In the late night thread, commenter Jeffg166 shared a link to a post on Paul Krugman’s Substack that featured a conversation with Dr. Kim Scheppele, a Princeton scholar who is an expert on authoritarianism and has studied how democracies slide into autocracy.
The link is for part II of a longer conversation, but it’s pertinent to our political moment because Krugman and Scheppele discuss at length how the Trump 2.0 administration is similar to and different from Hungary’s transformation into a “soft” autocracy under Viktor Orbán.
The Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation and Trump himself have explicitly praised the Hungarian model. I suspect Trump’s attraction to Orbánism is as shallow as he is and based on something dumb like flattery. But the organizations have openly declared an intention to imitate it. Scheppele notes that Project 2025 is the roadmap the Heritage types built to effect a Hungary-style soft autocracy in the U.S.
Krugman and Scheppele speculate that if quieter types like Russ Vought had been in charge of Project 2025 implementation and unhampered by chaos agents like Musk and Trump, we’d be further down the road to autocracy than we are already. Instead, we got a shambolic mess that is perhaps starting to arouse opposition that might slow the project down further, or at least we hope it will.
There’s video and a transcript at the link, and I recommend viewing/reading the whole thing if you can because it’s edifying to hear two smart people talking about the current shit-show. But here’s an excerpt that covers speculation on a topic that I know many of us, myself included, are kind of obsessed about, i.e., what is likely to happen next.
Krugman: I know that obviously we don’t know: What do you think is going to happen? Are we going to get Orban-ized or what are the odds that we manage to steer away from this particular cliff?
Scheppele: So, I’m writing a book on this and there are three kinds of countries. There’s Autocracy Fast, which is like the Orban takeover capture. It all happens very quickly. For instance Venezuela, it almost happened in Ecuador, Turkey…I’ll put Turkey in the second box. That was fast.
Then there was what I call Autocracy Slow, where autocrats start to look like good guys. Remember Turkey wanted to join the EU and Putin actually looked like he was just organizing things at the beginning. And then they make a pivot and people don’t realize they’ve made the pivot.
But then there’s a group of countries in which I put India, Brazil, and the US that I call Autocracy on the Fence. And what happens in these countries is you get these aspirational autocrats who come to power. They capture some pieces of the system, but these are big, complicated, large federal systems, India, Brazil, and the US…
And the autocrats are eventually voted out of office because they can’t capture everything. They don’t fully capture the election system. But they captured some things. And those some things prevent the pro-democrats who come back to power from being able to actually really restore things. And then because the pro-democrats can’t fully govern, they lose popularity because they look ineffective. And then the autocrats come back and they capture more things… And so that’s kind of a halfway house between autocracy and democracy.
As Scheppele points out, Trump captured the Supreme Court in his first term. With that institution under their control, Republicans were able to sandbag Biden after Trump got voted out by ruling against Democratic programs that would have improved people’s lives in the short term and therefore helped Democrats politically, e.g., things like student loan debt cancelation.
The implication here is that we’ll be stuck in the halfway house — or slide into autocracy altogether — unless the next Democrat who takes power is able to roll back authoritarian capture by, say, expanding the Supreme Court. That’s a heavy lift, as we all know. But maybe more realistic than hoping Barrett and Roberts go full Souter? (Talk about a slim reed to hang your hopes on!)
Anyhoo, Scheppele outlines another exit from the halfway house:
One thing you’re starting to see now, and especially the more government just screws up on stuff everybody took for granted and/or didn’t attribute to government, the more you’re gonna start getting pushback from red state areas. Because I mean, as you know, better than anyone, the United States is a giant redistributive project in which the blue states are subsidizing the red states.
And as government starts to fall apart, the places that are going to feel it the worst are actually going to be the red states long-term. And so the question is, Which is first? The red states suffer and then they have a political awakening. They’re not going to become blue state liberals, but they’re at least going to become anti-Trump Republicans. And that’s an optimistic scenario. Until the United States gets a conservative party that believes in constitutional government, we are in trouble.
Maybe that scenario is possible. From what I know of them, Trump voters fall into categories. Some are full-blown cultists, and I don’t think anything will change their minds, even personal ruin. But my impression is that’s a fairly small group. I don’t know what comes next.
Reading that conversation does reinforce something I think a lot of us feel in our bones, which is that if we get another shot at power, there’s no going back to “normal” times. That ship has left the barn, and that horse has sailed! So as leaders emerge, we should maybe look for someone who gets that and is ready to take the steps necessary to exit the halfway house.
Anyway, thanks again to Jeffg for the link.
Open thread.
different-church-lady
Actually, it was given to him. And one of the seats was a stolen good.
rikyrah
Over on TikTok, there has been a new series of posts.
It started when some woman posted:
Doesn’t America care about Nebraska?
The problem for Nebraska is two-fold.
Problem 1: They have gaping hole in their state budget, because they passed tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
They were able to fill the hole with the COVID money, but now that money has run out, and the hole is still there.
Problem 2: At least 60% of the workforce for Agriculture is immigrants. Undocumented.
Yet, the Non-blue dot part of Nebraska voted overwhelmingly for the ‘ROUND THEM UP AND SHIP THEM OUT’ CANDIDATE.
When those workers saw how Nebraska voted, they said, ‘ We’re not going to be sitting ducks for when ICE comes’, and they chucked up the deuces.
So now, Agriculture in Nebraska has no work force. Nebraska itself doesn’t have the tax dollars that work force contributed to Nebraska. And, they are saying that Nebraska is two quarters away from going under.
And, this is the point where the lady is like,
” Doesn’t America care about Nebraska?”
My response has been similar to others.
I cared about Nebraska when I voted for Kamala Harris on November 5th. That was my display of support for Nebraska.
Why aren’t you asking why NEBRASKA DIDN’T CARE FOR NEBRASKA?
THEY, more than anyone, KNEW WHO WORKED FOR THEM.
And yet, they voted for that man.
Are they mad because the workers didn’t stick around so that they could enjoy the pain of watching them being rounded up by ICE?
Is that why they’re mad? Because the workers exercised self-agency and GTFO Nebraska? How dare ‘those people’ deny them the joy of being entertained by the cruelty of ICE.
Who did they think were actually going to do those jobs?
They voted for cruelty, but, expect empathy towards them when they have to face the consequences of their own actions?
Really?
Seriously?
They should have read Project 2025. It’s clear that the object is for those family farms to go bankrupt and be bought by Big Ag for pennies on the dollar when they go up for auction. It was there..IN BLACK AND WHITE. All they had to do is read to understand that was the plan all along.
Yet…Harris voters like myself are supposed to have empathy for those who reveled in the cruelty that would be caused by their vote.
No, I don’t think so.
different-church-lady
No, it’s a pretty large group — scary large. But it’s not decisive. The margins are still thin.
catclub
I think/hope that when Trump dies a huge number will realize it was only Trump
that did it for them.
Steve LaBonne
This is what I am thinking. We cannot just go back to the cycle where Democrats get two years to clean up the Republican mess while being stymied by the filibuster and the Federalist Society courts. If we even do get another chance, it will be the last one and had better be approached that way.
different-church-lady
Gosh, if only this had been predictable somehow…
rikyrah
@different-church-lady:
Stop thinking about just the Supreme Court Seat that was stolen.
Think about all those LOWER COURT SEATS THAT WERE STOLEN FROM OBAMA WHEN THE TURTLE REFUSED TO ALLOW OBAMA TO FILL THEM. ALL THOSE DAMN SEATS THAT WERE OPEN TO BE FILLED WITH FEDERALIST SOCIETY JUDGES.
catclub
@rikyrah: very well put.
another case of leopards and faces.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: Next act of this play: the auto industry is gone because it was built on seamless integration among the three North American countries.
matt
So, great piece especially the bit about the ‘halfway house’ which you have to admit kind of captures a lot of what was frustrating about Biden’s presidency.
I think the current ambivalence and battling between Democrats about messaging is about this.
I think a lot of people understand the ‘halfway house’ and have internalized it and are looking for some indications out of Democratic messaging that if they win we’re not just going back to business as usual. Someone is going to at least fight the slide as right wing monkeywrenching drains their effectiveness and popularity. The first thing you need for that fight is messaging effectiveness. And very few Democratic politicians seem up to the moment.
People complain that Trump is always campaigning, but I think that might be the reality going forward is that Democratic politicians are going to have to be always campaigning as well to stay popular.
