Cromwell

C: I haven’t talked to you since a few weeks before the election. How are you feeling today?

S: Great!

M: Anxious. Very anxious.

C: Let’s start with you, Mark. In the end, did you vote for Trump?

M: Yes, I held my nose and voted for him.

C: Why?

M: I convinced myself that he would cut taxes and regulations, and that all of the noise about tariffs, deportation, and retribution was just that–noise. He wouldn’t actually do any of that. He talks a lot, but his actions aren’t as bad as his words.

C: So you’re part of the large group who voted for him because you didn’t believe he would do what he said he would do?

M: You could say that.

C: So what has happened since then to make you anxious?

M: We haven’t seen his economic team, so the jury is still out, but the rest of his domestic team is a bunch of crazoids. Matt Gaetz? Really?

C: And these choices make you think he really will try to burn it down?

M: Yes. I didn’t vote to burn it down. I want to keep what I have. America has the strongest economy in the world. It just needs a little adjustment, not a bonfire.

S: Too bad, RINO. The bonfire is coming.

C: So I take it that you want Trump to burn it down. Is the Gaetz nomination proof that he will?

S: What more evidence do you need?

C: What exactly is your understanding of burning it down?

S: We need to get rid of the cultural and economic elites. We need to throw out the so-called experts and replace them with real Americans. That’s what burning it down is about.

C: And what should be built in its place? What is your end game here?

S: I’m leaving that to Trump. I trust Trump to do what’s right.

C: Let me give you an example. Every respectable economist I know of says Trump’s tariffs will result in more inflation. I assume you hate inflation.

S: Right.

C: Then why did you vote for Trump?

S: Trump says tariffs won’t cause inflation because foreigners will pay them. I trust him. I don’t trust fancy pants economists. What do they know?

C: Do you think Gaetz is a good choice for AG?

S: Absolutely! He’ll do whatever Trump tells him to. He’ll punish the bad guys who stole the 2020 election. That’s what I want.

C: So politicizing the justice system doesn’t bother you?

S: It’s already politicized. At least the good guys will have the power this time.

C: Do you agree with that, Mark?

S: It scares the crap out of me. Whatever Trump does, the Democrats may come back and use it against the right at a later date. Do we really want that? Is it worth the risk to take the checks and balances out of the system just because we have a slim momentary advantage?

C: Sebastian, I want to ask you some questions about what America should look like, but I don’t have time today. It will wait for a later date.

GOOD COP, BAD COP IS AN EFFECTIVE APPROACH WITH FOREIGN LEADERS: Just as Trump tells moderates and the base completely different stories, he believes that speaking to foreign leaders with two voices is an effective tactic, as it maintains his flexibility, keeps the world’s attention on him, and keeps his adversaries (including leaders most Americans would consider our allies) guessing as to his intentions. Trump’s selection of Rubio, an establishment figure if there ever was one, as his Secretary of State is compelling evidence that he plans to continue with this approach in his second term.

Using dissonance as a feature rather than a bug is, of course, a problem for the credibility of the Secretary of State. In addition, it means that nothing Trump says can ever be trusted. This may have some deterrent effect on Xi and Putin, but it will drive our friends away from us. America First will be America alone.

THE MADMAN THEORY WORKS FOR TRUMP, BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY DETERS AMERICA’S ADVERSARIES. There are two problems with this approach. First of all, Trump has a record by now, and he is not nearly as unpredictable as he professes to be. The world already knows that he loves tariffs and trade sanctions, he’s far less keen on war, even though he likes to talk about using nukes, he’s a genuine mercantilist, and he plays good cop, bad cop with the State Department bureaucracy. Putin and Xi, among others, will be prepared for those gambits this time around. Second, whatever benefits uncertainty creates in dealing with your opponents, it has the opposite effect with your allies, who view you as unreliable and move away from you. So it was then, and so it will be now.

Over the last two years, a cadre of right-wing bomb throwers and a handful of moderates made it impossible for the tiny paper GOP majority to govern on its own. All of the essential functions were performed by a coalition of Democrats and a group of mainstream Republicans. Notwithstanding the public perception that the election produced a red wave, the composition of the House, when all of the votes are in, will be almost exactly the same as before. With Trump as president and a GOP majority in the Senate, will the dynamics in the House change?

