Wall Streeters are delusional, with a serious case of amnesia

I have to admit that the first thing I thought about when the news broke that Trump had been re-elected was to wonder how I might be affected. That could sound selfish, but I was basically following the kind of advice you hear on airplanes about securing your mask before attempting to help others. 

As with many Americans, the place I am most vulnerable is economics. But specifically, I am retired and depend on Social Security plus a small retirement fund as my sources of income. 

When it comes to the former, I would predict that, if Republicans are successful in doing anything about Social Security, it would affect future - not current - recipients. It is my retirement account that could take a hit since it is currently invested with the goal of producing growth and income. Given the fact that I'm in my "twilight years," I don't have a time horizon to make up for losses if the stock market crashes. 

Today I received an email from my financial advisors passing on what their company views as the outlook for 2025. Here's a summary (emphasis mine):

As we look to 2025, we remain cautiously optimistic. We’re cautious because no market environment is ever permanent, yet optimistic since constructive long-term technology trends are in place. Plus, potential tax policy and deregulation efforts in 2025 could provide some tailwinds — particularly from an economic perspective. While growth asset returns are not expected to be as robust in 2025, the investment environment should prove to be favorable for investors.

So they are "cautiously optimistic" that Trump's tax cuts and deregulation will contribute to a favorable investment environment. And yet they failed to mention two of Trump's most prominent campaign promises: tariffs and mass deportations.  That's the kind of financial analysis that some folks are calling "delusional."

Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives, told the New York Times that many Wall Street players have convinced themselves that Trump will only carry out the policies they support and not those they oppose, such as hefty foreign tariffs or mass deportations.

"A lot of people are using deductive reasoning and concluding that he’ll only do things that are good for the market... They can ride this wave of hope-ium through the end of January," said Coronado, who added that Wall Street's current view of Trump "feels delusional."

Even when these Wall Streeters acknowledge the way that tariffs would hurt the market, they tend to downplay whether Trump will actually implement his promises.

Barclays strategists estimated that proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China - and any retaliatory actions - could drag S&P 500 earnings down 2.8%...

BofA Global Research expects a 1% hit to S&P 500 earnings if tariffs on China double to 40% while they rise to around 8% for the rest of the world, excluding Mexico and Canada. But with retaliatory tariffs, which hurt foreign sales, the earnings hit would rise to 5%, the bank's strategists wrote...

"They are trying to boost U.S. growth," Lefkowitz [UBS Global Wealth Management]

 said. "Tariffs would end up reducing it and Trump tends to focus on how the market is performing. For that reason, the market has been downplaying so far what we have heard on tariffs."

None of them ever mention the impact mass deportations will have on the economy.

But it gets even worse. Not only are these Wall Streeters delusional, they appear to have amnesia when it comes to deregulation - as Chris Hayes explained.  

So whether it's tariffs, mass deportations, or deregulation, all of the things Trump has promised to do will have devastating effects on the economy, as well as the stock market. 

My conclusion is that it's time to tell the financial advisors to take their "cautious optimism" and have a seat. A storm is coming and its time to batten down the hatches.

Our entire economy could hinge on whether Trump is too incompetent to implement his plans.

Somebody has been making a list and you can bet that we'll be checking it twice.

But Trump's biggest promise didn't make that list. He repeatedly blamed almost all of our economic challenges on undocumented immigrants and promised to deport them all. 

This week Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee reported that the president-elect's plans would not only fail to make our economy stronger, they would actually make things a whole lot worse. The title of their report says it all: "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy."

Depending on how many immigrants are deported, these mass deportations would: 

• Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028,  
• Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including by up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction,
• Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028, and
• Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.

They also noted that Trump's plan "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."

As a marker, Democrats pointed out that, when it comes to GDP, "the economy shrank by 4.3% during the Great Recession." Deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants would more that double that.

What the report didn't address is that, in addition to those catastrophic results, it would cost the federal government over $300 billion to implement Trump's plan. For some perspective, that is about twice the annual budget of the entire Department of Homeland Security.

All of that happens if Trump is able to deliver on the biggest promise he made during the 2024 campaign. It could be that this one goes the way of his 2016 promise to "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it." In other words, the malevolence of Trump and his minions (ie, Stephen Miller) could be overwhelmed by their incompetence. 

So how does that feel America? Our entire economy could hinge on whether or not the next president is too incompetent to implement his plans. Jeeze!

MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement

Recently I wrote that MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo movement. But there was another major event during Trump's first term that sparked a backlash: the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the mass protests that ensued. 

Contrary to what Trump and his supporters would have you believe, the protests were mostly peaceful. 

About 93% of racial justice protests in the US since the death of George Floyd have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a new report.

The findings, released Thursday, contradict assumptions and claims by some that protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are spawning violence and destruction of property...

About 7,750 of those protests were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, the report states. Peaceful racial justice protests took place in more than 2,440 locations across all 50 states and Washington, DC – violent demonstrations occurred in fewer than 220 locations, according to the report.

I remember tearing up when I saw this: 

Those protests were so massive and multi-racial that even a cynic like Ta-Nehisi Coates was optimistic about their potential for police reform. 

But then MAGA and right wing news went to work scaring folks with an endless focus on the few instances of violence, along with claims that Democrats wanted to defund the police (a lie). Folks like Tucker Carlson even claimed that Derek Chauvin didn't murder Floyd - it was all a lie. 