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: 🎯 They have to keep getting clobbered until they learn to value their own lives more than they value white supremacy. I only hope that’s possible.
catclub
@Steve LaBonne: part of the totalitarian playbook is to destroy any institution you cannot subjugate.
zhena gogolia
And the voters are too stupid to realize that it would be better to keep them and help them be more effective than to just hand it over to the fascists.
YY_Sima Qian
@rikyrah: & the PRC has stopped buying American soybeans & corn, after Trump raised tariffs on Chines imports an additional 20% over the past month. US grains exports to the PRC had just recovered to ~ 90% of the pre-trade war levels.
No one should have any empathy for Nebraska farmers who voted Trump. They have already seen how Trump’s trade war could hurt their interests in the 45 term, when the trade war against the PRC caused the PRC to halt import of American grains. The tens of billions of Federal aid only covered part of their losses.
& they aren’t the service workers working multiple jobs trying to make ends meet, & seeing their purchasing power wiped away by inflation in food & other daily necessities, disillusioned w/ the status quo.
I guess the Nebraska farmers are banking on Trump reaching a “beautiful grand bargain” w/ Xi in the coming months, which will surely include the PRC buying a whole lot of American grains (& meat).
Steve LaBonne
@matt: I think the opposite may well be true: do what worked for Trump, run a campaign that downplays the radical change that you in fact plan on carrying out. There is a persistent failure among online politics junkies to understand that normies simply don’t, at all, hear political messages the way we do. Campaign on fixing the stuff Trump broke- which will be very apparent to voters- but don’t get drawn on the means that will be required. Voters pay no attention to policy details anyway, and they also don’t care (as we just found out the hard way) about issues like “saving democracy” that are distant abstractions to them.
Steve LaBonne
@catclub: And the billionaires love that because when chunks of the economy get destroyed they can pick up assets at pennies on the dollar. Russian shock therapy, courtesy of some of the same kinds of Ivy League sociopaths who imposed it on Russia (which I guess in a way is poetic justice).
cmorenc
A realistic SCOTUS scenario in the next 2-4 years, especially if the fallout from the wreckage from Trump/Musk/Vought appears likely to hand Ds back a Senate majority in 26 or 28, is that Thomas or Alito will retire so Trump can nominate an extreme Federalist RWer as replacement. And a very likely choice for Trump’s pick will be Aileen Cannon, whose blatant hackery saved Trump from timely conviction in the one case he and current the current SCOTUS 6 had no credible avenue to save him from – post-presidential retention of classified docs. Cannon is a complete partisan hack, but Trump is transactional and she has a huge chit to cash in with him, with MAGA support.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
NE didn’t just vote for Trump. They voted for a Republican senator instead of the independent that BJ was raising funds for.
matt
@Steve LaBonne: I don’t think effective Democratic messaging is about selling policy plans. It’s about attacking Republicans and expressing values. I agree that a Warren-like message about a whole lot of policy won’t work. I agree that plans about structurally fighting fascism might best be kept private.
Steve LaBonne
@cmorenc: If the Democrats manage to claw back the trifecta in 2028 they simply must expand the Court right away, which will entail nuking the filibuster. If they don’t, they’re cooked for multiple generations and so are the rest of us. But as per my comment above, I wouldn’t advise candidates to talk about it in the campaign.
frosty
@matt: Democratic politicians are always campaigning now. But they define campaigning as endless emails asking for money. That’s it.
Steve LaBonne
@matt: And there will be plenty to attack.
matt
@Steve LaBonne: This is already the most target rich environment I’ve ever seen for Democratic politicians. When will they wake up and do their jobs? Who’s stopping them from going out in the media and playing some chin music?
Betty Cracker
@Steve LaBonne: Great point.
JPL
@rikyrah: Thank you 😊
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
I agree, but then you need a response to people who claim Dems aren’t being “bold.”
It’s impossible to come up with an approach that won’t piss someone off.
zhena gogolia
@matt: They don’ t get invited.
Chris Murphy is beating the drum every day. Is he on the major networks?
(I wouldn’t know because I don’t watch TV, but I doubt it.)
WereBear
In the book, Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult, journalist Tony Russo finds two mysterious deaths were connected to a QAnon prophet.
It’s not graphic, it’s quiet and sympathetic. And I learned so much.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Unfortunately, this all reminds me of the Meduza article I read about how the Russian opposition can’t do anything because they can’t agree among themselves on anything.
different-church-lady
@matt:
The media.
matt
@zhena gogolia: It can’t all be about being on TV. maybe someone should tell Democratic politicians that YouTube exists, podcasts exist, TikTok exists, etc. They need to learn how to speak in sound bites and express themselves entertainingly. It’s not easy.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: Splitters!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Never heard of that, but it’s apt.
Could be where we’re heading.
Melancholy Jaques
@rikyrah:
Agree completely. And Nebraska & everybody else that voted for that asshole needs to be told this over & over.
cmorenc
@Steve LaBonne: Agree. I used to think expanding the court would be but a short-term win subject to symmetrical expansion retaliation that would end up destroying it as a credible institution, but now it may be the only way forward. Unless Roberts and Barrett undergo Souter-like transformations as they realize the difference between a conservative US still effectively under rule of law, vs serving as a toothless rubber-stamp for an out-of-control authoritarian dictatorship.
matt
@zhena gogolia: I think everyone who’s doing this is raising their profile. I’ve heard more about Chris Murphy than just about anyone among Dem electeds.
Steve LaBonne
@matt: What makes you think they aren’t? Despite the hostile media I see such attacks from a variety of Democrats every day.
Betty Cracker
@matt: To be fair, some are wading into that target-rich environment and bombs away. Frost, Crockett, Murphy, Warren, Sanders to name a few, if you want to hear Dem politicians calling out blatant corruption (which I do).
One thing that drives me nuts is seeing jagoffs like Newsom pivoting to the right on trans issues, as if throwing people under the bus is the fucking answer. Jesus. Read a fucking room.
different-church-lady
@Melancholy Jaques: <
Now now now, I’m told that if we are anything but unfailingly polite and coddling we’ll never win them back. Right here on this blog at times, even.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: The Stockholm Syndrome is deep in some of them.
Old Man Shadow
Now if we could be certain that Democratic leaders, especially Senate Democrats, understood that they can’t go back to normal.
WereBear
@matt: The young & smart ones already do.
matt
@Betty Cracker: I agree we’re seeing some. I want more. As to the whole give up ground, triangulation thing, I think of that as a donor service strategy in lieu of a media mobilization strategy and I agree, it’s death to the party in terms of effectiveness of opposition.
Baud
@matt:
Dem donors don’t care about trans issues. I don’t agree with what Newsom chose to do, but it’s all on him.
Chris Johnson
I didn’t realize DOGE installed keyloggers on Treasury computers, and I didn’t realize Treasury officials FOUND the installed keyloggers on Treasury computers.
Who are those reporting to, pray tell?
Steve LaBonne
@cmorenc: There is a long-term risk but it pales compared to the certain disaster of not doing it. Part of why Biden lost is being stymied on popular, immediately visible things like student loan relief. If voters don’t feel significant benefits within the 2 year term of a Democratic Congress they drift away again.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
Do you have a link?
rikyrah
Trump lawsuits put Maryland’s federal judges center stage in a turbulent moment
A surge in high-profile lawsuits against President Donald Trump has put a national spotlight on Maryland’s federal judges, some of whom have been singled out for their rulings by Trump’s high-profile supporters.
Maryland judges are handling the second-highest number of lawsuits against the Trump administration of any federal court district in the U.S.
The attention on typically publicity-shy judges has been jarring at times. After U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson temporarily blocked executive orders ending federal support for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, top Trump lieutenant Elon Musk called for Abelson’s impeachment in a post on social media.
Libs of TikTok, which runs influential far-right social media accounts known for spreading hateful conspiracy theories, shared a photo of U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman after she ruled against the Trump administration in multiple lawsuits, including one over an executive order that would have ended birthright citizenship. The post has 1.4 million views.
The response alarms legal observers, who say escalating attacks on judges violate long-held norms and threaten judicial independence.
more here: https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-power/trump-lawsuits-put-marylands-federal-judges-center-stage-in-a-turbulent-moment-N5J2WIN3XZHT3FOMP3EMBNE5AY/
narya
This. It makes ZERO sense to me to be all-in on the anti-immigrant rants and then be surprised and dismayed when actual immigrants GTFO. My empathy for such Nebraskans is nearly non-existent. It’s not just that they didn’t want immigrants, they wanted the spectacle of immigrants being rounded up and shipped off (and then possibly brought back as prisoners/slaves to do the same work). People having the agency to say”No” wasn’t something they thought could happen.
rikyrah
Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) posted at 10:43 PM on Thu, Mar 06, 2025:
This seems an appropriate time to mention DOGE has found exactly zero dollars wasted in Elon’s tens of billions in government funding.
