Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:
No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”
But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.
Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).
Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.
But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:
“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”
Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.
In general, it’s folly to compare Bush’s approval number from poll A this week with his number from poll B last week; it has to be apples and apples, or else you’re mostly looking at differences in systematic error. And even in an apples-to-apples comparison, you’re likely to spend a lot of time looking at random sampling error, unless you look at long-term trends and discount one- or two-point blips from week to week. Every time a poll comes out you see people writing elaborate post-hoc analyses of what the last week’s movements mean. This is all garbage, like those articles in the financial section in which somehow people can always justify why the previous day’s movements in the stock market made logical sense, even though they usually can’t predict them in advance.
Fox News had Bush’s approval rating at 50%, so that means it’s really about 45%, which most other pollsters are reporting. Of course, it has gone up a little since the attack ads on Kerry, but since that affect also eliminated Kerry’s lead, Kerry is now back in the lead (“It’s Official, Kerry’s Ahead”).
Steve, Don’t worry about Bush’s approval rating in that Annenberg poll. If you look at http://www.pollingreport.com, the Annenberg approval numbers are always about 5 points higher than everyone else. 53 percent is actually a new low for Bush in that poll.
“The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Kerry gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.”
Oops. I meant to say “The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Bush gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.”
Sorry for the slip.
Actually, I _have_ seen some numbers where Kerry’s approval on terrorism have come up slightly (I can’t remember where just off the top of my head, though).
But I’m not too suprised or worried Bush’s approval numbers aren’t worse. They’re certainly not rising substantially.
I’ve posted a variation on this theme here before, but it bears repeating: almost by definition by the fact we read this Web site and take the time to respond means we are totally “plugged in” on this election already. We are the minority at this point.
For most Americans, the election is this hazy thing still seven months off. They aren’t paying the same attention we are. Kerry acknowledged the other day most people don’t really know him. That will change as Election Day approaches.
The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Kerry gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.
My bottom line: be patient. If we are still in this position after the conventions, *then* start to panic.
just a reminder:
“Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt.”
Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138
It’s true that by himself, Bush’s approval ratings on specific war & terrorism issues is dropping. But when compared to Kerry (i.e. the question, “Who would do a better job defending the U.S. against terrorism” and the like), Bush still maintains a very comfortable lead. At least according to the last numbers I saw on tarrance.com. When asked about Bush’s performance by itself, it may be only a 51% approval of his actions regarding Iraq, but head to head against Kerry, they’re much higher.
Why is this? People think Bush is bad, but Kerry is worse? People figure Bush has been at it long enough, he’s bound to figure it out eventually? People know what they’re getting with Bush, but Kerry is an unknown? I’d be curious about the reasons. It would seem to me that if you’re not satisfied with the way Bush is handling things, you’d want to hand the job over to someone else, but people seem to be indicating the opposite.
Other question worth asking is whether the spread between Bush and Kerry on Iraq & terrorism issues is shrinking any in recent weeks / months.
If Bush’s speech/press conference doesn’t result in a drop in the polls for him, much less a bounce, we’re all screwed.
I mean if that pathetic performance makes his numbers go up, what kind of performance makes them go down?
uh…but he’s strong leader….
buhlahbuhlahbuhlah.
I doubt that “conference” will create any sort of rally. Here’s a great dissection of it:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/041504A.shtml
DonkeyRising says “By about 2:1 (57-29), the public says the Iraq war has increased the risk of terrorism against the US. Wow.”
The scary thing is that the same Annenberg poll shows Bush with an approval rating of 53%–and increasing! That’s “Wow”. Does this mean that the majority of Americans like Bush so much, it doesn’t matter what he does?
As a resident of Minnesota I really wish the LA Times let me read the article.
Oh well, Bush sucks and sentiment here in MN is starting to reflect that. We’ll deliver these 10 electoral votes to Kerry, fear not.