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.
Vote early and vote often…wait you can’t anymore. Well, JUST VOTE.
BTW, I got an e-mail about winning a free Zippo lighter with the Dem Donkey on it. Cool stuff. Vote on http://www.zippo.com
Get out the vote!
wahoo! Now if Kerry would just fight like hell we’ll win this thing.
This is no time for despair. KERRY IN A LANDSLIDE. The poll showing Bush ahead is an outlier.
It is the democratic party that represents the views of the vast majority of Americans. The delusional are going to vote for Bush, but I think most Americans aren’t that insane.
Like I said, KERRY IN A LANDSLIDE, and then W will GO HOME!
wgoeshome.com
Nice to see the folks at the RNC use the term Liberty as if it where a thousand foot crutch.
Isn’t the term Liberal shorthand for Liberty?
Spread the word… 🙂
The GOP convention ….I think I figured out the formula:
9-11
9-11
9-11
9-11
John Kerry sucks
John Kerry is a flip-flopper
Terrorism ….Bush keynote
Amen
The war party peddles in fear, because that’s all they have left to sell.
After 4 yrs Bush is still all HAT no CATTLE…
with his abysmal record on the US economy.
with his abysmal record on the jobs
with his abysmal record on healthcare
with his abysmal record on the environment
etc.etc. etc.
Net Net: George W. Bush is a “FAILURE”
Kerry Hits Back
NEWARK, Ohio – In a scathing attack, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused Republicans of hiding President Bush’s “record of failure” behind insults and promised a new direction for the country under a Kerry-Edwards administration.
Now the debate will turn more to REAL issues like the economy, jobs, healthcare, environment and Kerry/Edwards are going to pummel the daylights out of Bush/Cheney.
George W. Bush: “FAILURE” is a simple, very clear, and true message that most American voters will “Get”
Kerry/Edwards are going to win !
So what kind of bounce do we think the Repubs will get from their convention. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a negative bounce of 1-2% based on the Miller fiasco of last night.
Ruy, post in the damn comments for once.
Anyhow, when do we start counting LVs and not RVs? Why did the lead in independants shrinks o much?
Apparently, there were a number of security breeches at the RNC over the past few days… If they cant secure their own convention, how on earth are they going to secure the entire nation?
Maybe Brian has a response to this. My passing thru the GOP blogs notes that they gloss over this failure and simply wish the pres. a safe delivery tonight. hmm
Cheers
August was bound to be a bad month for Kerry. He had to hoard his money and Bush got to spend the rest of his warchest. That we’re still even with Bush should be cause for celebration.
Campaigns are marathons and the last leg begins tonight. Fortuantely, Kerry’s a great closer.
excellent news. and I agree that the handringing and teeth-nashing of fairweather democrats over kerry’s chances are excessive.
but it still doesn’t change the fact that kerry campaign did a lackluster job in august, particularly as concerns the swift boat vets for BS. nor does it justifiably mute critics of the campaign.
the facts speak clearly for themselves: the GOP is better at running elections. the issue for me and other dems is that the democratic party needs to be better organized, better disciplined about staying on message, and better about packaging campaign positions in palatable soundbites.
decry the vapidity of the american voter all you want (and we can be stone-cold dolts), but it doesn’t change what kerry needs to do to win.
Once again, the pundits are right. Kerry is toast. He should concede now and donate the 75 million to charity.
What about the latest Economist poll? I see it and the questions seem reasonable to me (I don’t know about polling). If the poll is any good, GWB is not doing very well based on trustworthiness, economy, etc.