Most strange.
(https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1897870652327014579?t=jPrOQbkpy8Aknlcp3CEnag&s=03)
Kelly
Lyle Lovett “If I had a Boat” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKKcNjvxhns&ab_channel=LyleLovett-Topic
rikyrah
Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) posted at 11:32 AM on Fri, Mar 07, 2025:
West Texans, Mennonites at center of measles outbreak choose medical freedom over vaccine mandates
With @AP: https://t.co/wszSGVvv3G
(https://x.com/TexasTribune/status/1898064100900397438?t=Ff_Q0YWjh-3OeCRo_MQ5-A&s=03)
Betty Cracker
@matt: There was a post at Mix’s place recently that touched on donor service and a dug-in army of shitty political consultants who drive that sort of thing. It reminded me of the political shit-show in Florida, which I do not want to see replicated nationally because it’s a sure-fire loser. I still think we can avoid that fate.
A Ghost to Most
You can’t educate the willfully ignorant. Their programming prevents it. All you can do is beat the old firmware out of them.
different-church-lady
@narya: They never made the connection between the people they wanted hurt and the damage to their own economic health.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Mennonites at center of measles outbreak choose
medical freedomto kill their children over vaccine mandatesWaterGirl
@rikyrah: Bravo, rikyrah!
p.a
The only long-term path to do a true reset (or as close as possible) to undo the autocracy-by-steps road we’re on is to control both the presidency & senate, make the SCOTUS seats = the federal court districts, have the D pres & senate fill them. In other words, hit electoral powerball. That’s about the odds for it happening.
I don’t see the electoral potential for that, and more disturbingly, don’t see the Dem Party will to do that, or even attempt it. Of course the right will marshall every ounce of energy to denounce that attempt, and protect their judicial control, but as this century has shown, progressivism just works on the margins with the FedSociety hammer ready to smash any positive movement.
WereBear
I was fooled by the MAGA surprise at seeing the leopard at their doorbell cam.
But that’s what happens when you only make excuses and still remain deliberately ignorant of how things actually work. Lots of surprises.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker: WRT public attitude toward trans, in most people’s sensibilities there is still a strong, instinctive repulsively alien reaction to them that is easy for malevolent bigots to exploit. It’s still a leap to convince a majority of dads with daughters that they should be comfortable with trans-teen girls in locker rooms etc, even though the numbers of such are vanishingly small. We can call it hateful bigotry, but the instinctive reaction isn’t going to be overcome by rhetoric, especially when it is so easily exploited by RW politicians. It’s going to take cumulative personal familiarity with non- threatening transfolk to eventually overcome the negative instinct – worked for overcoming gay bigotry, but their numbers are far proportionately larger.
Steve LaBonne
@p.a: This unfortunately is the outcome I would bet on. After all we have a Constitution carefully designed to insure that democracy cannot threaten concentrated wealth. But it’s much too soon to give up.
Steve LaBonne
@cmorenc: I would be very wary of assuming that progress on gay rights is irreversible.
Josie
@frosty:
Yes. I would like to get one, just one, email from a Democratic politician that doesn’t ask for money. That would be a person I could be interested in supporting.
Steve LaBonne
@WereBear: Minds that actively resist knowledge are a remarkable spectacle.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Once they learned vaccines lead to dancing, it was all over for those darn kids.
Steve LaBonne
@Josie: @Josie: This is the reality of our post- Citizens United system, as pretty much any member of Congress can explain to you. Just unsubscribe from the emails.
New Deal democrat
Seconded (or whatever number we’re at this far down the thread). Biden tried the Institutionalist route. It failed – whether it was the Institutionalists (Garland) or the Institutions themselves (court procedures) that failed is irrelevant at this point.
The next chance we get, there must be a take-no-prisoners AG at the helm (think RFK *SR*), an expanded Supreme Court, an anti-gerrymandering Federal Congressional election law, a Senate willing to shitcan the filibuster, an end to the debt ceiling, and other steps to prevent the would be autarchs from returning to power.
zhena gogolia
@New Deal democrat: And we’ll have our own autarchs! Yay!
Lynn Dee
One of the things being on the fence or eventually sliding into autocracy altogether suggests is the importance of Dems being ready for the enormous job of repairing the damage and protecting the future if/when we’re back in power or start to regain power. Another round of “business as usual, hurray for bipartisanship” won’t cut it. Talking points memo has been doing some good reporting and thinking about this. This week’s podcast from Josh Marshall and Kate Riga is good on the subject and the questions raised:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/podcasts/the-josh-marshall-podcast/ep-363-the-state-of-the-union-is-tariff-y/
Or, on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWlY9CaTO9Q&t=3s
If you want to skip ahead, you can go to:
26:00 for the Dem response to Trump’s not-a-state-of-the-union
34:00 for the challenge before us/work to be done going forward
Melancholy Jaques
@different-church-lady:
While I generally agree that is the right tack for elected Democrats to take, I think the rest of us are free to tell the truth in simple terms. For example, you guys let your bigotry rule you or you guys are just afraid a woman will do better than you.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Baudarch! 20XX!
trollhattan
Pain for thee, not for me. Because reasons.
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: I hear you and agree that’s the state of things now, but leadership has a role to play too — it can’t be all about personal interactions.
Republicans ginned this issue up, which was both evil and canny. They moved public opinion on it — trans issues weren’t even on the radar before for the general public.
Democrats have agency here too. The answer isn’t to meet voters at the place they were led by right-wing propaganda, which is what Newsom is doing. It’s to lead them to a better place.
cmorenc
@Steve LaBonne: Alas, you may be right about a potentisl comeback of anti-gay bigotry, but that will be a vastly harder lift, because now they will be working against the enormous change in social and cultural momentum – gays are out of the closet in huge numbers now and so many families have an out gay member they are comfortable with. Not so much yet with trans members.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I’d cheer that!
Baud
Regardless of what people think Dems should do if they get back into power, absent a massive cultural backlash to Trump, I don’t see Dems being successful campaigning on massive structural change.
New Deal democrat
@zhena gogolia:
Sorry, but hard “no.”
Every step I outline above is fully compatible with out existing Constitution, and would entail Congressional passage of each law.
it would no more be autocracy than the New Deal or the Great Society.
NutmegAgain
Late to the party, but audio/visual is only available to paid subscribers of Krugman’s substack. He does include a complete transcript.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: Don’t encourage him.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Just as Trump wouldn’t have been successful campaigning on what he’s doing now- which is why he lied about knowing nothing about Project 2025. Democrats don’t have to lie, just avoid details about what they’ll need to do to reverse Trump’s damage.
RaflW
“the more government just screws up on stuff everybody took for granted and/or didn’t attribute to government”
I think of myself as being pretty cognizant of what the federal government does. But I admit, I did not know that the Fulbright program was run at the State Dept.
There are thousands of US students on Fulbright scholarships right now (and thousands of foreign students in the US). This is a serious clusterf*ck.
My hope is that the more than 50,000 Fulbright alumni are aware, alert, and burning down the phone lines to their senators and reps.
There’s 1,000 fires burning. I know the move is to flood the zone with shit. But that also means a thousand oxen are gored, and people in all those constituencies should be good and mad — and VOCAL.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Avoiding the details leads to the problem I identified in #26.
Ohio Mom
Newsome did not need to bring up trans rights. That’s just playing into the MAGA talking points — at this point they are goading Democrats into saying “trans matter” just so they can go Girl’s sports! Bathrooms! (They seem to care less and less about children getting “permanently disfiguring surgeries”).
You can quietly support trans rights without setting off MAGAs. Didn’t any of these people have siblings growing up? If you know how to press their buttons, you know how to not press their buttons.
oldgold
@rikyrah: Iowa is in the same boat.
Our economic lifeblood is made up of corn, beans, hogs, cattle, slaughtering houses and related activities. During Biden’s time things were relatively good. ’22 and ’23 were banner years.
The Orange Menace’s economic
policiesidiocies are threatening our economic lifeblood bigly. Folks are on edge.Watch Joni Ernst closely. She is up in ’26 and vulnerable. $3.00 corn and a sex scandal may cause her to be more Murkowskiesque.
Baud
Via Reddit
Captain C
@narya:
“You’re horrible subhumans and I think you should leave or be tortured!”
[immigrants leave]
“Why won’t you come back and provide me with cheap labor. WHYYYYYYY?!??”