To understand how threatened MAGA folks were by the BLM movement, we need look no further than the fact that yesterday, a jury found Daniel Perry (a white ex-Marine) not guilty for the murder of a homeless Black man, Jordan Neely. Right wingers aren't just celebrating the verdict. They're claiming that "the BLM era is over." Here's Megyn Kelly:

Same thing from Chris Rufo.

Make no mistake: the Black Lives Matter era of “restorative justice” is over and the real spirit of justice is returning to America...Today’s verdict marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago, is finished.

Perhaps even more pernicious is the attempt to smear Jordan Neely (just as they attempted to smear George Floyd), a black man who was homeless as a result of drug addiction and mental illness.  Here's what the richest man in the world (who is also apparently the shadow president) had to say:

There are a lot of directions a conversation about all of this could go, not the least of which is a discussion about how abhorrent these people are. But let's keep this in mind as we go forward: the MeToo and BLM movements shook up the status quo of our white patriarchal culture so profoundly that we are now in the midst of a huge backlash. I have no idea where all of this ends, but I am confident that their fear indicates that those movements were powerful. In an odd way, that brings me some hope. 

Why I'm not buying Trump's claim that he'll work with Democrats to protect DREAMers

One of the things I've been thinking about over the last few days is how I'm going to deal with four more years of the daily onslaught of ignorance, lies, racism, and sexism spewing from the mouth of our next president. Part of the problem is that I'm in my "twighlight years," and don't have a lot of time to waste. It depresses me to think that much of that time will be consumed by anger and despair over the state of our country. But I can't simply ignore it all either. 

That dilemma was brought home today with the reporting about Trump's interview with Kristen Welker. In typical fashion, the president-elect said a lot of stupid, ignorant stuff. But given that I'm going to do my best to focus on his plans for immigration, I want to take a few minutes to break down some of the nonsense he spouted. 

Here is a summary of what he's promising to do:

• Deport every undocumented immigrant,
• End birthright citizenship, and
• Work with Democrats to protect DREAMers.

Estimates are that the cost of deporting 11 million undocmented immigrants would be around $300 billion - not to mention the humanitarian disaster it would be or the devastation it would bring to our economy. 

According to Pew Research, there are currently about 4.4 million U.S.-born children who live with an undocumented parent. During his interview with Welker, Trump said (1) they'd be deported with their parents, and (2) he'd end birthright citizenship. That means tossing out provisions of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Here's what's at stake with that one:

Amidst all of that, it might sound jarring that trump is promising to work with Democrats to protect DREAMers. But don't pin your hopes on anything positive on that front. All we have to do is remember what happened during his first term.

Trump has always talked positively about DREAMers. But in 2018, a bipartisan group of senators worked out a compromise that would protect them from deportation - as well as increase border funding and place limits on legal immigration. Trump signaled that he would support their work. 

But when the senators showed up at the White House to discuss their proposal, they were ambushed - most likely by Stephen Miller. Unbeknownst to the bipartisan group, several immigration hardliners attended the meeting - which ultimately became famous for Trump's comments about not wanting immigrants from "shithole countries." In other words, that proposal met the same fate as the bipartisan border bill this year. So excuse me if I don't put much stock in that promise. It's all a shit show of ignorance, lies, and racism. 

The next four years are going to be exhausting - at best.

MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo Movement

One year after Mr. "Grab 'em by the p*ssy" was elected president in 2016, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was "the great silence breakers" of the MeToo movement. 

This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know that boundaries exist. They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.

One of the seminal moments for that movement came a year later when Oprah Winfrey gave this speech at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards ceremony. 

The tears we shed during that speech were a testament to the power of all of the women stepping up to be "silence breakers."

One of the people who feared that power was Steve Bannon. During an interview with Joshua Green, he acknowledged that Oprah could "represent an existential threat to Trump’s presidency" if she decided to campaign for Democrats in 2018.

But, Green wrote, Bannon believes the most powerful backlash to Trump is bigger than Winfrey, who’s been the subject of much 2020 speculation. He’s most concerned by the women-led wave of liberal, anti-Trump activism, fueled by the #MeToo movement.

“The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history,” Bannon told Green. “You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch.”…”This is a definitional moment in the culture,” Bannon told Green of the Hollywood awards ceremony.

In her speech, Oprah declared that, "For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up." That terrified members the patriarchy whose power over women depended on silence. 

It is important to keep those days in mind as the president-elect - who has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 18 women and was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse - nominates several men to his cabinet who have been accused of sexual assault.

In defense of one of those nominees (Pete Hegseth), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that "We've all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that." On the one hand, it is truly abhorrent for Roy to refer sexual assault as simply an "indiscretion." But he also says what a lot of us learned during the height of the MeToo Movement: sexual assault is practically ubiquitous in this culture. 

Steve Bannon knew that, when women stood up and spoke out, the whole patriarchal culture was threatened. So the backlash against that possibility is now underway as the "p*ssy-grabber" tries to reinstate male dominance over women in ways both large and small. 

They think we're going to keep quiet while they do that. Will we?

