We once had a little dog. She was white and fluffy. Our kid was 7 years old when we got her. She, the dog, was a very good dog. Other dogs liked her. She was gentle around kids. I think WG’s Henry is the same breed.
Sometimes, on our walks, we’d encounter a dog who didn’t like her, for whatever dog reason. These encounters were very few, because our dog loved meeting other dogs and was never aggressive. Still, when a mean dog tried to attack her, she would immediately roll over and show her belly, because she would never want a fight. On the occasion when the attacking dog was not on leash, I intervened and protected our little pup, because she was a wee smol bean and I am a big human who can be scary when I’m mad.
I think of our little dog sometimes when I read stories like these:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to his caucus on Monday that detailed four strategies to counter Trump: investigations, litigation through the courts, legislation and party messaging.
However, Schumer pushed back against recent rumblings that Democrats might walk away from the negotiating table on spending bills, saying his party wants to avoid a “Trump shutdown” and supports bipartisan negotiations to try to find a funding deal. Republicans had accused Democrats of walking out on talks last week and some of Schumer’s members are warning the GOP can’t count on their votes to avert a shutdown.
“Democrats stand ready to support legislation that will prevent a government shutdown. Congressional Republicans, despite their bluster, know full well that governing requires bipartisan negotiation and cooperation,” Schumer wrote.
“Of course, legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes and Senate Democrats will use our votes to help steady the ship for the American people in these turbulent times. It is incumbent on responsible Republicans to get serious and work in a bipartisan fashion to avoid a Trump Shutdown,” he added.
Chuck seems to think that someone bigger and meaner is going to come along and protect his wee smol bean self, because I can’t see any explanation for throwing away the one piece of leverage that Congress (maybe) has — the debt ceiling. Like my tiny white fluffy dog, Chuck doesn’t even bark when the big bad dog comes to rip out his throat. He hopes that lying on his back and showing his stomach will keep that big bad dog from bisecting and disemboweling him.
It won’t. Where is the fight in this fucker? Is he mad about anything that’s happened in the past ugly horrible three weeks? “Republicans are unwilling to stop the criminal behavior of Elon Musk and his goons. So, we’re not going to vote for a debt ceiling increase until grants that we have funded are restored, until USAID is restored and Musk’s goons are out of Treasury, Education and every other Department.” Is that so hard?
Some people might say “Hey, mistermix, you’re overreacting to a generic terrible no good piece of messaging from Chuck, he’s just citing bipartisanship and making it sound like just another Monday, because that’s going to <insert reason here: appeal to normies, keep his caucus in line, appease a few Republicans who might jump ship, trying to keep options open>.” Well, to that I say: Every. single. time. that I and others have made a prediction about what King Musk and his junta are going to do, the reality has been as bad or worse than the prediction. This is the time for Chuck to listen to people like Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz, who get it, not to whomever is feeding him the bland pudding that he regurgitates at every turn.
Fan favorite Brian Beutler has a lot more on this. Here’s a gift link. His conclusion:
Why would Democrats do that? Some are probably scared, either physically, or for the people who would be hurt by the ensuing crises. The party is also suffused with strategists and consultants who can only think inside the box of electoral savvy, as if the question at hand isn’t also “will we have real elections anymore?”
This is why establishment-brained strategic interventions—like when David Axelrod says Democrats fighting to uphold the Constitution are playing into Trump’s hands because the public supports “cut[ting] foreign aid”—are so noxious at this moment. The torch must pass now from party strategists seasoned in (though not terribly good at) normal electoral competition to tacticians who understand how to wield power maximally in the here and now. What’s at stake is the highest principle, not whether Fetterman’s odd’s of re-election in four years slip a fraction of a percent.
Why would the members and candidates that Jeffries and Schumer and Axelrod think they’re protecting want these jobs under the conditions Trump is proposing? Where their power has been eliminated? I understand that winning elections is a big part of what members of Congress signed up for. But, corny as it sounds, they are also public officials—they take an oath to the Constitution just the same as Republicans do. And when those two imperatives come into tension with one another, as they do today, it’s the former that must give.