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: It’s mostly a “problem” on blogs. Anyone who isn’t sufficiently motivated by getting rid of Trumpublicans is not a reliable voter.
RaflW
@rikyrah: Can’t disagree with any of this. But a lot of those Huskers who voted for Trump still watch Fox on their teevee at night, and listen to very conservative radio while driving their truck, tractor or combine.
They are being actively lied to many, many times a day and so they will get the wrong people to blame propagandized endlessly.
I have no great idea of how it gets funded or mobilized, but a huge popular education effort needs to be undertaken. The narrow slice of more progressive (or at least not-blinkered) farmers and local workers in agricultural Nebraska need to be talking to their neighbors in concerted, repeated efforts to educate them.
All the historic channels of communication likely bounce off these folks. Peer networks are one of the strategies that can work, but it’s a whole campaign, and I am unaware of much that is at work in that realm.
Captain C
@rikyrah: I have no problem with supposedly responsible adults chasing Darwin Awards. I do have a huge problem with trying to force others, whether adults or children, to compete for said awards as a result of their own irresponsible actions.
RaflW
@Baud: Ok, well then the Dem message needs to be
“Your pain, rich people gain.”
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Blogs and social media, and the regular media who follow them.
Ella in New Mexico
Seeing now just how easy it would have been for the Biden Adminstration to ignore all the rules, laws and courts and impose some REALLY GOOD THINGS for the American people…
Can you imagine? Comprehensive Benefit Medicare for all, Social Security fully funded for eternity by taxing the wealthy and cutting taxes for working people, all student loans cancelled and turned into grants, …he could have done it apparently. Just by DOING it.
Sigh.
Baud
@RaflW:
That’s what some of the comments at the Reddit post said.
John S.
Newsom didn’t just shit on trans people, he did it with invited guest CHARLIE KIRK.
Nobody forced Gavin to invite that scumbag onto his show to dive into culture war issues. He made that choice.
Baud
@Ella in New Mexico:
False equivalence. Trump isn’t creating massive new benefits programs. He’s running the government he’s in charge of to the ground.
gVOR10
This is consistent with Kurt Weyland’s Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat. There is a lot of ink on how successful populist authoritarians succeeded, Weyland also looked at unsuccessful leaders, a total of 40 aspirational populist leaders, only 7 of whom succeeded in “suffocating democracy”. He published last year before the election, in which he saw Trump’s reelection as possible. He identifies an unsuccessful leader, Italy’s Berlusconi, as the nearest analog to Trump. Berlusconi became PM three separate times, but failed to overturn democratic institutions. But Weyland does note that each time he came to power, Berlusconi did more damage, from which Italy has not recovered. One of his main thesis is that presidential systems are more resistant than parliamentary systems. All the veto points that frustrate good prezes from doing good stuff also frustrate bad prezes.
Ohio Mom
@cmorenc: I’m too old to attract this sort of attention nowadays, but the times I was cat-called, flashed, had strangers suspiciously rub against me in sardine-tight packed rush hour subway cars* — they were all men dressed as men.
Even when I walked through some scuzzy streets in New York Coty as a young adult, the hookers I passed (some of whom could have men dressed as women, I didn’t look), left me alone.
* One of my high school classmates said she grabbed the hand feeling her up in tne rush hour subway, pulled it up and yelled, “Whose hand is this?” I considered that story apocryphal but satisfying.
Geminid .
@Steve LaBonne: Expanding the Court after winning a Trifecta in 2028 wouldn’t neccesarily entail numing the filibuster. Democrats could do a “carve-out” for such a court reform. Congress has done this twice already with regards to judicial nominations.
But this is a bridge l would be very happy to cross in 2029. For now, I’m content that Republican Senators did not nuke the filibuster, or at least haven’t yet.
Sister Golden Bear
@cmorenc:
No it’s a Republican attitude. FFS stop spreading their framing of the issue.
From a 2022 Pew survey:
Also worth noting at the time:
Oh, and Republicans are absolutely coming for gay rights. They’ve talked openly for years about doing so — and talked about how they’d use trans people as the wedge issue for attacking LBGTQ+ rights more broadly — and have been calling on the SCOTUS to overturn both Obergefell and Lawrence.
Rusty
I’m surprised how little coverage the Trump administration cutting off funding to Columbia has received. It’s a clear warning shot to all other colleges and universities that if you don’t knuckle under to conservatives you will be cut off from federal funding (both direct and student loans), which is a death knell for the vast majority of educational institutions. The Republicans are accomplishing a big step forward in control of educational institutions with little coverage.
Geminid .
@Baud: I think Newsom’s case may be one of political ambition exceeding political intelligence.
Mike R
@rikyrah: I live here, and let me say that politically these are some of the most uninformed, willfully ignorant people you can come across. Roger Welch used to say that the republicans could build a device that kicks the farmers when they exit the fair grounds and they would blame democrats and still vote republican.
Ohio Mom
@NutmegAgain: I actually like being able to read the transcript better than watching a video. Did anyone leave a link already, if not, here it is: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/from-orban-to-trump-part-ii
Even though the conversation does give a few rays of how, overall, I found it very depressing. But important to read.
Ella in New Mexico
@Baud: Uh, ?? More like a false conclusion drawn from what I posted, actually.
We could have worked the system for good things but chose to drive the speed limits or pay the tickets instead which meant the American people didn’t feel much of it until barely the end of his term, and actually never will because this Clown is halting all the programs we put in place by following the rules.
Apparently we clearly didn’t have to. We didn’t know the power we had.
rikyrah
Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) posted at 5:38 AM on Sat, Mar 08, 2025:
Remarkable: Numerous Fox News figures are now openly panicking about Trump’s economy, warning that it’s in real trouble. It’s a sign that the MAGA project is quite fragile: If voters keep turning on him here, the whole edifice could collapse.
New from me:
https://t.co/84A3LoVLxo
(https://x.com/GregTSargent/status/1898337429087543648?t=KKs1z8xzB-LuLbhTvTfctg&s=03)
Barth Keck (@keckb33) posted at 5:47 AM on Sat, Mar 08, 2025:
“Fox turning on Trump’s economy could be so debilitating over time. Perceptions of Trump’s economic prowess are the scaffolding that holds up the rest of the edifice.”
(https://x.com/keckb33/status/1898339892175708263?t=B1Q3nvjbZF55kD65jAFcQA&s=03)
Gretchen
@Rusty: They cut 1/3 of the funding for Haskell Indian Nations University in the middle of the semester so most students now have some classes with no teacher. That’s one of only two colleges for Native American students. https://lawrencekstimes.com/2025/02/14/haskell-layoffs/
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Newsom thinks he is reading the room.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: It was in Krugman’s transcript: https://archive.is/Rx8av
It’s an archive because my Chromium will not load any substack pages correctly.
Geminid .
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There are a lot of Mennonites in Rockingham County, accross the Blue Ridge from me. So far there haven’t been any reported measles cases there. That would be big news on the Harrionberg radio station I listen to every day.
I don’t know the attitudes towards immunizations on the part of Rockingham’s Mennonites, but I wonder if that West Texas bunch are outliers in that respect. It sounds like they are geographical outliers, and are a relatively isolated group but I don’t know this. I could probably find out.
Matt McIrvin
@gVOR10:
Wow–the conventional wisdom is the complete opposite and I think I’ve seen papers collecting statistics to argue that presidential systems are the dangerous ones.
I do think there’s a confounding element, though–presidential systems are much more common in the New World, and for many decades these countries have had US spooks and imperialists meddling in their systems, with an eye toward supporting anti-Communist or business-friendly autocrats.
oldgold
@Betty Cracker: “Read a fucking room.”
Well, Newsom is literally dyslexic.
pajaro
@frosty:
No, Democrats don’t just send texts asking for money. They send out information on what they are doing, and they also host town halls and events.
NutmegAgain
@Ohio Mom: Having just got my new glasses (wooo!) I’m back to loving to read.
Captain C
@rikyrah:
I still don’t understand why in both 2016 (especially) and in 2024 Democrats weren’t pounding on the bullshit that he’s a successful businessman. Six bankruptcies* (including 3 casinos), an entire ruined football league, multiple failed enterprises (including Trump steaks and the fraudulent Trump University), and (in 2024) his main company being busted for multiple crimes should have made this a target-rich environment. Seriously, this is the USA; if you can’t sell gambling, football, and steaks, you are a truly garbage businessman.
*The retort might be to say this was a business strategy rather than poor management. The response to that is to point out that stiffing your suppliers, creditors, and employees while walking away with the cash is an extremely dishonest way to do business, one which shows that the scumbag who employs it is a dishonest, fraudulent con man (ETA: and can’t be trusted with ANYTHING).