The Afghan refugees that Trump wants to deport

On Sunday, 60 Minutes told the harrowing story of how Jason Kander (read about him here) used private resources to get 383 refugees out of Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out of the country.  The focus of the story was on the nephew of Kander's translator, Rahim Rauffi, who had received death threats from the Taliban because he possessed critical documents from his work in payroll for Afghanistan International Bank.

Rahim has access to the list of tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked directly with everybody from the UN to the U.S. Embassy, to any other multi-lateral just trying to build democracy in Afghanistan, everything that the Taliban stood against, and everything that once the Taliban took over, one of their first priorities was to find those people and make an example of them by imprisoning them or killing them.

If you didn't see the segment, I highly recommend watching it. As I commented while it was airing, "if this were a movie script it would be rejected as too wild to be believed." But here's what Kander wants us all to take away from the story:

I want Americans to know that every Afghan that they meet did something heroic to get here. And when you first meet them they might be in a job where you may not think about that. They might be bussing your table. They might be driving your Uber. But these are some of the most industrious and resilient and incredible people that you'll ever meet. And I just would like every American to know that.

What the 60 Minutes story didn't cover was the immigration status of these Afghan refugees. It is most likely that they're covered by humanitarian parole, which has been granted to 133,000 Afghans, but is only valid for two years.  

Donald Trump has promised to end the "outrageous abuse of parole,” meaning that Rahim, his family, and the rest of those rescued by Kander would be at risk of deportation. In case you thought the incoming administration would be sympathetic to Afghan refugees, keep in mind that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggested that they might be terrorists. 

I wish 60 Minutes had included this risk of deportation when telling this important story. But when/if you hear about Trump ending humanitarian parole, perhaps Rahim's family will come to mind and we'll remember Kander's words about these heroic, industrious, resilient, and incredible people.

The least tyrant-proof part of government: DOJ

Donald Trump, who made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, or imprison the "enemy within," has nominated Kash Patel to be FBI Director. Here's what he's promised to do: 

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.” “We will go out and find the conspirators... Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

[image or embed]

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) November 30, 2024 at 7:02 PM

I was reminded that, very early on in the first Trump administration, Benjamin Wittes wrote that the least tyrant-proof part of government is the Department of Justice. To make the point, he quoted Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who also served as U.S. Attorney General (emphasis mine).

What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

Wittes goes on to point out that the safeguards against this ultimately "reside in an institutional culture at the Justice Department, and that is precisely the sort of thing a tyrant leader can change." 

So, if confirmed as FBI Director, Patel will be able to prosecute/sue/harass anyone Trump deems to be an "enemy within."

Wittes concludes that, "There is, in fact, only one way to tyrant-proof the American presidency: Don't elect tyrants to it." 

Oops, too late for that.

Rep. Seth Moulton would rather blame the word police than confront his transphobia

I'm not very knowledgable about Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), but he seems to be making a name for himself by promoting the idea that the Democrats lost in 2024 because they are too "woke." Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Moulton with these opening paragraphs.

Since Election Day, I’ve learned two things about the Democratic Party: The word police will continue to patrol no matter how badly we lose, and a growing number of us are finally ready to move beyond them to start winning again.  

Two days after Donald Trump’s victory, I gave an example of how Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone, even on issues where most Americans feel the same way. Speaking as a dad, I said I didn’t like the idea of my two girls one day competing against biological boys on a playing field. My main point, though, is what I said next: “As a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

The Congressman went on the relay that, after making those remarks, the local Democratic Party condemned them and people showed up at his office to protest. Ohhh, the horror! 

It's also interesting to note that nowhere in Moulton's op-ed does he reference the fact that Republicans are targeting the first transgender women ever elected to congress - Rep. Sarah McBride - with harassment and threats. In his mind, the real threat is that those who disparage transgendered people are being silenced. WOW! 

But this is the kind of backward "logic" we're hearing from pundits these days. It reminds me of a conversation I witnessed way back in 2007 between African American, Hispanic, and Native American bloggers in response to this statement from Glenn Greenwald:

It is always preferable to have views and sentiments -- even ugly ones -- aired out in the open rather than forcing them into hiding through suppression. And part of the reason people intently run away from discussions of race...is because it is too easy to unwittingly run afoul of various unwritten speech rules, thereby triggering accusations of bigotry. That practice has the effect of keeping people silent, which in turn has the effect of reinforcing the appearance that nobody thinks about race (which is why nobody discusses it), which in turn prevents a constructive discussion of hidden and unwarranted premises.

At his blog, The Unapologetic Mexican, Nezua responded with this:

In this analysis (or this part of his post at least) the problem is the various unwritten speech rules. But guess what? There really aren't any. There are just poor attitudes we keep about people who look different. Or who we've been taught to think of differently. And there is a "White" attitude of deciding for everyone else how they should live, be, self-identify, and do many other things. There are old slurs and old tropes that hurt people. These are the things that are flushed out when people speak: attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, manners of speaking that hint at lurking attitudes.

People avoid talking about race because they are scared of exposing their thoughts and views on race. They are afraid they are A RACIST. They are not afraid of "unwritten speech rules." They are afraid that what they really think and feel will cause them to be ridiculed or ostracized in public, or that they may see a part of themselves they have to feel bad about. So they keep the potential to themselves.

That conversation on the "diversosphere" went on for days. I learned a lot from all of the bloggers involved and am sad to say that most of their sites have disappeared or gone quiet. 