If you don’t like Brian Beutler, Josh Marshall ends up in a similar place as me:
Here’s the thing: If Chuck Schumer called me up and said, “Hey, we are absolutely going to go to the mat on this but we just want to keep the focus on Republican chaos for now” I might say, okay cool. But I don’t think we know that or can be confident about that without the leadership publicly locking itself in. (And no, in case you’re wondering I’ve never spoken to Chuck Schumer. So this isn’t happening.) Democrats really need to demand assurances that they’re going to use it. Otherwise there’s just too great a chance they either won’t be ready or willing to hold the line. Again, saying no help without stopping the criminal [behavior] just isn’t a big ask.
matt
Schumer has a lot of wealth and privilege he could lose. I imagine he probably will in the year two show trials.
Keith P.
There’s no debt limit leverage – Trump is going to mint out a couple of $1 trillion dollar coins (one for him to hold up, and one for Elon to hold up) and count on the GOP to fall in line on the idea.
Betty Cracker
“No help until Trusk-Mump stop the criminal behavior.” Yep. That’s a reasonable ask.
Old School
Why can’t Schumer see “Democrats promise to trash the full and credit of the United States” is a winning position!?
John S.
Chuck has been the subject of ridicule across the late night circuit for weeks now. It’s not that difficult to see that he is way out of his depth for this moment.
Steve LaBonne
I figure the Senate is hopeless because Chuck is not our only hopeless Senator. I’m much more concerned that Jeffries seems to have started making some equivocal noises. We absolutely need our House caucus to stand firm on stopping the Musk crime wave in return for providing any votes.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: Agreed. I know Jeffries takes comfort that “God is on the throne”, but he is in the House and they need to be resolute on this.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
One would like to think that Chuckles is listening to his caucus. JFC, we apparently convinced Hick to come out with, at least for Hick, a fairly strong statement saying exactly that. Okay, the 50 of us, old, white, retired Dems with time on our hands and probably 20K phone calls just to his office alone (as of last week, he was getting 2K a day according to his Denver staffers). Regardless, when you have milquetoast Dems like Hick mostly getting onboard the “we ain’t helping you do shit unless” train…
It’s becoming clearer that Schumer’s skillset was being the Senate Majority Leader, in that role, he really did thrive. Opposition leader? Where’s Harry Reid when you need him?
Sherparick
All I can say is call your Senators because Musk and Trump are quickly making elections “irrelevant.” Particularly, if you live in New York, call both Gillibrand and Schumer. I expect they are hearing from their Wall Street friends and donors, particularly the cybercurrency gang, that what Musk is doing is “a necessary evil.” They need a push back.
Geminid
A clever but transparent attempt at guilt by association on Mr. Beutler’s part.
John S.
@Suzanne:
I don’t know where this notion that our lives are completely out of our control (and in God’s hands) comes from, but that’s not what the Bible actually says. Self-determination is a major theme.
And when it comes to politics, the Bible is quite clear: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God. Politics is not the domain of God.
kindness
I respect Chuck Schumer but he ain’t the right one to be leading Democrats in the Senate at this moment in time.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/JuddLegum/status/1888948008990961701#m
Threadreader link
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1888948008990961701.html
eclare
I read that Andy Kim is on board with “no help unless.”
John S.
@eclare:
Absolutely. He was on the Sunday talk shows yesterday saying exactly that.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
It’s a very reasonable ask.
Is there any other ask we can make? Or does all the asking have to come from the dump disaster?
karensky
@Betty Cracker: Agree 100%
Alce _e_ardillo
@kindness: He is not the leader we need at this time. The problem is how do we lever him out to let a more dynamic leader in?
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: I immediately ran out of palms to apply to my face upon reading that statement. Trying to be charitable and factor in the novelty of the situation. Well, one thing about crises is they reveal the participants’ mettle. We’ll have some clarity soon enough.
horatius
@Old School: What’s your idea to stop Musk genius?? Give them their debt ceiling raise so they can do whatever the fuck they want and then what?
trollhattan
On this day in history, dreamers dreamed big and look what happened.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@trollhattan:
Thanks Obama!
motoran
I am sick and tired of the Democratic Dementia Caucus. Retire them all, and maybe we still have a chance at saving the Republic.