Yes, because the bomb throwers are likely to be in charge. The good news there is that we are unlikely to endure any more crises on the debt limit; they will serve no purpose with Trump in the White House. The bad news is that the vast majority of Republicans will probably support large cuts to the national safety net. The issue then is whether the remaining handful of moderates, most of whom won by very small margins, will swallow these cuts at the risk of losing their seats. We’ll see.

The Gaetz nomination wasn’t really aimed at the left; it was a preemptive attack on GOP moderates in the Senate. Trump is trying to tell them that he’s in charge, and that their job is to submit meekly to his demands, regardless of how outrageous they are. If he can do that up front, everything else should follow fairly smoothly.

But Trump will actually be a lame duck the minute he takes office, and some of the GOP senators clearly don’t owe their positions to him. Collins and Murkowski aren’t going to vote for Gaetz. Will all of the others fall in line? Will Mitch show some genuine independence, or will he just stick with his usual passive-aggressive approach in the name of party unity? We’ll see.

One of Harris’ favorite jabs during the campaign–as far as I can tell, she always used it in her stump speech–was that Trump was a deeply unserious man whose election would have extremely serious consequences for the American people. Was she right?

Most of Trump’s nominees prove that she was. Trump’s first cast of characters was minimally competent at best, but this one doesn’t even meet that abysmally low standard. He is deliberately choosing people who are good at throwing bombs and defending him on TV; competence is no object, apparently.

Can you really shatter the deep state by putting clueless people in charge of it? If so, what happens to the American people in the meantime? I guess we’re about to find out.

No governmental entity under the control of two volunteer billionaires and lacking statutory authorization can be a real “department.” It will operate as a small office in the executive branch. Given the identity of the two billionaires, however, it is completely possible that it could recommend enormous cuts in federal spending–Project 2025 on steroids. Then what?

There will be a willing audience for this kind of counterrevolution in Congress, most notably in the House. The GOP is going to have tiny and unreliable majorities in both houses, however. Are the moderates really going to swallow enormous cuts that will cause massive pain to their constituents and put their seats in jeopardy at a time when the economy is actually running quite well?

History says no, but history is not always a reliable guide.

Don’t bother–they’re here.

I can’t figure out whether Trump has just discovered a new way to own the libs, or if his plan to defeat the “deep state” revolves around hiring obviously incompetent people to run it. Kristi Noem at Homeland Security was bad. The Fox talking head at DOD is probably worse. Tulsi Gabbard at National Intelligence is ridiculous. But Matt Gaetz as the AG is at a whole different plane here. When I read it, I laughed out loud.

Gaetz is despised by most of his colleagues. Will the Senate actually confirm him? Is the GOP’s loyalty to Trump so strong that he can force Gaetz down their throats? I have my doubts.

In a way, picking him is reassuring to me, because I can’t imagine Gaetz playing much of a part in the creation of a fascist state. He just isn’t serious enough to pull it off.

Our new Secretary of Defense is a Kudlowesque figure who appears to have been selected because he is a ferocious partisan who is good on TV. I don’t see where he has any credentials to engage in serious military planning or to run a huge organization.

How this translates with regard to using the military to stifle dissent isn’t clear. Hey, it could have been worse; at least he didn’t pick Michael Flynn.

Kristi Noem for Homeland Security? Really?

I guess if you want someone who will shoot illegal immigrants like dogs, she’s a logical choice.

Biden never made fighting inflation an overriding priority, probably because he thought there wasn’t much he could do about it; the system just needed to heal itself. If so, he was right. Supply chain problems ended after the pandemic; the world adjusted to the impacts of the Ukraine war; and the two-year rule cited in several previous posts worked its magic. Today, inflation is back to normal. Trump will undoubtedly get the credit for it.

But the experience of 2022-23 was a political disaster for Biden. Would things have been different if he had been more public and less passive in the battle against inflation? Would a constant drumbeat of complaints from the Oval Office about unjustified price increases have helped? Would a more vigorous effort to rein in spending have impressed the electorate, even if it didn’t accomplish much in the real world?