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: presidential systems are much more common in the New World, and for many decades these countries have had US spooks and imperialists meddling in their systems, with an eye toward supporting anti-Communist or business-friendly autocrats.
And this might be why presidential systems are dangerous – because they might be more easily subverted from outside. But given Brexit happened with a parliament, I dunno.
Gvg
@cmorenc: we need to be collecting correct provable info on corruption and bribe taking on all the high court and as many of the lower courts as possible, including democrats. I expect and hope the democrats will be less corrupt than republicans but a culture of corruption spreads and we will have to prove fairness. Anyway when we get power to supervise the courts again, I think that is the Senate, we need to put in a code of conduct and start impeaching & removing every judge who is corrupt. I assume we will have to wait till Trump is gone or he will pick new bad ones, unless it is so bad it can’t wait…well the Senate must not approve any bad ones also.
This does not put them in jail, because the court overturned bribery’s meaning in law, but I think they can still be removed if Congress says so. Maybe we need both houses.
I hope that will show people that democrats can do things and fight, but I don’t understand ordinary voters and I know it. Still, we need to do that. We need the Supreme Court uncorrupted. It needs expanding also for work load reasons, but we also need to punish outright corruption and undermining the Constitution they swore to uphold. The law is not their toy.
Chris Johnson
@rikyrah: The thing is, when you consider that Trump and Musk and that whole rigamarole is in fact a Russian op there to HURT us, that’s why it’s so different from Orban or Hitler or insert-authoritarian-here.
They’re not at liberty to consolidate power. They have to WRECK the United States, presumably at gunpoint or at least with Congressional Republicans at gunpoint. It’s not at all about making anything great: Orban paid closer attention to maintaining a functioning government, but particularly Musk is fully a saboteur. Any remarks about ‘no pain no gain’ just buys them time, it’s stalling to do further damage.
My question becomes, who does Russia have lined up on the left to turn to when they’ve driven the Republicans into disgrace? They can’t simply leave it at that, they have to also have their hooks into the would-be replacement to sabotage them in turn.
Could Newsom’s pivoting mean they’ve got him? He’s transactional enough that he could be their guy.
TBone
Wow I’m glad I didn’t miss out on this today, B.C.! What a supremely important fount of wisdom and knowledge it all is – I feel smarter than I did a half hour ago.
Gvg
@matt: the media.
NeenerNeener
Now the actual Declaration of Independence is under threat:
https://archive.ph/CU10d
T***p would steal Jesus off the cross if he wasn’t nailed on.
laura
@Ohio Mom: Newsome did not need to bring up trans rights
Newsom said not need to invite Charlie fucking Kirk on his first podcast episode, let alone tongue bathe Kirk. Gavin Newsom can drown in a pool of his own sick or die in a brylcream fire.
When I retired, Iwent back to college as an art student (Sac City College represent!) TPUSA would show up in the quad on the regular to recruit for their white power organization. So I ran to the campus bookstore, bought a fat marker and a foam core board and wrote These fuckers are nazi’s with a directional arrow- anytime I saw them in campus, I’d run to my car, grab my big ole sign and park my old self right next to them. Big Mad ensued, and even bigger madder because I refused to speak to or engage with them in any way. That’s how I handle nazi’s, unlike my Governor. No Fucking Quarter! Nazi Punks Fuck Off
I failed to include that Trans Rights are Human Rights and we leave no one behind, we sacrifice no group, ever, ever again.
pajaro
@Old Man Shadow:
I believe that Democrats in both the House and Senate understand that things are not normal, and the current Republican Party is not normal. Figuring out how best to respond has not been easy, but I think they are getting better, and in a couple of weeks they will be back opposing Trump’s budget.
MagdaInBlack
@Captain C: My retort is ” ….And that’s how you want him to run the country?”
Gvg
@Steve LaBonne: loan relief was overall unpopular. I don’t understand why, but it was.
I work in financial aid for students. I know too much to understand how much other people don’t understand about college loans and why their own experiences years ago don’t matter to the big picture.
People also don’t understand investing to build up capacity. Too long with asset strippers winning and too long ago that people expected companies to invest in themselves to keep growing.
rikyrah
it’s a SCAM
Rebecca Ballhaus
@rebeccaballhaus
Trump was regaling donors at Mar-a-Lago about all his administration was doing for the crypto industry when he turned to a more personal element: all the crypto money he is making as president. He marveled at how much $ his memecoin could bring in and asked the audience if they knew what the coin was worth. (The answer: a market cap of $13 billion.) How Trump came to embrace crypto, politically and personally, w/
@jdawsey1
@elizacollins1
: https://wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-crypto-president-meme-coin-0ca2c31b?st=H7GVkp&reflink=article_copyURL_share
https://x.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1898197150527295515
Chief Oshkosh
@Steve LaBonne: That was actually what I thought when Biden won. I know it’s a Debbie Downer to say it, but there is some likelihood that that was our last chance. It’s the message underlying the Krugman piece highlighted in the OP. We’re left with our best option being a citizens’ press that reports on the failures, because even the massive fuck-ups that are coming will not be reported by the mainstream media.
Steve LaBonne
@Gvg: The important constituency was not people in general but the mostly young voters who struggle with repayment. And our results were particularly disappointing among young people.
rikyrah
Chris Murphy![]()
(@ChrisMurphyCT) posted at 8:40 AM on Sat, Mar 08, 2025:![]()
![]()
![]()
stage on the short term risk of losing our democracy, it’s this.
If you want to know why I’m at the
Trump shuts off spending so each Congressman, Governor, Senator, Mayor has to come pledge loyalty to get the $$ turned back on.
It’s called “petitioning the king”.
(https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1898383315775717836?t=iAIG-K-9hYmnVrW82fQHyw&s=03)
Sister Golden Bear
Excellent piece on trans athletes by a former competitive women’s swimmer. I There are no ‘unfair advantages.’ Just look at the numbers.
Worth reading the whole thing.
rikyrah
IS BJ working on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race?
Candidly Tiff (@tify330) posted at 9:47 AM on Sat, Mar 08, 2025:
I hope all the people in this crowd vote for Judge Susan Crawford on April 1st and spread the word. Musk’s PAC has spent $3.2M to help her opponent.
The movement needs to show up at the ballot box or none of this matters
(https://x.com/tify330/status/1898400175246246059?t=AeF2k_JMrZOzSgEGHNj-1g&s=03)
coin operated
@rikyrah: Every word of this.
Oh, and ‘chucked up the deuces’…I learned something new today.
Gvg
@zhena gogolia: those aren’t autarchs. Those steps are within the Constitution and have been done in the past, by Teddy Roosevelt breaking up the monopolies and during the Civil Rights era breaking Jim Crow. They led to better democracy not dictatorship. But they weren’t times of decorous slow legalese and were times of urgent strategy.
@zhena gogolia:
Betty Cracker
@laura: Not all heroes, etc. — brava!
Sure Lurkalot
@Ohio Mom: Newsom did not need to have the loathsome Charlie Kirk as his guest on his very first podcast.
Talk about “telling people who you are”. Who does Newsom think the audience is for his podcast? Who does he want to attract to listen to it?
I have little to no interest in hearing Charlie Kirk’s take on anything. I’m sure there are “know your enemy” peeps who disagree but there’s no good reason to give the likes of the Charlie Kirks in the world any more oxygen than they already waste.
Point number infinity as to why I stopped watching MSNBC about 2 years ago. If I wanted to hear about Trump and Republicans and what the Democrats are doing wrong, and mostly from Republicans (albeit disgruntled), I would tune into another station.
jonas
@rikyrah: I’ve seen this over and over again the past couple of weeks. Reporters go out and interview some white person whose business or life has been upended by these ICE roundups and it’s always the same response: “I thought they were going after the criminals and drug dealers — not Lupe. She was such a great caregiver for my grandma!”
I’m sure she was, asshole. How’s that leopard on your face doing?
Jeffg166
@NutmegAgain:
It is worth the read. He is having people on and being on other people’s substacks doing videos talking about what is going on.
If you can swing the subscription it is well worth it.
Another Scott
Thanks for the link and the post, BC. I’ve started on it and have involuntarily started a “yes, but” list in my head, but I’m going to put off nitpicking it until I reach the end and have more time to think about it.
Orban had control of the legislature, eventually by big majorities which is a major difference from the US right now (but, she’s right, that the speed of the fall doesn’t determine the final destination).