BellyCat
100% co-signed, MM.
Ohio Mom
Well I have two no-too-smart and slimey Republican Senators whose office staffs rarely answer the phone. They don’t reply to emails either. Doesn’t stop me from calling and writing but I’m not optimistic it makes a difference.
Meanwhile, every time I call my Democratic Rep, a chipper intern answers the phone and a couple of days later I get the same email letter telling me Greg Landsman promises he will be “reliable, accountable, transparent, and bipartisan.” And then I chuckle because every phone call I beg him and his colleagues to be the opposition party.
Can I convince myself Schumer and Jeffries are playing 11 dimensional chess, not so far.
brendancalling
I have said for years now—YEARS, APPROACHING DECADES— That Chuck Schumer is useless, and needs to go. He has been useless since the early 2000s. Anyone surprised the Charles Schumer is rolling over has been living under a rock for the past 25 years or more. If Charles Schumer was a car, he would be an AMC Pacer: never very good to begin with, and so out of date it’s an antique. if Charles Schumer was an orange, he would be pulled from the shells because he would be growing mold. Chuck Schumer is like that pair of underpants you keep around, even though the band is worn out, and you’ve worn holes in the crotch. You know you’ve got to get rid of them, but for some reason you don’t.
The comparisons go on and on, and none of them are favorable. Charles Schumer is the wrong man at the wrong time. He should step down and let someone younger (or with more fire in their belly) lead the Democrats in the Senate.
sab
i used to think our political experts knew what they were doing until they threw the best president of my lifetime under the bus.
Now, I often doubt their judgement.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Ohio Mom: There’s a song from Jens Lekman called “A Postcard to Nina”. It’s about a guy who served as a beard for his friend Nina so her parents wouldn’t know that she’s gay.
Great rhyme. Seems like the same situation with your Congressman.
sab
@motoran: Fuck you. I am an old and I object but I am still not tossing all of us under the bus. It was you kids who didn’t bother to vote.
Miss Bianca
@sab: Yeah, me too. Now I’m starting to feel like they’re all complicit in the death of US democracy. I’m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Suzanne
@John S.: I think Jeffries was trying to be somewhat comforting to religious Dems, so I can accept that he wasn’t talking to me over here in the Godless Heathen Section.
Seeker
@trollhattan: Obama was a huge failure as President and Post-President
He is as responsible as anyone for the current shape of the country
@mistermix.bsky.social
@sab: Do you know something about this person, that he didn’t bother to vote? Or are you just venting your frustration at her/him?
I’m guessing the percentage of voters in the B-J comments section is pretty much 100%.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I have a little bit of sympathy for Schumer and the rest of the Democrats in that the last couple weeks seem not to have effected Trump’s approval ratings at all and maybe they’ve even improved a little.
I mean it’s like nothing has any basis in objective reality anymore. Tariff chaos doesn’t matter, cyber criminals running amok in the Treasury doesn’t matter, egg prices don’t matter, spending freezes don’t matter…I honestly have no fucking clue what messaging resonates in this environment. People just seem to want to watch the world burn while Trump says crazy shit. WTF do you even do or say? What would make a dent? Who knows?
sab
@Miss Bianca: We need to cut off their retiree pensions and gym privileges. If you do your job wrong there are worse consequences than not being reelected.
HopefullyNotcassandra
I appreciate almost all of your posts and certainly respect the work you put into each, even this one. I definitely understand how much we long for the democrats to succeed here. We long for our country and our very democratic project to succeed here!
Nonetheless, whatever you might feel about Senator Schumer, focusing our public ire on him is playing wholly inside the GOP frame.
Instead of hollering about feckless republicans, who are solely to blame, we are helping the GOP and the ever bored DC press, turn the democratic majority leader into a laughing stock. He is no laughing stock. He is the senior senator from New York and the Democratic majority leader.
Who is responsible for an oligarch and his questionable minions rooting around in our country’s financial underpants?