But if we take Nezua's response and apply it to what Moulton wrote up above, you'll see that he referred to transgender females as "biological boys." That indicates that, at best, the congressman knows nothing about the issue and, at worst, he's parroting transphobic talking points. Of course, he's free to say ignorant stuff because there are no "speech rules." But the people who responded are also free to protest that kind of bigotry. Actually, it is imperative that they do so. 

As Nezua ended his response, "if we keep the focus on Speech Rules, we miss the opportunity to change ourselves." The truth is that Moulton is upset about the fact that he got called out for his thoughts/attitudes/beliefs about transgender people. Rather than listen and learn, he decided to blame the "word police." 

Gov. Tim Walz: The fascists depend on fear. Don't give them the power.

I recently went back to remind myself of the first time Gov. Tim Walz talked about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance being weird. 

Gov. Walz on trail stumping for Harris. Posting a few of his remarks that stuck out to me.

"These guys are just weird," he said before calling Trump/Vance "a threat to democracy" who will put people in danger. He said Trump is going to have his "ass handed to him" in Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/BcHYSFKFxX

— Eva McKend (@evamckend) July 28, 2024

Here's the transcript (emphasis mine): 

These guys are just weird. That's who they are. So it ain't much else.

Don't give them the power. Look, are they a threat to democracy? Yes. Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people's lives in danger? Yes. Are they going to endanger the planet by not dealing with climate change? Yes, they're going to do all that.

But don't lift these guys up like they're some kind of heroes. Everybody in this room knows. I know it as a teacher, a bully has no self-confidence, a bully has no strength. They have nothing.

The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we're not afraid of weird people.

We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid.

The part about Trump/Vance being weird got all of the press. But I think that the most important part of what Walz had to say is the context he provided  - and that part is even more important now that the weird guys have been re-elected: "Fascists depend on fear, so don't give them that power." 

When I think about fear and power, this quote from Audre Lorde comes to mind.

Standing up as a Black lesbian woman 50 years ago would have given Lorde plenty of reasons to be afraid. Notice that she didn't simply dismiss those fears. Instead, she said that they became less important when she dared to be powerful. In other words, she didn't focus on her fears...she focused on her vision and her own powerful self.

I think that's what Gov. Walz was trying to tell us last July. At the time, it lifted our spirits and brought us joy. Of course, the threat is more real today than it was back then. But the message is still the same: let your soul shine!

When your world seems cold
You got to let your spirit take control

Talking 'bout soulshine
It's better than sunshine
Better than moonshine
Damn sure better than rain
And now people don't mind
We all feel this way sometimes
Gotta let your soul shine
Shine till the break of day

Why fascism wasn't a deal breaker

As the 2024 presidential campaign was winding down, Tucker Carlson gave a speech at a Turning Point rally for Trump in which he compared the opposition to a disobedient teenage girl.

There has to be a point at which dad comes home….and he's pissed. 

Dad is pissed. He's not vengeful. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be. He loves them because they're his children…. 

And when dad gets home, you know what he says, "You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl. And it has to be this way."

The crowd loved it. And when Trump came on stage, they chanted, "Daddy's home!"

As Talia Lavin noted at the time, it was a "florid illustration of the way patriarchal family dynamics and punishment stand at the center of contemporary right-wing morality." She goes on to suggest that Carlson's words "had a special resonance for a particular breed of authoritarian conservative: members of the evangelical right," in which "tens of millions of Americans have experienced, firsthand, the consequences of disobeying Daddy."

In the 1970s James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, gave credence to all of that with his book, "Dare to Discipline." As part of this so-called "biblical parenting," Dobson recommended regular corporal punishment of disobedient children from the ages of 18 months to 10 years old, with a spanking “of sufficient magnitude to cause tears.”

For Dobson, the purpose of all of this was to break a child's will, which he defined as a "passion for independence" and a "deeply ingrained desire to have his or her way." The end goal is to force the willful child into obedience, which is achieved either through violence, or the threat of violence. 

Of course, "biblical parenting" mirrors the right wing view of God and how he interacts with his children. That one goes back a very long time. For example, in 1741 Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon titled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It employs intense, vivid, and frightening imagery to depict the torments of Hell to create a sense of fear and urgency, emphasizing the wrath of an angry God who demands obedience.

Listen to any evangelist today and they'll repeat the same message: "You are a sinner and God is angry. If you don't obey him, he'll send you to hell for eternal punishment." If it sounds like abusive authoritarianism, that's because it is.

Is it any wonder that right wing evangelicals are uncomfortable with a democracy that promises independence to people in the name of freedom and equality? Or that they are much more comfortable with an authoritarian leader who foments fear and promises to punish those who are disobedient? As Katherine Stewart put it:

The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.

It should come as no surprise then, that fascism wasn't a deal breaker. To the contrary, it's what they've been looking for. 

Preparing for the zone to be flooded with shit

Historically, a president-elect starts announcing their cabinet nominees by the end of November. But Donald Trump has already announced most of his nominees and plans to finish by next week. Steve Bannon and Sen. Tuberville exposed the game plan recently.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville tells Steve Bannon that Republican senators have a plan in place to confirm Trump's key nominations (including Gaetz and Hegseth) before Trump is sworn in pic.twitter.com/nB15SvDZIa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 20, 2024

The new congress will be sworn in on January 3rd and MAGA senators plan to start their confirmation hearings right away - more than two weeks before Trump's inauguration. 