What happens on Friday and afterwards with the FY25 budget (Are the MAGAts able to force through an unconditional CR for the rest of the year with big domestic cuts, or are Democrats and opponents able to pass a budget with conditions on the money that prevent 47 from gutting the government?) and the Reconciliation Bill(s) (Gutting Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest?), and the Debt Ceiling later in the year (Suspension? Pushing it out 2+ years? Raising it a little but demanding gigantic social program cuts?) will be an important indication of how far the MAGA-majority Congress is willing to set its powers on fire and infuriate their (and our) voters even more.
Much of the power that 47 has tried to claim was given to him. That gift can be reclaimed, but the country doesn’t have an indefinite time to do so…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
bbleh
@catclub: I think this also. The cult of personality is all that’s keeping the Republicans from turning into a seething maelstrom of backbiting, infighting and cannibalism. When the Lord calls His Chosen One home — hopefully very soon! — it’s gonna collapse.
The racism won’t go away, of course, nor the endless whining grievance, the sense of entitlement, the faux religiosity, and all the rest of it. But the Orange Guy has, imo, unique “charisma.” He REALLY IS as bigoted, entitled, ignorant and shameless as they are, and they know it. Anybody else is gonna look like a wannabe and a poseur
@matt: concur. Dems need to move into permanent-campaign mode. And in some ways it’s gonna be harder because there is no propaganda network equivalent to Fox doing a big chunk of the work for them.
They need to do it NOW, btw. RIGHT F-ING NOW
@zhena gogolia: @different-church-lady: this is true, which means they can’t depend on that channel and they need to do other things. One big thing they could do is get out of DC, go back to their districts / states, and go into campaign mode. Make multiple stops a day. Talk to LOCAL media (who very likely WILL feature them). Do “town halls.” Mingle, show the flag. That has its own benefits — it’s how they get elected, after all — and it can change the attitude of the major media in time.
For sure it isn’t gonna work to stay in DC, keep streaming out fundraising texts, occasionally issuing focus-grouped press releases, maybe occasionally doing some DC-centric stunt, and waiting for NBC to call.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: Just the fact that they keep harping on Lia Thomas is telling. When the same one name always comes up as evidence of some gross systemic unfairness, one should be suspicious.
New Deal democrat
@Gvg:
Agree 100%. Note the code of conduct doesn’t have to be a law (which the same court could strike down), but an internal Congressional procedural rule (which are explicitly Congress’s prerogative) that determines what conduct will automatically trigger the impeachment process. We’ll never get 2/3’s of the Senate to remove, but wayward judges and Justices may step down rather than have all their dirty linen aired. And it won’t hurt as a campaign issue either.
Trivia: Impeachment in the US is a carryover from the UK procedure, now called an “Address to the King,” with the crucial difference that in the UK only a simple majority of the Lords is required for removal.
rikyrah
@jonas:
They really think that I’m supposed to believe that they thought there were MILLIONS of criminals and drug dealers in the country just roaming the streets.
NO.
All the nopes in Nopeville.
BlueGuitarist
@Baud:
Would be great if Dan Osborn runs for Senate again.
last i saw he was also considering running for the Omaha area US House seat.
NE-2 would be easier for him to win
But other Ds could win NE-2, especially if incumbent R Don Bacon retires, but Osborn is probably the only person that can make a credible run for the US Senate seat.
From afar Nebraska Dem party chair Jane Kleeb seems very good.
US Senate map is not favorable for us but
Osborn in NE, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Mary Peltola in Alaska could give us a good chance, along with good candidates in NC and Maine.
writing some more postcards in the meantime.
p.a
@rikyrah: defacto line-item veto. Kiss t’s ass or else. Mob rule of acquisition 1.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: Elon Musk has his own personality cult–it used to be futurist technophiles, many of whom were even liberal or leftist; now he’s attached it to the Trump train and Fox News fans think of “Elon” as the genius who is saving America. The Trump cult could reattach to him and he seems to me to be the only one available.
Now, he’s theoretically constitutionally ineligible to be President. But he could be the kingmaker. He’s also out of his mind, but so is Trump.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott:
Wait, it didn’t come from his using the word “hereby”?
Betty Cracker
Speaking of crypto, I was listening to Rachel Maddow’s show via podcast the other day, and she compared crypto to the 1990s Beanie Babies craze. She’s right in the sense that the value is speculative — only worth what others are willing to pay.
Anyhoo, I’ve struggled to find a relatable comparison when talking to people who don’t understand how any of that shit works and how to convey that what Trump is doing with a “U.S. crypto reserve” is a big fat scam. A U.S. Beanie Baby Reserve illustrates the point nicely. Thanks, Rachel!
jonas
Watch enough Fox News and, yeah, that’s pretty much the picture they paint. And yes, people buy it. I know some.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: concur he is presently the only heir-apparent, but I don’t think it’s gonna last. Trump has the whole Apprentice persona, which is (1) still what most voters “know” about him and (2) relentlessly engineered to be in many ways normal and acceptable. Musk has the business mystique — mostly undeserved but whatever — and … that’s about it. In person he’s deeply weird, and it shows pretty much from the start. I think his personality is just too off-putting, and I expect his star will fall sooner rather than later.
And of course, when the Orange Guy passes from the scene, the knives will be out, and if he’s still around, he will be target #1.
BethanyAnne
@WereBear: Hey, WereBear, did you see this thread about the cat that talks with buttons? https://balloon-juice.com/2025/03/03/cats-apparently-not-about-to-be-outdone-by-dogs/
Another Scott
@rikyrah: Remember 47’s mantra, “You just tell them and they believe. They just do.” Lots and lots of people do fall for that approach and do put more trust in people they regard as being in their tribe. Affinity fraud is a real, and really bad, thing.
The answer is, probably, to say (as Pritzker did) – “Donald Trump is lying to you.”. Give normal people an out. Help them find a better path. Voters have limited choices and have always depended on the process to weed out bad and dangerous actors before they actually vote. They, especially these days, have limited time to figure out candidates’ positions and little ability to know what’s true and what isn’t. We can’t quickly fix it, and we can’t just say that “the system is corrupt” or “both parties are the same” or “your vote doesn’t matter” if we want to make progress. We have to help to encourage people to take a better path.
Somehow.
“Something something, I need a majority.” – Adlai Stevenson II
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: I remember thinking Ivanka was going to be the focus of the Trump dynasty after Donald, but she’s been notable by her absence this time around. She and Kushner seem to have noped out after being pivotal figures in the first Trump administration.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@rikyrah: The first clod hopper in which I found myself landed in the “wilds” of Nebraska. The people there are fierce, principled and no nonsense. A Nebraska thunder storm is a sight to behold. They are Republican by inheritance from John Brown and the free soil movement. The GOP is completely divorced from that inheritance now. Nebraskans can be reached with plain old facts.
Climate change already has the state in a vise of flood and drought. Years back, the state’s unicameral legislature tried to address climate change, but the state’s MAGA governor decided to study super volcanoes, instead. I kid you not. The legislature stopped that nonsense.
If democrats want Nebraskans as allies, we have to invest there. The state fought the Keystone pipeline to a halt to protect the Sandhills.* It isn’t an expensive state to reach. IMHO we should try reaching out to them with all of the bells and whistles. Nebraskans want allies, not bailouts.
Insulting them (remember Senator Nelson and the so-called “Cornhusker bailout?” I think that is another to thank Joe Lieberman for, although idk for certain) will never work. That only leaves them stuck in conlandia and us with fewer allies.
In 2023, the state defied con dogma to study mitigating climate change. That report was due in December of 2024. It got delayed a bit I think because of personnel hires. Some suspect con sabotage.
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/02/24/nebraska-climate-report-delayed-to-allow-for-revisions-and-further-vetting/
One of the reasons I kept lurking at this blog is the support this blog showed Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn. Democrats should not concede these sparsely populated states where we could reach nearly everybody. We need to ditch the consultants, buy some runsas (yummy) and talk to some folks. IMHO
* the wild and wonderful Nebraska Sandhills.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/nature/nebraska/sandhills-ne
Baud
@jonas:
Cities. Burnt. To. The. Ground.
raven
There is a women’s march in downtown Athens in a bit and I’m going to drop my bride and here friend down there.
Baud
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Pretty sure that was Republicans.
Baud
@raven:
👍
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
My dad grew up in the Panhandle and we’d go out there every several years to visit family. His whole family is super conservative. As much as I’ve appreciated knowing them, their political though does not strike me as commonsensical or reachable. They’re all in with MAGA.