I doubt it, but we’ll never know. In retrospect, it was probably his only chance.

During the first Trump term, the bureaucracy ran a relatively “normal” foreign policy, while Trump ran off on his own, leading to dissonance and uncertainty that the man on golf cart clearly viewed as a positive feature of his system. His appointments to date suggest that he plans to do the same thing this time around, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. Is Marco Rubio prepared to have his position undercut by Trump every time he opens his mouth? I certainly hope so.

But the foreign policy appointments have been unobjectionable, at least by Trump’s incredibly low standards. The real test involves his selections for AG and Secretary of Defense. Does he intend to use the military and the legal system to punish enemies and stifle dissent? We will have a much better idea when these appointments are made.

J: Hey, Alex! Happy Veterans Day!

H: Yeah, at least one of us was a veteran, and it wasn’t you.

J: Whoa! Why so grumpy?

H: Did you see the results of the election? Can you believe what our country is doing to itself?

J: Yeah, it’s hard to believe they elected that clown.

H: We spent a lot of time worrying about demagogues and men on horseback during the Constitutional Convention. We thought we might have to deal with a Caesar or an Oliver Cromwell. Instead, we got a narcissistic casino owner whose idea of exercise is riding in a golf cart. It’s absolutely pathetic.

J: You’ll get no argument from me. His vices are mitigated only by his other vices.

H: He reminds me a bit of your friend Aaron Burr, except that Burr was a good attorney and a war hero. He just didn’t have any principles when it came to his ambition.

J: He wasn’t my friend. I had him tried for treason, as you know.

H: Yeah, but he ran on a ticket with you and shot me. Anyway, the American people are mostly responsible for this, but you get some of the blame, too.

J: For what? I was a Renaissance man. Trump’s more of a Neolithic man.

H: That part’s true, but his base hates cities and immigrants, just like you did. They think that only white Christian farmers are real Americans. They want to stick it to everyone else.

J: I admit I thought America should be run by virtuous and independent yeomen farmers, but the country evolved in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine. I wouldn’t be channeling Sarah Palin if I were alive today. Anyway, I think you’re to blame, too.

H: For what?

J: Tariffs. You loved them. So does Trump. They’re a big part of his appeal to the voters.

H: At the time, tariffs were necessary to raise revenue, and to protect infant American industries from unfair foreign competition. Times have changed. Trump’s tariffs have more to do with Juan Peron than me.

J: Probably true. Can we call it a draw and just blame the American people for falling for a fraud who won’t deliver the economy of 2019 with his mass deportations and his ridiculous tariffs?

H: I’m OK with that. The real question has to do with what happens with the public sees it has been deceived. Will Trump respond by crushing dissent and destroying the system we worked so hard to create? Or will he back down and spin his failures as a success?

J: I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

RATIONALE: It’s all Joe Biden’s fault. His spending resulted in inflation. He didn’t do enough to sell the economy to the American people. Then he waited too long to drop out. Harris didn’t have a chance. REALITY: This one contains germs of truth, but nothing more than that. Biden deserves far more credit than he got for bringing the country back after the pandemic; his spending was authorized by Congress, and only caused a small part of the spike in inflation. He wasn’t a successful salesman, partly because he didn’t command the spotlight the way Trump does, but based on the results of elections in the rest of the world, it is unlikely he would have convinced the public even if he had tried harder. As to the timing of his decision to drop out, it still gave Harris a chance, and does anyone believe a different Democratic nominee–even one who wasn’t part of the administration–would have avoided responsibility for inflation? I have serious doubts about that.

THE RATIONALE: The Democrats don’t care about working people. They have become the party of self-satisfied coastal elites that are too progressive for the average worker. THE REALITY: Really? Joe Biden, the most labor-friendly president in history–a man who didn’t go to an Ivy League school–doesn’t care about workers? How do we explain his protectionist measures, his attempts to expand the welfare state for the benefit of workers, and his vast investments in struggling red states?

The reality is that the Democrats have done little but worry about their relationship with workers since 2016. Their failure to connect with them has nothing to do with a lack of effort.