What's the rush? Bannon answers that question in the clip up above when he talks about "flooding the zone." He explained what that meant back in 2018 when he told Michael Lewis that "the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” 

But the shit isn't going to stop with the nomination/confirmation process. About a year ago Stephen Miller talked to Charlie Kirk about how Trump's plan to deport 10-15 million immigrants was going to work. Here's how the conversation ended:

You go in so many different directions that they can't fight you. You do the deportations, you're simultaneously shutting down the FBI headquarters, you're firing bureaucrats, you go nine different places at once methodically...you have to spread the media thin.

So that's the plan. But rushing through enormous projects like this with the level of incompetence we're seeing in Trump's nominees is a recipe for chaos at best and disaster at worst. 

With this plan to "flood the zone with shit," I'm thinking that it might be best to pick an area of concern and focus my response rather than try to cover everything. For now, I'm most interested in following the implementation of their mass deportation efforts. 

First of all, I'm interested in where they'll start. Paul Krugman pointed out that the whole process will likely be ripe for corruption.

[D]eportations will also become a way to reward friends and punish enemies. Whatever he says, Trump won't be able to round up 15 million people and put them in camps right away. What we'll see instead, at least initially, are scattershot raids on businesses suspected of employing undocumented immigrants. So which businesses will be targeted, and which will be left alone, perhaps for years? If you think choices of who gets raided and who doesn't will be unrelated to political connections and probably financial payoffs, I have a degree from Trump University you may want to buy.

There's also the fact that one of the states with this largest number of undocumented immigrants - 1.6 million according to Pew Research - is Texas. Writing for the Texas Monthly, Jack Herrera recently noted that "If Texas officials wanted to stop the arrival of undocumented immigrants, they could try to make it impossible for them to work here. But that would devastate the state’s economy. So instead politicians engage in border theater. "

The Lone Star state likes to brag about the so-called "Texas Miracle" that has brought 10 million new people to the state since 2000. The development around that kind of migration has meant a huge boon to the construction industry, while relies heavily on undocumented labor. That's why leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott had engaged in "border theater," but have done little to make it difficult for immigrants to work there. 

Whenever Texas politicians threaten to pass laws that would make it harder for businesses to employ undocumented workers, phones in the Capitol start ringing. Stuck with the need to show their base that they’re cracking down on migrants, politicians, including Abbott, have instead found a middle ground: They keep up their bombast regarding the border, but they avoid stringing any razor wire between undocumented immigrants and jobs in the state’s interior.

Screaming about all of the dangers posed by "illegals" has been good fodder for politicians like Trump and Abbott on the campaign trail. But when the rubber of mass deportation actually meets the road, the choice will be to (1) devastate the Texas economy, or (2) skip over a state that has one of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants. 

You can bet that I'll be watching to see which one they chose.

The danger of demonizing education

In the aftermath of this election, we're hearing a lot of pundits and politicians suggest that the reason Harris lost is because Democrats abandoned the "working class." It is important that we call that argument out because it's not only wrong, it's dangerous.

These days the standard definition of "working class" is those who don't have a college degree, and the argument that Democrats have abandoned them is almost always paired with the idea that the party has increasingly aligned itself with "elites" who have college degrees. Back in the 1950s, that might have made sense, when about 5% of the population graduated from college. But here's what has happened since then.

Almost 40% of the population now has a college degree, with the number of women recently surpassing the number of men. We see a similar trajectory with African Americans, who started at almost zero in 1950 and now are at about 20% with a college degree. 

For decades, part of the so-called "American Dream" involved parents who sacrificed in order to send their kids to college in hopes they could have a better life. That dream came true for many of us, but now the whole framework has been dumped on it's head. A woman who got a college education in order to become a public school teacher is now an "elitist," while a guy worth $330 billion is some kind of populist leader.

The movement away from an assumption that everyone needs a college education is a positive development. We should all be free to follow the path that is best for us. But in many ways, the script has been flipped to demonize the educated - especially those who are experts in their field (ie, Anthony Fauci). 

For both MAGA and some on the left, the message is that we should abandon expertise and rely on so-called "common sense." That might work when it comes to a seating arrangement for Thanksgiving dinner, but it's an absolute catastrophe when it comes to things like public health, economic policy, or diplomacy. Demonizing experts also makes it difficult to differentiate between the truth and a lie - opening the door to fascism.

All of this is why Trump/Vance have promised to undermine education. For example, Vance gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021 that was literally titled, "The Universities are the Enemy." More recently, he suggested that the U.S. should follow the lead of Hungary's Viktor Orban, who seized control of that country's universities and turned them over to his allies. Meanwhile, Trump promised a "massive higher education overhaul," suggesting that he would tax, fine, and sue private universities in order to confiscate their endowments and create "The American Academy," Orban-style.

But that's not all. They've also promised to eliminate the federal Department of Education. That would accomplish four main goals:

1. Eliminate funds for schools with high rates of students living in poverty,
2. Eliminate funds for students with special education needs, 
3. Eliminate federal enforcement of laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion and disability status, and
4. Eliminate federal student loan programs.