Republicans are responsible. There are republicans showing their bellies, republicans furrowing their brows uselessly, and republicans desperately attempting to rid themselves of the pesky power of the purse our framers gifted Congress.
Senator Schumer did not roll over. He voted to convict this president twice. He surely knows he is on the GOP enemies list
The GOP, on the other hand, rolled over and hobbled their legs. Holler that truth I beg you
By all means carry on bashing the so-called democratic strategists whose strategy seems to be bashing democrats for caring. Those folks are so deep inside the Republican frame they spout GOP talking points for breakfast.
This is my humble opinion. Please give it your attention. Your ire is righteous and well put. I long to see it consistently directed at the Republican Party.
Somewhere Abraham Lincoln is crying and John Brown is trying unsuccessfully to console him.
sab
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Venting, just like they are blaming us olds when statistics show we weren’t the wrong ones.
“Dementia caucus” is, of course, not blaming anyone.
Ignorant twerps.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
We’re in a really degraded media environment. King Musk has been moving very quickly. I think the public is just catching up. Watching the polls right now gives mixed signals, at best.
The more noise Dems make, the more likely that persuadable voters learn about the Musk coup.
I think Beutler’s point, which I know lots of readers here don’t like, is that the poll-driven view of how to do politics is not useful at this moment in time.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I agree — the Republicans are the ones falling down here.
That’s why I’m so sick and tired of the “bipartisan” framing. To me, it says “we’re getting into bed with party that is solely responsible for where we are today.” And, yes, I understand that compromise is necessary to legislate, in general, but I don’t see this moment as one for pre-signaling compromise.
As you’ll note, most of my posts criticize Republicans. But on occasion we need to push back on Democrats who aren’t meeting the moment.
John S.
@sab:
Unfortunately, only 42% of 18-29 year olds could be bothered to vote last year. But that’s really nothing new.
Since 1972, this cohort has only cracked 50% voter turnout 4 times.
mvr
I agree they can’t take not going along unless the BS stops off the table until the BS stops and in an enforceable way. I’m not as confident as Beutler that that letter did take that off the table. I think there is a way of reading it as meant to provide cover for not cooperating when things go south.
On the third hand (I have many hands) we have some good reason to be worried that it isn’t that. So letting the Democrat in Congress know we want them to tank any deal that doesn’t protect many things including democratic governance and legislative prerogatives in a reliable way. So it is fine to call and give them crap for not making sufficiently clear that that is what they will do.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@sab: FWIW, I think “Dementia Caucus” is a reference to DC Democrats, who are rather old. I don’t think it’s a reference to older Democrats in general.
My dad is 94 and a very dedicated Democrat. I didn’t think the commenter was referring to him. I’d be offended if s/he was.
sab
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Excuse me for offending your tender young feelings also.
I took the ageist insult a little more personally after voting for a lifetime.
chrisanthemama
@Suzanne: God’s away on bizness.
sab
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Thank you for jumping in to defend them. I am done here. Front pagers taking sides too much lately.
Bupalos
@sab: He was the best in terms of governance or policy/legislative terms, no argument. By 2023 he was close to a nonentity in terms of communicating a coherent political vision. The latter is how you win an election. The former is pretty much worth a bucket of warm spit these days.
I think (and the numbers suggest) he was going to get shellacked far worse than MVP, who almost pulled our electoral fat out of the fire. And IMO lost by failing to establish sufficient independence.
But I also do agree that just about the entire Dem political class needs to turn over. It’s hidebound and unable or unwilling to see the new political options a new era brings. “Eat the rich before they eat you” is the order of the day, and Chuck and Nancy don’t have the chops for that.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@John S.:
Butbutbut, we were told by “political experts” that we needed to toss the best president of our lifetime under the bus in order to appeal to that cohort and if only we’d stfu and get onboard, which we did, everything would be hunkydory.*
*Not trying to pin the loss just on the 18-29 year olds by any stretch, but on those “political experts” that are never right about anything.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I’m just extra fatalistic because I’m one the federal workers that the richest man in the world is gunning to make miserable in the best case scenario. And it feels like slightly more than half the country is on board with watching us suffer for lulz and it’s all over made up bullshit because we didn’t thwart Trump’s agenda. He didn’t HAVE an agenda. That’s what the issue was, not that we stood in the way. There was nothing to stand in the way of.
different-church-lady
Lots of people get hurt in a shutdown.
