idea what was happening. Scalise told the GOP they were moving bills that signaled imminent shutdown. This is what we expected. Then McCarthy suddenly and unexpectedly did an about face and announced a vote on a CR. We didn’t know what to make of it.

How to interpret this? McCarthy has resisted doing this all along, the wingnuts threatened to kick him out if he did it and he was running every play at their call. My immediate read was he wanted and expected us to vote against the suspension so we would be blamed for a shutdown 

I said this then (see below). And our members believed it, in fact without naming names I can say I heard it from multiple members yesterday as they were weighing how to vote, and that was with hindsight about what happened.

So in this moment, you look to McCarthy for signals—

And what signals is McCarthy sending us?

Dems: “We would like to read the $200 billion, 71-page bill we’ve never seen. You promised 72 hours but we’ll settle for 90 minutes.”

McCarthy: GFY

Dems: well we are going to take that time, but we are satisfied, we’ll pass your bill to help you get out of the jam you created for yourself

McCarthy: the Democrats wanted to shut down the government and f*ck the troops

People want us to give the guy credit for stopping a shutdown but it is still not clear to me right now sitting here writing this that he *intended* to do that.

This really matters and not just on an emotional level- the resolution set up not one but two new legislative problems 

Now we have to pass an omnibus or face a shutdown again by Thanksgiving AND we have to fund military assistance to Ukraine pretty soon. But we are told McCarthy is going to help us there, he has made an agreement to help Ukraine.

And what does McCarthy say about that? This:

And what is McCarthy signaling to us on funding? He’s going to steer us directly back into the crazy cuts and abortion restrictions, the Freedom Caucus setting the agenda, breaking his deal with Biden, and driving us towards a shutdown in November
x.com/Olivia_Beavers…

Ok we are reasonable people, maybe he’s just telling them what they have to hear and he’ll screw them at the last minute. So what’s he saying to us privately? What reason is he giving us to think any of this is going to turn out well if we help him? None.
x.com/JakeSherman/st…

The supposed “institutional interest” would have us not only put out Republicans’ many fires for them, it would have us do so based on our specific belief and trust that *McCarthy is lying*. Like, his lying is supposed to be a good thing, and what sells the arrangement for us. 

A speakership founded upon Democrats’ trust that McCarthy will lie to his own guys and not to us is not rational, folks! It isn’t sustainable or reasonable and it’s no way to run the House. We needed him to give us any reason to help him and he very intentionally did not do so. 

People say “he couldn’t make a deal it would compromise his power” and they’re just wrong, that was a solvable problem. He could’ve publicly or privately given us a sense the CR was good faith and we were going to get through the omnibus, stave off a shutdown, and help Ukraine. 

This came down to trust, and that’s the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that. 

Even after all that happened – January 6th, the debt limit crisis, his vengeance against our members, breaking his word to the President, impeachment, empowering the right wing – there were Democrats who were imho willing to help McCarthy if he had given them a reason. He didn’t. 

It is completely daft to assume that Democrats could have trusted Kevin McCarthy to get us through this mess. He had run out of rope from the Republicans and he no longer had any ability to make a deal and stick to it and he didn’t seem inclined to try. He was incompetent. He never should have allowed that Motion to Vacate with one person to take effect. He put his own gun to his head.

Your party turns its lonely eyes to you

Some Republicans literally can’t think of anyone but Trump:

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) announced late Tuesday that he will file paperwork to nominate former President Trump to be the next Speaker of the House.

“This week, when the U.S. House of Representatives reconvenes, my first order of business will be to nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Nehls said in a statement. “President Trump, the greatest President of my lifetime, has a proven record of putting America First and will make the House great again.”

It’s mass delusion. And statements like that should prove to all of us that the idea that elected Republicans are all cynics and cowards is not entirely true. Some of them are brainwashed true believers in the cult of Donald Trump. To them he is literally the only leader they can conceive of.

Trump said he was fully concentrating on becoming president (to stay out of jail) but that hasn’t stopped the speculation.

Hannity: Sources are telling me that some Republicans have been in contact with and has started an effort to draft former Trump to be the next speaker and I have been told that Trump might be open to helping the Republican party at least in the short term if necessary. pic.twitter.com/V6A11Iexct

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 4, 2023

He’s their north star, their dear, Dear Leader.