Thomas Jefferson is often quoted as saying, "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." Given the complexities facing a representative democracy in the 21st Century, that has never been more true, or more threatened, than it is today.

 

Trump's MADA: Make America Delusional Again

Since 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy for president, I've been on a journey towards increasing pessimism. 

I remember in the early days when I'd read what his supporters were writing/saying and my internal optimist would tell me that, when reality set in, they'd learn at least a bit about the error of their ways. It never happened. 

I also watched as Trump's sexism, racism, cruelty, and narcissism were put right out there in the open - constantly thinking that his latest outrage (ie, "grab 'em by the p*ssy) would finally lead to his demise. It never happened. 

We just watched Trump close out his 2024 campaign by promising to take revenge against the "enemies within," parrot Hitler by referring to immigrants as "vermin" who are "poisoning the blood" of our country, and promising to be a dictator on day one. As an added bonus, he talked about Arnold Palmer's penis and pretended to perform fellatio on a microphone. I assumed that he'd lose support. It didn't happen.

So now we're preparing for Trump's return to the White House with his determination to wreck the economy via mass deportation and tariffs. If, as everyone suggests, his re-election was all about "the price of eggs is too high," we're tempted to believe that soaring inflation and a recession (or depression) will surely turn his supporters against him. Right?

Not so fast. The first check on that is to remind ourselves that the Covid pandemic surged during Trump's presidency and we experienced the worst recession of our lifetimes. Not only did we all feel the economic pain, millions of people died because he totally bungled this country's response. What did his supporters do? They blamed China, Fauci, and science. Then they went on to blame Biden as he successfully cleaned up Trump's mess. 

To understand how that happens, it is helpful to remember what Julian Sanchez wrote about epistemic closure on the right. He noted that when he injected that phrase into our political discourse, a lot of people thought he was simply talking about an echo chamber or closed mindedness. But it's more complex than that.

So an “echo chamber” just means you never hear any contrary information. The idea of “epistemic closure” was that you WOULD hear new and contrary information, but you have mechanisms in your belief system that reject anything that might force you to update your beliefs…

I bring this up now, because the Trump ecosystem has developed a pretty sophisticated set of epistemic closure mechanisms that work to reject new information that might otherwise pose a problem.

The closure mechanisms Trump set up to inoculate his followers include his references to things like the deep state, fake news, and the swamp. When fact-checkers expose Trump’s lies, it is just fake news. When former administration officials decry the president, they are part of the deep state. 

Trump's narcissistic personality disorder has led him to develop a delusional system for dealing with the realitiy of his failures. As I noted shortly after he took office in 2017, it can be summarized as "lie, distract, and blame." We need look no further than his Big Lie after the 2020 election as an example. He lied about voter fraud, distracted with references to the great replacement theory, and blamed Democrats. 

The problem that we all face now is that a large portion of the electorate has bought into Trump's personality disorder. They have adopted his set of epistemic closer mechanisms to shut off the reality of his failures. To put an exclamation point on that, let's remember than one of Trump's most effective strategies during the 2024 campaign was to ask people whether they're better off today than they were 4 years ago when refrigerated trucks were being used as morgues and lines for food banks were miles long. Astoundingly, too many voters said "no." That is delusion created by epistemic closure. 

What we're going to have to grapple with is that, when Trump tanks the economy this time around, he will once again roll out his lie, distract, and blame strategy. Since I don't suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, it's hard for me to forecast what that will look like. But I have no doubt that it will happen. My concern is that his supporters will believe him and rather than holding him accountable, they'll unleash more hate on those the president choses to blame. 

With all my heart I hope I'm wrong. But for almost 10 years now I've been learning the hard way that the one time Trump told the truth was when he said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters wouldn't abandon him.

None of this is meant to suggest capitulation to the very real danger Trump poses. It's just that we have to start by understanding what we're dealing with.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is right about Tulsi Gabbard

Since Donald trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard to be head of our intelligence services, many people have spoken up about how she consistently parrots Putin's talking points - which poses the question about whether or not the next president is turning over our intelligence services to a Russian asset. It is hard to overstate what a danger that poses to this country and our allies.

But Gabbard has attempted to sell herself as anti-war - which is a lie. Representative Ocasio-Cortez recently pointed that out when she told Joy Reid that "A Tulsi Gabbard nomination is a pro-war nomination globally. Point blank, period." 

Let's unpack that a bit.

Folks have been reminding us that, in 2017, Gabbard travelled to Syria to meet privately with Bashar al-Assad, after he had gassed his own citizens as part of the civil war in that country. But we need to dig a little deeper.

The civil war in Syria began when citizens of the country rebelled against the dictatorship of Assad as part of the Arab Spring in 2011. More than any other Arab country, Assad responded with horrific violence against the rebels. But by 2015, he was losing territory. That's when Putin intervened and started a bombing campaign in Syria.

Putin attempted to justify his actions by saying that he was fighting terrorists in Syria. But that was a lie. He was bombing civilians in an attempt to shore up the dictatorship of Assad. Long before Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, they were bombing hospitals, schools, and markets in Syria. The atrocities were so severe that the UN took the unprecedented step of releasing a report charging Russia with war crimes.

What was Gabbard's response? As the bombing began, she suggested that the U.S. should be joining Russia in bombing Syrian civilians -  utilizing Putin's propaganda to suggest that the civil war in that country was all about terrorism.

Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 1, 2015

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 1, 2015

Then in 2016, Gabbard was one of only three lawmakers — and the only Democrat — to vote against a non-binding resolution calling out the Assad regime for war crimes and stating that the United States should support the establishment of an international tribunal to bring war criminals to justice.

Gabbard's affection for brutal dictators doesn't stop with Syria's Assad.

In 2015, two years after he orchestrated the worst mass killing of protesters in modern history, a smiling Gabbard appeared next to a grinning Sisi on a visit to Cairo, after which she praised him for showing “great courage and leadership” in the fight against “extreme Islamist ideology.”

In summary, when oppressed people stand up to protest against tyranny, Gabbard supports violence and civil war as the tool for dictators to maintain their power.

It's worth noting that the first time Russia invaded Ukraine it was in 2014 after the Maiden revolution got rid of Putin's stooge, Viktor Yanukovych. When that didn't bring the country to heel, he launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. On the very same day, Gabbard sent out a tweet blaming the invasion on Biden and NATO. In other words, Putin's actions were justified. Is it any wonder then, why Russian state television calls her their "girlfriend?" 

Sorting through the noise to try and understand what just happened

After sitting in my discomfort for a few days, I'm ready to try to understand WTH happened in this election. There are an awful lot of bad takes out there attempting to find fault with VP Harris, President Biden, or Democrats in general. But they're all impossible to square with the fact that, no matter their shortcomings, a little more than half of voters supported a delusional, narcissistic bully who has been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and tried to overturn an election.

So here's the take that makes the most sense to me: 

About a month ago I wrote that, when it came to the presidential election, it was all about the lies and the way Trump/Vance used them to create an alternative reality. As it turns out, the lies worked. One of the best ways to document that came from a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was conducted just prior to the election.

What we see is that the more voters believed Trump's lies about crime, the economy, and immigration, the more likely they were to vote for him. Those who believed the truth swung heavily in Harris's direction. 

We're also getting a lot of bad takes on who those lies appealed to. Philip Bump did a good job of debunking all of that nonsense. The first thing to note is that Trump received about the same number of votes that he did in 2020 (it's just that Harris got fewer than Biden). So if we look at the demographics of Trump voters, "his voting base [in 2024] was older, wealthier and about equally White to what it was in 2020."

For example, we're hearing a lot of talk about how Trump won over Hispanics and African Americans in 2024. But here's what that actually looked like:

To all of those who are suggesting that this election was all about populism and support from working class folks, the truth is that Trump's big gains were actually among the wealthy.

What this kind of information tells us is that we not only need to combat the lies from right wing media, we're also being fed a lot of junk information from mainstream media and pundits. So chose your sources wisely.

Over the last few days I've been noting who I will pay attention to and who I'm going to ignore. On the former category, I've been significantly impressed with Rebecca Solnit. Here are a few gems from her latest column at The Guardian. 

I’m wary about anger – as George Orwell once observed, it’s easily redirected, like the flame of a blowlamp, and it has been in this election as people whose own lives were thwarted economically and otherwise got on board with the scapegoating of immigrants. So it’s something to be careful with. Even so, “rage is a form of prayer too,” as Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems declared after this terrible US election.

I suspect she means that behind that rage is care, and this is something I have found secular activists often forget – you are angry the children are being bombed or the forest is being cleared because you care about them, so it’s not the feelings about the forces of destruction that is primary. It’s the love, and not losing sight of that is crucial...

Not being them and not being like them is the first job, not just as negatives but as an embrace of the ideals of love, kindness, open-mindedness, the ability to engage with uncertainty and ambiguity, inclusiveness...

There are other kinds of resistance that mean making your own life and your own mind an independent republic in which the pursuit of truth, human rights, kindness and empathy, the preservation of history and memory...This does not overthrow the regime, but it does mean being someone who has not been conquered by it, and it invites others who have not been or who can throw off the shackles to join you...

We do not know what will happen. But we can know who we can commit to be in the face of what happens. That is a strong beginning. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving. Let Julian Aguon have the last word: “No offering is too small. No stone unneeded … All of us, without exception, are qualified to participate in the rescue of the world.”

Solnit's words remind me of a song Garth Brooks wrote after the Oklahoma bombing titled "The Change." It's going to be my anthem for a while.

I've also been extremely impressed with the analysis provided by historian Heather Cox Richardson. She was interviewed by Jon Stewart a couple of days ago on his podcast. It is a little over an hour long and I know most people won't take the time to listen to the whole thing. But she's absolutely brilliant (Stewart...not so much). So I definitely recommend paying attention to her - no one does a better job of describing what just happened. 

Doug Muder has always demonstrated a deep understanding of this political era and recently wrote a post titled, "My Way-Too-Soon Election Response" over at his blog The Weekly Sift.

Going forward, I'll be paying a lot of attention to Timothy Snyder, who literally wrote the book on fascism. His most recent column at the New Yorker is titled, "What Does it Mean that Donald Trump Is a Fascist."

To maintain my sanity in the midst of the chaos that is about to come, those are just a few of the people I'll be listening to. 

On a final (somewhat related) note, I'd just like to share this little nugget to help explain why Christian nationalists are so amenable to the alternate reality created by Trump's lies. 