In that light, they’re the little dog and Schumer is you protecting.
John S.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I think that just reinforces the opinion that these political strategists, along with far too many of our Democratic politicians, are simply out of touch and wrong for the moment.
Old School
@horatius:
Dems should certainly call out the illegality and demand that it stops. Hopefully, the court decisions will pile up that the actions are indeed illegal.
The debt ceiling will be an issue June-ish (the last I saw). It certainly can be used, but announcing the strategy in February and allowing Republicans and the media to “what about?” it for four months doesn’t strike me as a good idea.
pajaro
We are going to court to get AID contract to help vulnerable communities that will just have to be cancelled again if there’s a budget shutdown or debt default. Republicans are the folks who are shutting down government right now; we are the ones who don’t want government to fail, so asking Democrats to tank the government is asking them to put a gun to their own (or their community’s) head and threaten to shoot. Maybe they will need to participate with the freedom caucus in drowning the government in a bathtub, but I don’t understand how people can’t see the difficulty here.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Old School:
@pajaro:
This.
Feckless
I hate Chuck Schumer. Anyone who primaries that bastard gets the full $ and volunteer time from me. I will throw a party when that useless apparatchik coward shuffles off his mortal coil. Fuck Him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
sab
@Bupalos: Don’t bothering responding to me. I am done here.
John Revolta
It’s called “surrendering in advance” and it’s a proven way NOT to deal with bullies.
MrPug
Meanwhile the leader of the other chamber is out in Silicon Valley doing a, yes, fund raiser. Both of these worthless fuckers need to quit their leadership positions.
gene108
Telling Republicans off about the budget and debt ceiling only works, if the Freedom Caucus doesn’t fall in line and vote for the Republican budget. House Republicans fell in line to re-elect Johnson as Speaker.
If the Freedom Caucus does fall in line, Democrats lose what little power they have. A budget on Republican terms will be awful.
Information distribution is along partisan lines. I doubt many Republican voters will defect, because right-wing media will blame Democrats and others for the economic fallout.
There risks in whatever Democrats try.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MrPug:
You need to raise money to win elections, sadly atm. Do I think Jeffries and Schumer should be more aggressive? Yes. But this isn’t it, chief
Dan B
@brendancalling: I had a client who made millions branding tech companies who repeatedly said that Dem’s brand is, “Dems are wimps.” Is it all the consultants who tell the Dems they have to be nice. When your constituents are terrified of the Republicans they should pay attention. Nice will not cut it when the robber has a gun to your head.
A Ghost to Most
@John S.:
Your sky daddy has no proper place in our government.
FDRLincoln
So the Federal courts are stepping up to block Trump and Musk’s rampant criminality. Good.
Next step: can they enforce it? Many of these court orders are being ignored and the courts have now caught onto that, too.
If Trump doesn’t back down and Federal Marshals are not allowed to enforce court orders by DoJ, then the Constitution no longer applies.
Within a week we will know if the Rule of Law still operates. If it does not, then extra-constitutional means will be necessary to restore it. And those actions will need to be taken immediately by the American people.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
I don’t think that would work on all of them considering the GOP control all branches of government at this point. It could only be their fault
RinaX
The Trump Justice Department wants to drop charges against Eric Adams.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/politics/eric-adams-charges-dropped?Date=20250210&Profile=cnnbrk&utm_content=1739231848&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
As far as Schumer, he’s nowhere near the top of my list as far as who I’m mad at. No one right now is going to change the minds of rhe apathetic who have no clue what is happening, and won’t care until they are personally harmed.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@FDRLincoln: Can’t the courts deputize anyone they want to enforce their decisions? DC metro police…pissed off Twitter ex employees who got shafted on their severance…just deputize them and don’t worry about injuries. Besides which it seems like there are plenty of FBI agents without many f’s left.
