Cabinet churn was one of the most prominent features of the first Trump term. This time, not so much. Why the difference?
Because this time, Trump’s minions understand that competent department management is not the point; the essential job qualifications are complete subservience and the willingness to wreck. They are meeting the new standards with gusto. Don’t expect a boatload of tell-all books from this crowd when it’s all over.
At the beginning of the shutdown, I feared that the base would take to the streets if the Democrats capitulated. It’s not happening. Why?
Because the election took place during the shutdown, and the Democrats won, bigly. Hope for progress through the system consequently still exists.
The Democrats believe that a decent level of health care is a right, not a privilege, and that it must be guaranteed by the entire community, not the market. As a result, the key features of Obamacare are subsidies and community rating. Republicans, on the other hand, generally think that health care is a commodity like any other, that positive outcomes are driven primarily by personal responsibility, and that costs can be kept low by the operation of the market. You should not be surprised, therefore, to hear a lot of chatter about HSAs replacing Obamacare.
As I noted many times during Trump 1.0, the rosy Republican view of health care markets is not supported by the facts. The average consumer of health care services doesn’t know enough about the problems and products identified by physicians to bargain for them; wellness is driven as much by good genes and luck as by wise lifestyle choices; most hospitals are effectively monopolies; and drug patents are temporary monopolies by definition. In addition, relying on HSAs will benefit young and healthy people at the expense of older and sicker folks. The latter simply would have to go without the care they need if Trump’s concept of a plan becomes reality.
It won’t. The tiny GOP House majority is in no position to tackle fundamental health care reform in a way that will offend public opinion and threaten powerful vested interests. Any movement by the Republicans in that direction will only fail and cost them more votes.
An attack on Venezuela for the purpose of forcing regime change is clearly on the table. Is that the end of Trump’s ambitions?
If Venezuela is a success, why stop there? Why not invade Cuba? Sure, the Cuban military would fight back, but they would ultimately be overwhelmed. The exiles in Miami would be forever grateful, and the Cuban regime wouldn’t get any help from Russia or China. The rest of the Western Hemisphere would complain about gringo imperialism, but Trump doesn’t care one fig about that.
It could happen.
With a small swing, the Democrats can still win a free and fair presidential election. They will be favored to win the House next year. But the Senate presents serious challenges due to its bias in favor of rural areas, and not just next year; it is hard to see how the blue team can win any kind of working majority in the absence of some sort of GOP policy-driven disaster. The rural bias and the filibuster are key components of the McConnell Project, which keeps the blue team from exercising real power even when in office. What can the Democrats do about them?
In the end, they will have to take the risk and abolish the filibuster if they want to do more than play with the budget. They will also have to figure out a way to win at least some reasonable proportion of rural votes. Since rural voters appear to be more motivated by values than interests–their views on policy matters, according to surveys, aren’t very different from ours–that means running candidates who don’t look weak and woke.
The first year of Trump 2.0, as expected, focused on wrecking and retribution. The last two years will be devoted to the succession. But what happens next year? How will Trump define his legacy between now and the midterms?
Here are the most critical questions:
That’s how long the Democrats held out. In the end, however, Trump’s willingness to inflict pain on the American people exceeded the blue team’s tolerance for taking it. There was no prospect that the GOP would fold on the health insurance issue no matter how long the shutdown lasted and how loudly the voters screamed about price increases. It was time to capitulate.
And so, Trump and the Republicans have proved to the world that the Democrats have no real leverage in Congress, which is what really mattered to them. To put it more optimistically, the Republicans own everything that goes wrong over the next year. When they don’t reduce health insurance costs, it will be on them.
The blue team set a record for the longest shutdown in American history. The left can’t say they weren’t willing to fight. You can’t make much of an argument that starving SNAP beneficiaries is an acceptable tradeoff for a fruitless battle over health insurance with no exit ramp. And the Democrats actually won something valuable; the provision in the House bill prohibiting the GAO from suing Trump over impoundment is being removed. Given the Supreme Court’s most recent decision on standing and impoundment, that is a big deal.
It is suspicious that exactly enough blue team senators changed their votes. I suspect that was arranged with the leadership. A large majority, including Schumer, is still on record as supporting the shutdown. The most vulnerable members of the blue team consequently can claim that they wanted to continue to fight, which is the best of all possible worlds.