The last time I was there was during the Obama administration and at one point we went to a rodeo. The rodeo clown, as they do these days, had a wireless mike on and was keeping up a line of banter through the whole thing, and it struck me how ALL the jokes were political, every single one of them–the rodeo clown comedy was just all about how the audience was being oppressed by Obama and political correctness and how you couldn’t tell ethnic jokes any more (but he was gonna do it even though he was gonna get in big trouble, oh boy…) It was like Fox News comedy night.
No, I think those people are gone.
Ohio Mom
@laura: Of course we are all in on trans rights. We just don’t have to leave openings for MAGAs to spout their bumper sticker talking points. We don’t help them megaphone their message.
justsomeguy05
@Rusty: Stolen from this post in response to my own comment about mis-education creating the public MIS-perception that Reagan is the best-est President ever http://disq.us/p/328wvy8
“Just ask Elissa Slotkin!”
HopefullyNotcassandra
@rikyrah: Yes. They are told that on Fox and even on their local news.
They also think California is broke when it most assuredly is not. New York is awash in crime when the actual crime there is astonishingly low. Chicago is a den of vice when it is not (and crime has dropped quite a bit there too).
and let us not forget, Portland is full of lawless thugs just being lawless. This is another fox/ right wing nonsense line.
The entire goal of the con project, seems to me, is to make us terrified of everything so we cannot think
Whatever you think of Frank Herbert, he certainly was right
“Fear is the mind killer “
Ohio Mom
@jonas: The irony is, that’s what Biden was doing, deporting undocumented people with criminal charges against them. Looking back, Democrats should have played that up but it was done on the down low instead.
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
I watch a lot of videos by roller-coaster/theme-park fans. At one point in the comments of one of them, someone was talking about touring the Pacific Northwest, which is notorious for having about the slimmest pickings for roller-coaster fans of the whole contiguous US, so some careful planning is needed.
Anyway, the thing that struck me in particular was all the Oregonians speaking up telling this person, whatever he did, to NOT go to Portland because it was just too damned dangerous there, he’d get killed! They talked like it was this instant death zone. These people seemed actually fine with other cities but they were specifically terrified of Portland.
I guess part of it is that, like all West Coast cities, it currently has an amazing amount of visible homelessness, even by comparison with the East Coast. And there was mythologizing about the George Floyd riots there. But it’s gotten hyped up to an absurd degree.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: Devil’s Advocate.
Biden had the House and Senate but couldn’t get legislation through to do things like set up stronger voting rights protections, and codify Roe, and specify a student loan forgiveness program that the SCOTUS would accept, and a whole lot more.
A big majority in the legislature expands the space for change, but it won’t make it pain-free. Roosevelt still had to compromise within his own party on setting up new programs, and he had huge majorities.
I do agree that Fight for 15 is a worthy and important goal (as I’ve screamed myself for years). But I think we have to remember what a heavy lift it is going to be. Some scholar once said that the SCOTUS throughout history has only been “liberal” from Brown v Board of Education until around 1980 with Berger – a period of all of 26 years.
IANAL, but I can probably come up with a bunch of reasons why the SCOTUS has been out of control since at least 2000, but getting enough people to accept the need for reform is going to involve a lot more than persuasion. People are going to have to be comfortable that it’s a return to the mainstream while the MAGAts and the screaming monkeys and all their enablers say it’s sour grapes, is too radical, is a power grab by Democrats, and all the rest.
Humans make their governments – either overtly or via neglect. They’re not chemical reactions or geologically determined. People have to figure them out…
tl;dr – Most of us see the need for big changes quickly. But incremental change is the path for sustained progress. We would (mostly) all like progress to be faster, but we liberals are a political minority. We have to find a way drag the normies along with us.
Best wishes,
Scott.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Matt McIrvin: The panhandle in Oklahoma or Texas? I don’t really know anything about that panhandle or its people.
Unless I missed something, which is everlastingly possible, Nebraska is not Oklahoma is not Texas is not Kansas is not Wyoming, etc. All of fly over country resents being called fly over country. That is a seething resentment all share.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Baud: Maybe. I really don’t know. The gop certainly ran with it and clobbered Nebraska democrats with it for years.
Trivia Man
@laura: awesome strategy!
Baud
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Libs don’t use flyover country. That’s a Republica/media thing.
Baud
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
That’s what they do to manufacture resentment.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: Ivanka is, it appears, smarter than all the rest of them — Don, Melania, and Dumber and Dumberer — put together.
And Jared is no slouch. Don’s corruption the first time around was totally nickel-and-dime — golf cart rentals for the Secret Service? FFS — but Jared knew how to turn his position into SERIOUSLY big bucks. He knuckled the Qataris and got his family out from under 666 Fifth, to the tune of, what, a billion or so? The mind reels …
I don’t blame them for disappearing quietly. When The Chosen One passes from the scene, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
it’s absolutely a SCAM
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
Yeah no LOL.
rikyrah
The Justice Department has removed top national security officials as part of a widespread purge of senior career leaders across the law enforcement agency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/03/08/trumps-justice-dept-ousts-national-security-officials-latest-purge/
BlueGuitarist
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Don Osborn will get a lot of support from outside NE if running again.
excellent NE Dem chair Jane Kleeb is on BlueSky janekleeb.bsky.social
including info re local elections this year in Nebraska and volunteer opportunities.
@janekleeb on Twitter retweeted someone in Jim Jordan’s district asking AOC to come do a town hall since local Rs weren’t
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: The Nebraska panhandle. Morrill County.
Jeannedalbret
@Josie: I have received such from Rep. Jayapal.
cain
It will be difficult to do autocracy and Indians do protests like the French and India isn’t some uniform culture, it’s highly diverse across so many aspects. You just can’t do “white male” whatever like you can here.
That said, the young are not happy – and if I read /r/india — they are not happy with their fellow citizens either.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: I haven’t listened to it, but this 19thnews.org story indicates that Kirk brought it up:
I can understand why Newsom would ask him that first question, about building support. (I can’t understand why he would think that he would get an honest answer – why would a political operative willingly help the other side??) I can even see why Newsom would be trying to figure out a way to convince voters that one is worried about the “fairness” of it that polls indicate is a concern. I don’t see that saying “I agree with you” to someone as deep in MAGA land as Kirk is a helpful response.
But I always worry about ellipsis in quotes – especially on topics that (often rightly) get people riled up.
We need enough voters to make things better for trans people and everyone else. Politicians respond to their voters and usually cannot get too far ahead of them without suffering consequences. That said, Newsom needs to be a better ally (he also vetoed a bill in October that would have improved access to gender-affirming care after signing one in 2022 that ensured gender-affirming care would be available in the state.).
Punching down is never a good position from Democrats.
Best wishes,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@YY_Sima Qian: Sorry I was grumpy. I just envy everyone who doesn’t live here. But I’m not leaving.
Glidwrith
@Betty Cracker: I called his office and informed him he lost four voters. Sitting down with Charlie Kirk and spewing that?
Also noticed that the drop-down menu of topics to contact him had NO mention of LGBTQ issues.
He’s done for us.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Auto generated.. More at the link.
Another Scott
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Thank you.
Post more often.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Chief Oshkosh
@Rusty: Yep. I have seen exactly one MSM story on this, and it’s something I watch.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Osborn – an unknown without a party behind him – only lost by 6.7% points (less than 33,000 votes). I wouldn’t give up on the state, myself.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
That excerpt makes Newsom look even worse. Like JFC man, the right wants these people fucking dead and eliminated as a group, they don’t give a fuck about women athletes or bathrooms, whatever else they blather on about. And it won’t end there either, they’ll go after all of LGBTQ+ afterwards. It’s a genocide.
All because this asshole apparently wants to run for president. Fuck this clown, what a betrayal
Chief Oshkosh
@jonas: Oh, absolutely. And this goes all the way back to the 90s. Many US cities have some form of a ring road. In every one of them that I’ve worked in since the 90s, the people living outside of the ring road were and are largely convinced that everything, and I mean everything, inside the ring is a crime-infested pile of garbage, full of thug blahs and even more violent Latino gangs. Hell, I had business associates who absolutely refused to even meet for lunch inside the ring. And again, this has been going on since the 90s.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: Well, it must take all of their time to spend that $2 billion the Saudi’s handed them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@oldgold:
Yeah but Hair Furor got out of that during his first term by creating very specific carve outs in broader policy so that a red state like IA wasn’t impacted.
I’m assuming that basic process will be followed again this time.
Another Scott
@Baud: Thanks.
