Rolling back your voting rights Michael Podhorzer finds, as Digby posted on Saturday: the defining feature of American politics this century is that neither party can “win” elections anymore; they can only be the “not-loser.” Donald Trump was the not-loser in November. (It’s just what he wanted for Christmas.) Trump “won the same share of the eligible population” in 2024 as he did in 2020 while the Democrats’ share dropped 3.5% from 2020. Hurrah!The country did not turn more MAGA. That’s little consolation for the left and doesn’t change the facts on the ground. In an age where facts don’t seem to matter, those facts nevertheless could get suckier under Trump 2.0, writes Sam Levin for The Guardian: Donald Trump could use a second term atop the justice department to gut enforcement of US federal voting laws and deploy an agency that is supposed to protect the right to vote to undermine it, experts have warned. Trump has made no secret of his intention to punish his political enemies and subvert the American voting system.
Uncategorized
You know that Elon Musk is sitting next to Donald Trump every night at Mar-a-Lago, talking to foreign leaders, kibitzing with fellow billionaires and whispering in the ear of the soon-to-be most powerful man on earth. You may have also heard that he’s exercising his own power on the internet to influence congressional leaders and fight for dominance over MAGA. He’s branching out. He wrote an op-ed in a conservative German newspaper endorsing the neo-Nazi right party, saying they are Germany’s only hope (and causing the editorial editor to resign from the paper.) And now there’s this: In the first three days of 2025, Elon Musk commandeered global politics through dozens of rapid-fire,often inflammatory posts to his 210 million followers on X. The world’s richest person called for the release of a jailed British far-right extremist. He shared a post pressing King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and order a new general election, as he posted memes and a flurry of attacks directed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Chesebro has admitted what he did and has been sanctioned numerous times, even pleading guilty in the Georgia case. But in the end it was a tiny price to pay and he was one of the few has paid anything. What a slap in the face to honest people everywhere that these people have been put back in power. It’s a shocking indictment of our country one from which I wonder if we’ll ever be able to recover.
I’m afraid that’s exactly what they will be proposing. Trump wants a “one big beautiful reconciliation package.” Speaker Mike Johnson told Republicans on Saturday that President-elect Donald Trump wants one reconciliation package, instead of the planned two that Republican leadership has been pushing, three people in the room where discussions took place told POLITICO. Johnson’s message came as Republicans are meeting behind closed doors at Fort McNair to map out their strategy for passing a sweeping border, tax and energy package that will be the heart of their legislative agenda. Trump told Johnson that he wants “one big beautiful bill,” the Louisiana Republican recounted at the retreat, per three lawmakers. Trump’s decision is a break from Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s pitch for a two-bill strategy that would have seen Republicans pass a border and energy bill first followed by a tax bill. Johnson had also previously indicated there would be two bills — though that was viewed as more of a deference to Trump’s perceived preference and a way to notch quick wins for his agenda.
So Biden obviously did an excellent job as president but he is self-indulgent and lacking in accountability? Interesting. It’s also interesting that Baker notes the last time a president inherited such a prosperous country. You may recall that the press also vilified the man who accomplished it as being self-indulgent and lacking in accountability. The press will never forgive Democratic success.
John Roberts’ year-end message was rightly taken to task for implying that criticism of the court’s corruption was inciting violence. If the Chief Justice can’t defend the right of the people to criticize the Supreme Court then they really have gone down the rabbit hole. But he made another point that’s worth looking at as well: Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the court, popular or not, have been followed. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected. I can’t think of any prominent Democrats making that argument but I suppose there might have been at one point.
To all of you internet addicts like me, I hereby gift you with this marvelous piece by Chris Hayes in the NY Times. He talks about The Attention Economy”, which is the subject of his new book. An excerpt: In the wake of Donald Trump’s second electoral victory, a viral tweet from October 2016 once again started circulating: “i feel bad for our country. But this is tremendous content.” That probably seemed funnier before child separation and Covid. (Indeed, in 2020 Darren Rovell, who wrote it, posted, “Four years later. There is nothing tremendous about this content. I’m just sad.”) But for many millions of Americans, perhaps including the crucial slice of swing voters who moved their votes to the Republican nominee in 2024, Mr. Trump is the consummate content machine. Love him or hate him, he sure does keep things interesting. I’ve even wondered if, at some level, this was the special trick he used to eke out his narrow victory: Did Americans elect him again because they were just kind of bored with the status quo? I have no doubt about it!
A new internet star is born: Tupi the baby capybara! I co-sign this:
What will you see? Perhaps you noticed? C-Span operator swept their cameras about the U.S. House chamber on Friday during the vote to reelect Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as Speaker. A huddle of white Republican men gathered here. A diverse cluster of Democractic women gathered for a selfie there. The cameras opened up the proceding, untethered from their normally fixed gaze. This is typical during a State of the Union Address but not House business as usual. Heather Cox Richardson took note in her Letters from an American substack: Today a new Congress, the 119th, came into session. As Annie Karni of the New York Times noted, Americans had a rare view into the floor action of the House because the party in control sets the rules for what parts of the House floor viewers can see. Without a speaker, there is no party in charge to set the rules, so the C-SPAN cameras recording the day could move as their operators wished. They did. Limiting what the public can can see of the House chamber will return soon enough. Limiting what you can see is already happening elsewhere. Over at The Washington Post, editors were deciding what their subscribers would see.
On serving honorably With deep irony, Phil Klay, a novelist and a Marine Corps and Iraq war veteran, describes Donald Trump as “the least hypocritical president of my adult life.” The flag-hugging con man holds nothing sacred, defends no American values or principles. Asked about the nation’s military policy in Iraq, Trump’s response was “take the oil.” Twice. “A dumb answer, but a clear one,” Klay observes. “What a thing to ask soldiers to fight for.” But it was “bracing cynicism” that was “almost refreshing.” Even if it repudiates Americans’ belief, despite our failings, that when the country goes to war it must conduct itself and fight honorably. Trump famously considers those who serve honorably “suckers.” Klay recalls his Marine training (gift link): When I started Marine training, our instructors constantly harangued us candidates about the core military virtues and told story after story of past heroes who had lived them.