The discomfort I'm sitting in today

I'm still reeling emotionally and doubt that it's a good time to write any analysis about what happened on Tuesday. There are an awful lot of bad takes pointing fingers - which is understandable, but ultimately not productive. Here's a twitter thread from Brad Bauman that I found helpful:

A lot of times we confuse fast with smart. Quick and simple answers at a moment when everyone is trying to make meaning of what’s happening and looking for something to do. We end up doing things that aren’t productive or counter productive when we move that quick.

Sometimes, the right answer is to sit in our pain; sit in our discomfort and feel it, rather than rush to answers or movement.

There will be a resistance, and all of us will be a part of it, individually and collectively.

Let’s take a moment and allow ourselves to process, to feel, to think about what truths arise and then let’s act.

As I "sit in my discomfort and feel it," Rebecca Solnit captured my reaction perfectly.

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. 

I literally cried as I read that. Here's how John Harwood put it:

If you’re accustomed, as I am, to believing that a critical mass of Americans embraces the values of freedom, pluralism, and common sense, the choice voters made defies comprehension. The arc of history in 2024 bent not toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. liked to say, but away from it.

Regular readers will know that I've always maintained that President Obama's speech at the 50th anniversary of the Selma march was the most important he's ever given. In it, he defined his view of America and the ideals we've embraced/fought for. VP Harris echoed that vision during her speech in Washington D.C. last week.

I’ve seen [the promise of America] in Americans, different in many respects, but united in our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency and our faith in a better future...

Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us, the Patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall, on farmlands, and factory floors, they did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives only to see us seed our fundamental freedoms.

They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.

These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised, a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.

So America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love.

And in 7 days, we have the power, each of you has the power to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.

What's been shattered is my belief in that America. More than anything else, I'm grieving that loss today.

Why I'm getting optimistic about this election

It's hard to over-state how much the Des Moines Register's Selzer poll shook things up by showing Harris/Walz leading in Iowa. None of us know if their numbers are on point. But here's what we DO know:

That's one of the ways to look at the Selzer poll. In early Sept, they had Trump up +4. By the end of Oct, they have Harris up +3. Since their methods didn't change, they captured something important. (2/2)

— Nancy LeTourneau 🇺🇦 (@Smartypants60) November 3, 2024

Whether or not Harris wins Iowa isn't as important as the fact that the same pollster found a 7 point swing in her favor in state that has been deeply red. WOW!

But let's forget about the polls for a minute. While Selzer gave us all a moment of hope, a consensus has been building over the last week or so that pollsters and aggregators really don't have a clue about what's going on. Here are the data points that make me optimistic.

Enthusiasm

According to Gallup, Democrats are seeing a surge in enthusiasm.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely driving the surge in enthusiasm nationally. In March, 55% of Democrats and Democratic leaners said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting; now, 78% are. Republicans and Republican leaners, who held a slight edge in enthusiasm in March, now trail Democrats by a significant margin, with their current 64% enthusiasm score up slightly from 59% in the spring.

That difference is palpable when you compare what is happening at Harris/Walz rallies to Trump's. 

Meanwhile here was Kamala’s rally, held at the exact coliseum. Both levels plus the floor full of eager supporters! https://t.co/ZJmaeIaIvg pic.twitter.com/w55RKfka1A

— V 🤎 (@veexoh_) November 3, 2024

Fundraising 

It's true that Trump has a lock on money from the oligarchs. The problem is that they only get one vote - like the rest of us. When it comes to small donors, they've abandoned his ship.

Donald Trump’s contributions from small-dollar donors have plummeted since his last bid for the White House...Fewer than a third of the Republican’s campaign contributions have come from donors who gave less than $200 — down from nearly half of all donations in his 2020 race...The total collected from small donors has also declined, according to the analysis. Trump raised $98 million from such contributors through June, a 40% drop compared to the $165 million they contributed during a corresponding period in his previous presidential race.

Here's how that compares to Harris/Walz:

Ground game

When it comes to GOTV, Trumpers are nowhere to be found.

Some battleground state Republicans say they’re worried they see little evidence of Donald Trump’s ground game — and fear it could cost him the election in an exceedingly close race.

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running.

In comparison, here's at taste of what the Democratic ground game looks like:

The Harris ground game strategy is at once obvious and sophisticated. Harris has more than 2,500 staff and 358 field offices across the battleground states, including more than 475 paid staffers in Pennsylvania. Since July, more than 110,000 people have volunteered with the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, and those volunteers have knocked on nearly 2 million doors in October alone. One third of the Pennsylvania field offices are in rural counties that Trump carried by double digits in 2020, and where Harris’ goal is to hold down Trump’s margins. At the same time, the campaign is attempting to lock down the base in urban areas through long-term relational organizing targeted to hard-to-reach voters. The campaign realizes that Democrats have long taken Black and Latino votes for granted. Now, the campaign is treating them as persuasion targets as much as mobilization targets. And it believes the path to victory goes through the suburbs, where they hope college-educated voters and women could propel the VP to victory.

Harris/Walz voters are "fired up and ready to go!" Their enthusiasm is demonstrated by their willingness to donate both money and time to the campaign. So while I'm certainly not ready to celebrate yet, I'm at least starting to unclench my fists and breath a bit.