As usual, Trump declined to take any of the blame for the GOP’s losses in last week’s election. In his view, the culprits were GOP senators, for refusing to abolish the filibuster and end the shutdown; the Democrats, for seducing the voters; and the American people, for being too stupid to see they have the best economy in the history of the world.
The real question is, how much longer is the great man going to be willing to tolerate such acts of gross insubordination for his subjects? TBD.
The GOP didn’t really lose the 2020 election; Donald Trump did. The swing voters in the electorate were tired of his chaos in general, and his incoherent response to the virus in particular. By 2024, however, the voters were suffering from collective amnesia about 2020; all they could remember was the good times of 2019. Biden, on the other hand, was unjustly held completely responsible for the inflation of 2021-2023. The transactional swing voters–about 10 percent of the electorate–went Trump’s way, and the rest is history.
The pendulum swung back on Tuesday, as any reasonable person would have predicted. It will probably continue swinging left unless the economy improves, which, GOP optimists notwithstanding, is unlikely. The Democrats will probably win seats in both houses in 2026 if the election is free and fair. Then what? Trump will be a lame duck, Vance will be required to embrace every part of his unpopular legacy, and the base will be pulled in a variety of different directions by candidates outside of the administration. It will make for fascinating viewing.
On the once-again President Trump.
The election made him a big grump.
Since he won’t take the blame
We’ll have more of the same
And his party will likely get thumped.
The Democrats want to provide cost relief to the American people, strengthen their position for the coming elections, and prove that they are willing to stand up to Trump. Trump and the GOP want to show that they are in charge and that the Democrats have no meaningful leverage in Washington.
Since these objectives are not mutually exclusive, it is likely that both parties will end up with most of what they want.
For Donald Trump, Trumpism means whatever idea happens to run through his brain on any particular day, consistency and truth be damned. J.D. Vance, on the other hand, is more systematic; he has evolved into MAGA’s most prominent ideologist, similar to the role that Suslov played in the Kremlin during the Brezhnev years. Vance is closely associated with a variety of strains of New Right thinking, including, but not limited to, natalism, legacy Americans, reactionary Catholicism, and “common good” constitutionalism. How will this play out in 2028?
The problem for J.D. is that his wife is an immigrant from India, a Hindu, and an accomplished career woman. She is the refutation of everything he claims to stand for. Don’t think for a minute that the other GOP candidates will be too polite to point that out to the electorate during the 2028 primaries, assuming they actually take place.
Every time some minor left-wing goofball says or does something extremely woke, it shows up on Fox News a few days later as a Democratic Party position and becomes part of the national discussion. When prominent white nationalists say or do something outrageous and the GOP leadership refuses to repudiate it, however, nothing happens. It is a major structural advantage for the GOP. Why doesn’t the dog bark?
Because the leading right-wing media make no pretense of being anything but Trump supporters, but liberal TV networks and newspapers make a genuine effort to be independent. They can’t be relied upon to pump out the message that the entire GOP is neo-Nazi even if it would benefit their side because they know it isn’t true.
Young progressives see Mamdani’s victory as the beginning of a golden age for themselves and NYC’s downtrodden. Many Republicans, for their part, can’t wait to tie the entire Democratic Party to Mamdani’s “socialism.” Will either of them get their wish?
Probably not. Whatever the merits of Mamdani’s progressive agenda items, he can’t make most of them happen without help from Albany that is unlikely to materialize. As to the GOP, tying moderate Democrats to Mamdani won’t work, because what happens in NYC has little practical impact elsewhere. Only Fox watchers are going to buy that argument, and they aren’t swing voters in 2026.
Spanberger and Sherrill were roundly criticized for lacking a positive vision and putting too much emphasis on Trump, but it worked. Will the same tactics prevail in 2026 and 2028, assuming we have free and fair elections?
In 2026, yes. Trump is the factor that unites and inspires the entire Democratic coalition. Presenting a new, positive vision of America is potentially divisive. The easier and more successful alternative is to limit the discussion to complaints about the unsatisfactory status quo.
In 2028, no. In general terms, there will be two competing platforms available to blue team primary voters. Moderates will argue for a united front against Trumpism, and a return to the status quo ante to the maximum extent possible; progressives, on the other hand, will insist that the new powers granted to Trump by the Supreme Court should be used to build a more fair and equal America. Who will win that argument? At this point, I have no idea.