I don’t really understand where he’s coming from there. (What about fairness to swimmers who had to swim against Michael Phelps with his freakishly (or maybe not freakishly?) long arms??). Maybe there’s some eleven-dimensional chess going on in his head, but he really didn’t make it clear how in that first quote how excluding “10” athletes makes things “fair”. Why is it worthwhile to accept the framing of the monsters on the other side??
Punching down isn’t “fair”.
Grr…
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
@Chief Oshkosh: I live in an older, inner-ring suburb, about five miles from the northern border of the City of Cincinnati and fifteen miles from the center of downtown, and plenty of my neighbors are afraid of “the city.” They are a timid lot.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ohio Mom:
That seems to be somewhat of a standard perception not confined to Cincy.
A decade + ago, that would have been a typical racial dog whistle by lily-white burb residents, fearing “crime in the city”.
Funny thing is, as such urban cores have massively gentrified (at least in the “hot” cities”), that same perception still exists, particularly coming out of The Plague Times and the homeless issues that are now pointed to by those same people being “afraid” of going into the city.
It’s compounded by the fact that “they city” isn’t necessarily the site of a massive, daily worker presence the way it was pre-plague. It’s one reason why Newsom, when he wasn’t throwing trans people under the bus recently, ordered all the state employees back into the office.
surfk9
I am a delegate to the CADEM convention for the next two years as I was for the last two years. I can tell you that knowing how the delegates who vote are, he could easily lose the party’s endorsement over this issue. For example: Barbara Lee got the most votes at the last convention. This is not a crowd that will accomodate a move to the right.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Ella in New Mexico: No. He could not.
Destroying things as this president is doing can be done without Congress.
Creating entirely new things cannot. President Biden forgave some student loans. The courts blocked that meaning the companies holding those loans could seek payment.
Illegally destroying things can be done anywhere at anytime, just ask any arsonist. The law may or may not catch the crook. Here the Supreme Court quite literally defanged the law.
Illegally building a thing is nearly impossible. Building takes time. Destruction can happen in less than one second.
Please do not seek any Octavian.
cmorenc
@jonas: How many times did Fox portray yet another caravan of Venezuelan would-be illegals gathered somewhere down in Mexico on their way to sneak and smuggle across the US border? In between sensationalizing some illegal brownskin perp murdering and raping a blond US citizen?
gene108
It’s the corruption and Orban’s ability to enrich himself that appeals to Trump.
zhena gogolia
@HopefullyNotcassandra: THANK YOU
Gloria DryGarden
My attention has been hijacked by the awareness that Maxar stopped sharing satellite imagery w Ukraine, and things have gone much worse since that shift.
Maxar is 29 minutes north of me in the suburbs of Denver.
just google Maxar, there’s plenty of websites and news articles. It matters a bunch. My tax dollars paid for this, and now twitler is cutting off that info. Possibly sharing it with his favorite country.
TONYG
The thing that is “interesting” to me about the current clusterfuck is that Trump/Musk seem to be trying to fuck EVERYONE who is not a billionaire allied to them. Traditional fascism, as I understand it, would try to crush its enemies but reward its supporters. Are Trump/Musk up to something that I cannot understand? Or are they just idiots? I guess we’ll find out soon.
Bill Arnold
IMO, the Democrats and their (actual) allies need to focus the next 1.5 years on making GOP toxicity the mainstream narrative, and as 2026 elections approach, strongly consider running on root-and-branch purges of the Federal government of Trump loyalists, and of MAGA’s allies of convenience.
With implied waterboarding at Gitmo in the background. Patriots (real patriots) need to know where the ticking backdoors have been installed by DOGE et al.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott:
Counterpoint: the job of leaders is to LEAD. Average voters didn’t give trans issues much of a thought until Repubs made it a wedge issue and LED them to view it negatively. Our leaders need to LEAD them in the direction of equality and fairness. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.
There was a video posted here the other day of two lawmakers convincing wingnut colleagues in Montana to vote down anti-trans legislation. MONTANA! Pols like Tim Walz and Gretchen Whitmer have handled it as a freedom issue.
Betty Cracker
@Bill Arnold: I really want to see them to lean into the epic, unprecedented corruption as a reason to eradicate the Trumpists root and branch from the government. Voters are generally disappointing on corruption because they cynically believe both parties are equally bad and that it’s inevitable. But what’s happening now really is brazen, jaw-dropping stuff. Chris Murphy laid it out here (YouTube). Longish but worth it!
Aziz, light!
@TONYG: Once the billionaires control everything, they won’t need any supporters.
Aziz, light!
@Matt McIrvin: In Portland we have a small number of anarchists and lefty loonies who hijack every peaceful protest and get their jollies destroying public property, like the ones who wrecked the Portland State University library last spring during the Palestine protests. They are greatly outnumbered but the media loves them.
UncleEbeneezer
I’m glad people are finally admitting that SCOTUS is, in fact, a very important reason why we should all, always elect Dems. Sadly, in 2016, making that obvious moral argument made Progressives cry that they were being Blackmailed!!1! into voting for Evil Hillary. I wish people had taken the fate of the Supreme Court more seriously then, and once again in 2024. Like Ukraine, it really should have been a huge focus of our conversation and advocacy, instead of the never-ending obsession with Biden’s age and Gaza. We will be lucky if this SCOTUS (which is already doing generations worth of damage) doesn’t get even more right-wing with more MAGA justices.
Matt McIrvin
@TONYG: I think that it might be very similar to the outrageous, unbelievable lying offered as a show of power and a test of loyalty.
Yes, they said they would give you cheap groceries and then the prices went up. Yes, they’re actively hurting you and have for some reason pivoted from promising immediate relief to promising to hurt you more. But you can voluntarily choose to love their abuse that as a sign that you’re 100% on the Trump Train. You can grant Trump the power to control what is real and what is good, to contradict what he said yesterday and insist he never said it, and some of that power might in some symbolic sense rub off on you.
Ebony
@rikyrah: Hi Rikyrah. That was great! Do you have a blog? I miss Pragmatic Obots. I want to let you know I appreciate you!
TBone
@rikyrah: thank you for that.
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: Not a problem, it is a difficult time to be alive, & I certainly recognize that my being an ocean away from the ongoing car crash afford me privileges & emotional distance.
As Another Scott is wont to say, hang in there!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@UncleEbeneezer:
Who are these people admitted this?
I’m not being snarky here. You, me and the rest of the online left fully realize the importance of the SC.
But I don’t see that as even a Top 5 category for your bog-standard low-info/low-motivation voter.
I wish it were different but gave up hope that that issue would every become an important one in 2016 at the latest and quite frankly, most of my life.
sab
@Chief Oshkosh: They don’t need Daddy’s inheritance anymore. Her brothers still do.
sab
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I agree with Zhena Gogolia in thanking you.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
THIS. ALL OF IT.
The people involved in this crap want to be the sole controlling force in a DEMOCRACY.
Funny, if it’s working correctly it does not work like this. Of course if it was working correctly we wouldn’t be in this mess with people that can’t do anything in any reasonable.
JMG
Problem: At least 40 percent of our countrymen want a dictatorship where their imaginary enemies, the other 60 percent, are persecuted, imprisoned and executed, no matter what else happens.
Solution: No non-violent ones possible. To save our constitutional democracy, many will have to die on both sides.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
In our system we have singular power.
Sure we have congress, but the highest power is one person, making decisions. That one person can be on the side of the country as a whole or wholly on their own side. Our current president has no idea about anything but his own side. That doesn’t mean he can’t do good, we have the proof of history that one person can be good for all the citizens. But this time I believe that every issue, every decision is being made based upon what is good for the decision maker. Or at least what he “thinks” is a good decision for him. Thinking possibly being something on the other side of the world, rather than where it belongs.
Ruckus
@Wapiti:
It almost always depends on the specific situation. It’s most often any more that it’s the humans that are dishonest not the system itself. Part of this is communications, like what we are doing here, or such aggress criminal dealings that open up the ignorance or stupidity, or willful ignorance, or actual public criminal behavior of someone in power that there really is no getting away with it.
Ruckus
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
If you believe that money is the end all be all of life, any thing but all the money is not good enough.
And many people think that. No matter if they have more than they can spend.
Denali5
@bbleh:
I don’t think we can depend on a quick demise of the CF. It would be nice, but so often life is not predictable. Somehow people must understand how danger and destructive he is. I think this shift is coming soon, because people love our National Parks, they depend on Social Security and they want a reliable weather service and safe air travel.
Denali5
@cmorenc: I have a trans member of my family who I am comfortable with, but I am terrified about their future. I am at a loss as to how the Democratic Party should handle this issue.