His strategy to win the election is to delegitimize the legal system and martyr himself

I’m sure Donald Trump was hopping mad to see Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz steal the spotlight yesterday with their historic antics in the House. After all, Dear Leader is on trial and he’s appearing in the courtroom even though he’s not required to so that he can preen before the cameras in the hallways and insult the judge, the prosecutor and everyone else. This is supposed to be his party and it was completely overshadowed by House Republicans who are supposed to understand that.

As of midnight last night the only thing he had to say on the matter was, “Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves, why aren’t they fighting the Radical Left Democrats who are destroying our Country?” If the man he calls “My Kevin” expected him to intervene on his behalf he was sorely disappointed. In fact, he didn’t even bother to write a bland Truth Social post wishing McCarthy well in his future endeavors.

Trump was already in a bad mood on Tuesday after Forbes Magazine dropped him from the list of the 400 Richest people in America which, according to Forbes is largely because his investment in the Truth Social platform has turned out to be a dud. If this trial proceeds as it appears it’s going to, he’s going to fall even further. He stands to lose his NY properties and $250 million or more in punitive damages. He doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about what’s happening in the US Capitol right now. This is important.

Trump stood triumphantly on the courthouse steps at the end of day one and crowed that he had succeeded in getting the judge to overrule himself on 80% of the case, due to the statute of limitations running out. The judge corrected him on Tuesday saying that his earlier ruling has not changed and that the statute of limitation started running every time Trump submitted a statement of facts that was fraudulent. And they were submitted every year since 2011.

Mostly he has been racing to the cameras to insult the “rogue” judge and insist he be disqualified. And he has openly instructed his followers to “go after” Leticia James, the Attorney General who brought the case. This sounds like a threat to me, but what do I know?

“This is a disgrace and you oughta go after this attorney general…”

— Donald Trump attacks NY AG Letitia James before entering the courtroom for the start of his civil fraud trial in New York City pic.twitter.com/KHDAm5pDtc

— The Recount (@therecount) October 2, 2023

And over and over again he has said that his financial statements are fantastic but also that he made it clear to the banks and insurance companies that they shouldn’t believe a word they said:

Reporter: “Will you be testifying [in your civil fraud trial]?”

Donald Trump, moments ago: “Yes, I will. At the appropriate time, I will be.” pic.twitter.com/oRPb6ipbvX

— The Recount (@therecount) October 3, 2023

During the trial on Tuesday, Trump’s former accountant testified and Trump’s lawyers attempted to blame him for the fraudulent financial statements. But the accountant testified that he could only go by the data the company gave him and that he’d compiled the financial statements based solely on information he received from Trump and his company. Apparently Trump forgot to issue him the same disclaimer he gave to the banks: don’t believe I word I say.

But the real fireworks happened after Trump sat before the judge and re-posted a Truth Social post identifying the judge’s clerk, claiming she is Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend and linking to her Instagram account. Here’s what he said about that:

“This trial is a rigged trial … You saw what was just put out about [Chuck] Schumer and the principal clerk — that is disgraceful.”

— Donald Trump, seemingly referencing his TruthSocial post calling the judge’s “clerk” in his civil fraud trial “Schumer’s girlfriend” pic.twitter.com/ZrBiEln1T8

— The Recount (@therecount) October 3, 2023

Throughout the break, he and his lawyers were called in for a private conference with the judge. When they reconvened, the judge was clearly angry and issued a gag order forbidding defendants from discussing members of his staff. According to legal observers it’s not unusual for defendants to insult the prosecutors and the judge (although it’s particularly stupid in a bench trial like this) going after the public servants who work in the courts is crossing the line.

Needless to say, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss can testify to the fact that Trump is more than happy to smear such employees whenever he chooses. He did delete the post but not before it had been captured by millions of his followers and passed all over the internet. It was a lie based on an innocent picture of the clerk taking a selfie with the senator as thousands of other New Yorkers have done. No one should be surprised when it turns out that she is being threatened by MAGA yahoos.