FDRLincoln
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I’m not sure how that works exactly but I will find out tomorrow.
I work for a local law enforcement agency in the Midwest. About half our line personnel are MAGA, with the other half a mixture of liberals, moderates, and non-MAGA conservatives who hate Trump due to the law breaking. The senior leadership is anti-Trump, but it gets more MAGAy the lower you go in the ranks.
There is tension around the office let us say.
I’ll ask about the court deputizing Marshals tomorrow.
Jackie
Trump has pardoned Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption-related crimes, including trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat vacated by Obama.
There is a strong likelihood FFOTUS will order the charges against Eric Adams be dropped.
I won’t be surprised if FFOTUS pardons Mendoza – everyone who’s committed crimes akin to him will be pardoned.
The guilty are being freed, while those FFOTUS deems his enemy are under surveillance by his DOJ.
frog
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
A stock market crash. Chaos at our ports.
Baud
@frog:
Panic at the disco.
sab
No morecat reports, We were bored and frustrated. Gave Echo and Solomon to the pound.
Did we or didn’t we. Only mistermix knows and even he does not knowfj
sentient ai from the future
@frog: Bloomberg’s email wrap-up today is titled “a dangerous legal game” so i think there are segments of the moneyed class that are starting to catch on. “it’s not a constitutional crisis yet” still leaves open the door to it may become one very soon.
if the business media starts calling this what it is, i think we will see a lot more action of some kind, though it’s hard to predict what that might be.
John Revolta
@Baud: Midnight at the oasis.
Geminid
@Feckless: I don’t assume Chuck Schumer will run again in 2028. He’ll be 78 (I think). Senators Stabenow (74), Carper (78) and Cardin (80) just retired at a similar age.*
But Schumer is in good physical health, so he may follow the examples of Senators Warren and Sanders who just won new terms at an advanced age. If Schumer runs, you can help fund his primary opponent. But New York Democrats may not take your view of Schumer, and they’re the ones who count.
* The Democratic Senators who succeeded them– Elissa Slotkin, Lisa Blount Rochester, and Angela Alsobrooks are collectively 68 years younger than their predecessors. And two other new Senators, Andy Kim and Ruben Gallego are in their early 40s.
I have yet to see any of the people griping about the Democratic Party’s so-called “gerontocracy” acknowledge these younger Senators. But they have their own agenda and these facts are inconvenient for them.
MagdaInBlack
@sab: Don’t you dare fkn leave me. I look forward to you in the morning.
Baud
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MagdaInBlack:
I agree. Don’t leave us, sab.
ETA: MagdaInBlack, I do want to express, if you see this, that I apologize for last night. For what it’s worth, I think you might be right. It’s very scary and it’s only been 3 weeks
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meanwhile, Trump out right said he doesn’t want JD Vance as his successor during that Fox interview. I suppose Trump is planning on living forever.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@sentient ai from the future: Apparently JP Morgan announced the Trump admin is not business friendly
MagdaInBlack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is very scary. When we say the law doesn’t matter to these people, it doesn’t mean I or anyone has given up. It means we see them for what they are. Especially elon, who really does not care what he breaks, because he has so much money he feels he is untouchable. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen.
p.s. its scary because they want it to be. Lots of stuff, very very fast. That’s steve bannons thing: flood the zone, or as he likes to say “muzzle velocity’ so people will be overwhelmed. Don’t let them overwhelm you.
sentient ai from the future
@MagdaInBlack: musk was definitely skurred by luigi. he brought some kid with him as a human shield when he was doing all those press hits on capitol hill
MagdaInBlack
@sentient ai from the future: He has that poor child with him everywhere. I suspect there’s a nanny in the background somewhere. You know elno isn’t caring for that child.
and yup, Luigi is the one thing that did scare him.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Trump msy be messing with Vance’s head. He likes to do that with subordinates. Or maybe Trump resents Vance because Vance is the one subordinate he can’t fire, and he wants to cut Vance down to size.
Another possibility: Trump realizes he might not finish out his term, and could even face removal under the 25th Amendment. In that case, there’s no rational reason that Trump’s preferences would come into play, but I dont think Trump is a rational man.
different-church-lady
@sentient ai from the future: I mean, when you support a lunatic who pretty much says he wants to smash everything, why were they expecting something else?
