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.
Yeah, I caught that revised Mitchell poll — which doesn’t speak well for any of his work that he has such day-to-day volatility in a state he’s supposed to know well (as opposed to national pollsters doing tracking polls in individual states a la Zogby, Rasmussen, etc.).
Of course, the Kerry +5 MI Mitchell poll didn’t get a mention in the WaPo.
i live in michigan, today mitchel released a poll and kerry is up 5, most don’t know this but we have a local political show on sunday mornings and the guy who runs the poll always sits and speaks as a voice from the right. Kerry will win by 5 -7 points.
Latest Mitchell poll has Kerry up 5 in Michigan now.
But note that in today’s (10/28) WaPo story on the race in Michigan, which poll do they show a pie chart (to graphically emphasize the supposed closeness of the race) for? Why, Mitchell’s, of course.
Meanwhile, Richard Morin — who as the Post’s poll guru had to give approval as to which poll to use for the MI story — is all over their Style section piece on polls talking about a) how unclear everyone is about what’s going on with the polls, but b) at the end of the day, the polls are probably right.
Of course, nothing about 2000 track records.
Hell, Michigan has been Kerry’s ever since GM and Ford announced production cuts. That’s perhaps a greater comment on the swing in this poll.
from wed salon.com:
But Tony Fabrizio, a Republican who served as chief pollster for Bob Dole’s ’96 presidential campaign, doesn’t have much incentive to game the numbers to hearten anxious Democrats. And if his latest analysis is correct, the only way Bush can win will be if fewer minorities turn out this year than they did in 2000, when the stakes were far lower.
Fabrizio’s latest poll of 12 battleground states shows the race dead even, with Bush getting 47.3 percent and Kerry getting 47.1. But a press release for the survey says: “[W]hen the data is weighted to reflect minority turnout based on the 2000 exit polls, Sen. Kerry leads by 3.5 percent and if minority turnout is weighted to census levels Sen. Kerry’s lead expands to 5.2 percent.”
I live in a very Republican area of Michigan and I can tell you that I have never seen so many signs for a Democratic Presidential candidate. In fact, aside from the Clinton signs that my sister and uncle had in 1996 I have never seen ANY. I have certainly never seen any bumper stickers for any Democratic Presidential candidates too. I have seen dozens and dozens of both. Another thing is that at least 120 Kerry signs have been reported to the police as stolen and that number is from a couple of months ago. I say Kerry wins here with at least 54% if not 55% of the vote because since he has such support here which is supposedly “Bush Country” Do any of you live in a “Bush Country” area which has lots of Kerry signs or stickers? Or is this just a Michigan phenomenon?