It’s clear that Trump knows he’s lost this case. so he’s decided that stalking around and glowering like his mug shot will make his followers see him as defiant and courageous in facing down his accusers. I’m sure he still has hopes that he can overturn the judges ruling on appeal but in the meantime using the occasion to get free media and continue the work of delegitimizing the legal system and targeting his enemies as his primary campaign strategy.

Frankly, he’s being pretty successful. His non-stop threats and intimidation of the courts, the prosecutors, the witnesses the jurors are largely going unanswered. Yes, the judge in NY issued a gag order to protect his staff but it didn’t come with any teeth. If the judge sanctions him with fines for any of these antics, he’ll just use it to fund raise and won’t spend a penny of his own money to pay them. Is there reall a chance that any judge will order Trump to jail for contempt for something he says as they would any other defendant in these circumstances? I highly doubt it.

Short of Trump trying to flee the country or being caught on tape personally threatening someone with violence, I think this is going to be his strategy for dealing with his legal problems. He wants desperately to become president so that he can make this nightmare go away. I’m not sure how can escape these civil lawsuits, but if he becomes president again there will be ample opportunities to regain his fortune.

As president he could order the federal criminal case to be withdrawn and while the state cases theoretically can continue, you have to wonder how sentences would be carried out? Would the Atlanta police be dispatched to arrest the president of the United States? Would the Secret Service let them do it? As with everything else with Trump, we are in uncharted territory.

So, I think we can expect Trump to continue with this rebellious, insolent behavior as he deals with the legal system, daring anyone to try to stop him. He believes that his best chance of proving to the world that he isn’t a loser and protecting himself from accountability for his crimes is to win the election by destroying the country’s belief in the legal system. Every time that he defies the rule of law and gets away with it he degrades people’s respect for the legal system on all sides of the political spectrum.

The good news is that we have already seen that judges and juries are not affected by this, at least not yet. If he is ultimately held accountable I’m sure his followers will believe he’s been railroaded and we don’t know exactly what they’ll do. But at least the rest of the country might regain some faith in the rule of law. Right now, it’s hanging by a thread.

Wait for it

The narrative will come from the press, from Republicans, and from the peanut gallery.

Here’s former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, post-defrocking:

“I think today was a political decision by the Democrats, and I think the things they have done in the past hurt the institution. When they just started removing people from committee, when they just started doing the other things, and my fear is the institution fell today.”

Ah, they failed to support the institution.

Here we go:

It would be understandable if Democrats decided to remain neutral on Tuesday (by voting “present”), reasoning that it is a Republican civil war. But they didn’t. Instead, by voting “no” on the procedural motion to table Rep. Matt Gaetz’s motion—and then voting “yes” on his Motion to Vacate the Office of Speaker—Democrats effectively voted for Gaetz. And a vote for Gaetz is a vote for chaos.

Peanut gallery (I think):

McCarthy was a MAGA-owned House Speaker who removed Ukraine aid from the government funding bill, so … no. https://t.co/PtNRVnAN2R

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 4, 2023

Steve Benen counters on the institution:

I can think of members who can credibly claim to be institutionalists. McCarthy isn’t one of them.

What’s more, McCarthy is blaming Democrats, despite the fact that he spent 10 months alienating them; he never reached out to ask Democrats for their backing, and he ultimately offered them nothing in exchange for their support.

Even if the ousted GOP leader had made a real effort ahead of Tuesday’s dramatic events, it probably wouldn’t have mattered because he’d clearly lost Democrats’ respect and trust, after having lied to and about them.

But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: The biggest problem with blaming Democrats for McCarthy’s downfall is that none of this was Democrats’ idea. It’s not as if House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was the one who filed a motion to vacate the chair.

McCarthy spent months struggling with many of his most radical members. They threatened to try to oust him. Then they did. If Republicans are looking for who was responsible, they need only to look around at their next conference meeting.

That does not mean the press, the Republicans, and the peanut gallery won’t embrace the narrative. Democrats are always expected to be the adults in the room tasked with changing the dirty diapers.

Update: Forgot to drop this in.

The idea that Ds should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and Ds managing the consequences of that behavior is a given. It’s part of DC being hardwired for the GOP.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2023