John S.
@A Ghost to Most:
I don’t have a sky daddy. And my point is that religion has no place in politics.
Try reading for comprehension.
Kay
I personally believe we’re now out of the political realm and into something else.
Im no longer mad at the Democrats – they just seem irrelevant. This isn’t “politics” anymore.
John Revolta
@MagdaInBlack: Which reminds me
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MagdaInBlack:
Good advice. Thank you. I’ll try not to let them
Leto
CBS New – Justice Department tells prosecutors to drop case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams
MagdaInBlack
@John Revolta: He certainly did touch a nerve with regard to how people feel about the health insurance industry, didn’t he?
pajaro
@brendancalling:
Of course, Schumer can be replaced as majority leader at any time if a majority of democratic senators wish to do so. Yet they don’t. Maybe they don’t because he actually represents the views of the majority of Dems.
And all of you just flat out refuse to acknowledge that Democrats supporting shutting down the programs that they are fighting to keep alive is a difficult ask.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
JFC, these people just can’t help themselves
Kay
@Leto:
Just nuts. This is bad. They’re going to take it as license to do anything.
I don’t know what regular people are supposed to do though – just watch it burn, I guess.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
If you’re an associate of Donald Trump you’re immune from law enforcement.
Geminid
@frog: I noticed how Trump tried to play off the Covid pandemic until the stock market crashed in March of 2020. That got his attention, and he adjusted his policies and messaging.
Those were easy adjustments though, in a relatively limited area. Now Trump and his henchmen are all-in on a broad, radical political program. I’m not sure Trump can make adjustments without alienating his MAGA base, even if he has the mental facilty which I doubt
YY_Sima Qian
@Jackie:
@Leto:
The speed at which the US is turning into a “banana republic” is truly something to behold. I think we all need to revise our assumptions about potential timelines for hegemonic decline/collapse.
Of course, the rot had already gotten deep long ago, what w/ corrupt practices pervasively legalized (money as speech, opaque lobbying, revolving door between members of government & businesses, lobbyists writing legislation, members of Congress in the pockets of big businesses, etc.), but the Trump crew has dispensed w/ all the pretensions once carried for propriety’s sake.
Starfish (she/her)
@Old School: Yes, because we see that Trump saying he is going to “negotiate” on the debt an maybe we don’t owe all of it is not harming the full faith and credit of the United States.
Starfish (she/her)
@John S.: Faith without works is dead.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
When you say stuff like this, I get worried. You’re very level headed
Starfish (she/her)
@chrisanthemama: I love Tom Waits.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
And if you’re not an associate of Donald Trump, you’re guilty
Geminid
@Starfish (she/her): I guess we’ll get to.see how the financial markets react to Trump’s debt gambit before too long. Bond traders are not invested in the MAGA movement, and neither are stock traders.
Starfish (she/her)
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Oh, you are very brave, and I appreciate you.
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: It doesn’t seem to suit the mood of thread, but okay. Panic at the Disco – High Hopes
pajaro
@Feckless:
Tell me some issues where Schumer departs from the majority of his democratic colleagues or the other senator from New York, please.
Professor Bigfoot
@MrPug: Oh my, the Jew heading the Senate caucus and the Black man running the House caucus– both elected by their peers– ain’t fuckin’ good enough for you, are they?
MrPug
Here is one thing I would like to see our Democratic leadership do:
Oppose everything the GOP wants to do until and unless the biggest most corrupt takeover by an un-elected lunatic that is what DOGE and Musk is doing stops. Period. Is that complicated?
Don’t make any feints to the GOP like, “we can work with them on things the American public wants” bullshit. We are so far beyond that.
DOGE is a wholly illegal unconstitutional group of freaks stealing the government for the purposes of benefiting a drug addled freak in Musk.
Is that so hard to fucking comprehend?!?
MrPug
@Professor Bigfoot:
You got me. I think those 2 are feckless morons not up to the moment because I’m antisemitic and racist.