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.
Ed: A lot of what’s seen in these polls just confirms their limited use at this early point, especially when the nomination hinges on something as weird as the Iowa caucuses.
The nuance that Tiparillo talks about emphasizes an oft-repeated point that seems hackneyed but also makes sense: Obama’s voters, recuited by Oprah or not, are not good bets for caucusing in Iowa, and they will likely only turn out in NH if Obama has momentum coming in. Basically Obama has the Bill Bradley voting base, and I haven’t seen much from the Obama campaign that indicates they’ll be much better than the Bradley campaign at targeting them and bringing them out to vote.
Unlike Bradley, however, Obama isn’t so naturally strong in NH that he can use it as a firewall against losing Iowa. If Obama loses Iowa, he has enough money to stay on TV until March, but it would be an ultimately vain Bradley-esque denoument.
These polls say Edwards is doing better in SC. At this stage in the campaign, this can only reflect Edwards’s recent TV buy there. Polls really echo TV buys pretty well (see the inflated Richardson numbers in IA and NH). It’s more likely that Edwards has always had a fairly entrenched but small base there, that his TV buys haven’t moved him much, and that he is buying TV in SC to maintain what he has in case he wins IA and loses NH. Maybe he bought the TV to make people think he’s confident in his internal Iowa numbers. The same dissonance with polls is possible in Nevada, which is a caucus: Even if the only people who show up are HERE members, polls will inevitably reflect a much wider universe. (Maybe most importantly, no one knows who the Nevada caucusgoers are for sure, but there probably won’t be many of them, and it may not matter who wins.) In any case, the poll only tells a small part of the story.
Even if everyone realizes the CW is overreliant on polls, they are such attractive reference points that it’s impossible to put them in realistic perspective.
Iowa has always been decided by field organization and this time will be no different. Obama has always looked like a third-place candidate in Iowa because he just doesn’t have enough precincts and his turnout strategy is oddly Howard Dean-like. Thus he has an outsized place in the narrative of this campaign.
The most crucial narrative is the Edwards vs. Hillary battle on the ground in Iowa. Hillary has the decided edge here.
Once Iowa is over, the campaign finally takes shape in time for open primaries, and polls start meaning a lot more.
Tiparillo:
I was surprised, too, though it may be a good reminder that despite Edwards’ faithful channelling of netroots rhetoric, his actual base of support is among rank-and-file union folk and/or older Democrats who aren’t likely to be that attracted to Obama. From that perspective, it’s also not surprising that Obama supporters who perceive HRC as the ultimate blast from the past would prefer Edwards in a one-to-one with Hillary.
Ed Kilgore
Wow – I have a hard time believing that the Edwards voters will break that dramtically for Clinton.
My impression from a limited sample is that Edwards voters – much like the cnadidate – are not fans of Clinton at all.
But this poll is about New Hampshire in particular so…..