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.
Its obvious that the press is not willing to go ahead and declare Kerry an outright winner of the debates and the person carrying the momentum at this time. I am not sure whats up with that, maybe they think there will be some bad reprisals if Bush got his first elected term in the HOUSE.
No matter what the press thinks or does however, its common knowledge that the electorate has assured Kerry that he won the three debates by wide margins.
In like manner, the electorate, by way of the polls, are also showing that they are learning to accept Kerry’s demeanor, his mannerisms, his style, his obvious honesty, his thorough knowledge of the English Language and how to use it, he wide knowledge base on relevant issues etc.. etc.. etc.
I guess Bush and his troop didnt quite expect to find another person on earth who would know more English than Bush himself, well they now know its not so.
Its early days and one should never fall into the pitts of over confidence and must stay on tract and keep the momentum going all the way to this time four years from now.. but, while you are at it, take some time to savour this moment.. it creates a most excellent feeling.. so why let it slip away!!!!!
Let’s not be to overconfident. We have Mo but I think we are in for all slime, all the time for the next 19 days. The only thing they’ve shown they have in their bag is to paint Kerry as a traitorous turncoat. The Swift Boat deal over again with much more money behind it. They have to make it uncomfortable for people who have begun feeling good about voting for Kerry. I hope Carville and his crew are ready to fight back and put these yahoos on the defensive.
I fear that election day may be so dirty, we’ll be looking at Afghanistan’s vote as a shining example of democracy.
Demtom:
They still have doubts about his replacement. They always do — even such lionized presidents as FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton were widely disaparaged/wondered about prior to their first elections. But the voters went to them ultimately because they thought change was necessary.
As usual, Demtom hits the nail on the head. The main thing Kerry had to do in this race was prove himself as a viable alternative to Bush, and he did so with flying colors in the debates.
The media will likely make it seem, when he wins, that the debates did it. Not totally true, but I do agree that it was the debates where the Bush talking-points were shown for the nonsense and fluff they were all along.
I thought Kerry did another solid job in the third debate, and deflected Bush’s criticisms when they verged upon saliency. Barring wild surprises, all Bush can do now is cry wolf (“he’s an anti-security liberal who can’t pay for his promises!”), pray something sticks (the “Tony Soprano” line tells me it won’t), and carry out his ground war. So long as Kerry and those of us supporting him keep up his good fight, this election is ours to win.
I agree with Demtom’s observations about the media. The narrative seems to be taking hold that Kerry’s campaign was drowning until two weeks ago when the debates started, giving him a life raft. In fact, throughout September Kerry was behind but still very competitive in most polls. The ones that pointed to a Bush blowout (which were often treated as gospel by much of the mainstream media) often used dubious samples and methodology, a point that we argued on these boards in great detail.
In a sense I do wish we could have even more debates, but in another sense I don’t. It’s really nerve-wracking to worry about your candidate making a fatal gaffe with all the eyes of the media and the nation focused on you, and in the debates all it takes is one ill-considered sentence or answer to do that.
John Kerry to me is an acquired taste. Unlike Bill Clinton, for example, he does not go to great lengths to try to get you to swoon over him the first time you see him. His entire approach to campaigning bespeaks a kind of faith in the old verities our mothers told us about how, in the end, character is what counts, and that if you’re a good egg the people who know you will come to know that. In our age this bespeaks a bold, one might almost say daring, faith in the ultimate good judgment of the voters. A concern his approach creates among his supporters is whether voters will acquire enough of a taste for him in time to vote for him. My perception is that over these debates Kerry is winning a lot of folks over, slowly but surely. For when it comes to John Kerry, the surprises are pretty much all good ones. He turns out to be the sturdy, reliable, steadfast friend, the one whose advice you might seek out on an important matter or who you’d want to be your best man–not the hell-raising party animal you met in college who, a couple of years after graduation, remains most notable to you for being–the hell-raising party animal from your college years.
To those inclined to vote for Bush because they think he is more the kind of guy they’d like to have a beer with, I’d say vote for Kerry. Although I hope Bush does not go back to drinking after he leaves office–this being unbecoming behavior from a former President–it will free up more of his time for informal, unscripted social occasions.
If Kerry wins 19 days from now (which I think is an ever-increasing possibility), the media consensus, I’m certain, will be that he won because he won the debates. Some will probably go further — taking the goosed post-GOP convention polls as gospel, they’ll proclaim that Kerry was “on the ropes” until extricating himself with a knockout first debate and solid victories in the later two.
I’m not about to argue with the fact that Kerry has done better in all three debates — he’s smarter, more presidential, all those things. But I’d argue that an opposite dynamic is actually at play: Kerry’s going to win the election, and that’s why he’s won the debates.
The voting public is not as shallow as the media conglomorate like to believe; they don’t switch votes based on a stray catch-phrase, a bad camera angle. They make their Election Day decision not on assorted trivia, but on the basics of presidential performance: how’s the economy? What’s our status in the world? Are things going well? On all those scores, Bush has been losing ever since Iraq started to go south. The continuing sub-par recovery in the economy keeps Bush on the defensive in another vital area. But for a few, artificially (and typically) inflated polls right after his convention, Bush has polled below 50% (including a shocking 43% from CBS the other day). The public WANTS a new president.
They still have doubts about his replacement. They always do — even such lionized presidents as FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton were widely disaparaged/wondered about prior to their first elections. But the voters went to them ultimately because they thought change was necessary.
Kerry did well in all the debates, but all he really needed to do was meet a minimum standard. Once he did that, the voters were going to judge him the winner of the encounters, because they have already deemed Bush’s POLICIES a loser.
Another beatdown. I think we’ll see Kerry moving up in the polls as this final debate settles in people’s minds.
“Wonder how that [ABC] poll would have turned out without an 8 point Republican party ID advantage.”
We can do a rough calculation of how the ABC poll came out for independents.
Respondents: 38 R, 30 D, 28 I
Results: 42 Kerry, 41 Bush, 14 tied
Assume that R’s backed their man and D’s the same. (Probably some deviation on both sides, but it likely cancels out.)
Then: 12 (42-30) Kerry, 3 (41-38) Bush, 14 tied
Changing to %ages: 41% Kerry, 10% Bush, 48% tied
(Numbers do not add to 100% due to rounding.)
Well, I actually watched the debate. I thought Kerry absolutely owned the first thirty minutes of the debate and dominated Bush. I thought Kerry’s victory in this debate was more pronounced than the first debate (which I thought was closer than the blowout it is now regarded as). I am not at all surprised at the instant poll results. My non-political sister called during last night’s debate to express how stunned she was at Bush’s lousy performance (she didn’t watch either of the first two).
I think the talking heads are so used to Bush’s eccentric mannerisms and lack of speaking ability that they don’t realize how off-putting he is to watch unfiltered. It is for that reason (along with their being afraid of accusations of liberal bias) that the “analysts” right after each debate have acted as if the debates have been a draw, when they weren’t. The nightly news edits out Bush’s awkward moments, which makes him look a lot smoother than he actually is. The debates shattered that media-created image.
It really was a trip to the woodshed for poor W. Tim Grieve sees big trouble ahead for Bush’s ratings in his just-posted article on Salon. (Get the day pass if you don’t have subscription).
I didn’t watch the debate, but — judging from a number of [mostly-] widely divergent blogosphere comments — it seems it was basically another draw. I would have preferred a sub-par “Shrub” performance, but unless the post-debate spins against JFK, I think he can live with this result. After all, the polls indicate a a majority of viewers felt Kerry’s performance was more convincing. Again.
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Predictably, wingerville is hyping the “War President’s best-ever debate performance” but I suspect there is more than a little bit of wishful thinking/desperate spin going on.
MARCU$
I thought the comments for this topic were especially on target.
Kerry has sealed the deal with voters.
Bush has shown the voters that his best is mediocre, and it goes downhill from there. Kerry has done the opposite. Suddenly, $100 million of negative attacks rendered meaningless.
Bush’s attack lines have been reduced to cotton candy, with equal weight.
HA-ppy – days -are -HERE a-again!
The skys above are CLEAR again,
So, let’s sing a song of CHEER again.
HA-ppy DAYS are here a-GAIN!!!
[Release balloons, cue the band]
How can you support Bush when he lied to you again within the first five minutes of the debate. I remember clear as day that man said he was not concerned about Osama Bin Laden. Cheney lied about never meeting Edwards before until their debate. If they lie about these petty things what else are they lying about and to what extent will they take thier conserative views to. No child ;eft behind? My little brother was in second grade and could not read, why? Because he did not have a spelling book- if you can’t spell you can’t read. Bush said himself he can’t speak english as good as his wife. I think Bush needs to be left behind.
I agree.
This third debate is where Kerry sealed the deal.
He proved that he is presidential, can laugh at himself and Teresa, and will lead the country in a better direction.
Bush proved that at the top of his game, he’s weak.
I think we will see the polls solidify for Kerry.
CNN/Gallup poll even more impressive: a 14% Kerry win.
Kerry scored a clean win tonight, and ends the “series” 3-0. In all three debates, he looked more presidential than the president, and he calmly, methodically and forcefully dismantled every single element critical to Bush’s reelection chances. The polls have been starting to move in Kerry’s direction and it seems likely that this performance tonight will only accelerate that trend. As a Democrat, I am a happy camper tonight. Let’s roll up our sleeves, do the the work that still needs to be done, and bring this baby home.