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.
I suppose this means that the reflexive hatred of New York, and New York City in particular, is re-establishing itself as a well of ill-will for the right wing to draw upon in other parts of the country.
I had hoped, after the outpouring of sympathy following 9/11 from all parts of the United States (students in Mississippi actually raised money to buy the city a fire engine, which brings tears to my eyes even as I type it), that this ugly attitude might be a thing of the past.
People actually apologized at the time for calling the city “godless” and vilifying it so unthinkingly. Now “New York” is a dirty name again for for political mobilization in the red states, and for GOP fundraising? It’s a resonant red state insult for a judicial appointee, like “known thespian”?
We are till the primary target for terrorism (that has been proven yet again, recently). The notion that anybody with a geographical connection to New York is somehow shielded from life’s dangers and complexities and daily realities is a grim joke.
Please, America, if you think New Yorkers are your enemies; if you imagine that we have nothing in common with you culturally, spiritually and intellectually; and if our foreign enemies feel exactly the same way, then stop sending more of our federal taxes to less-populated states than you give back, and let us use those dollars to defend ourselves.
If Elena Kagan’s not a true American, and Sonia Sotomayor isn’t a true American, then what the hell do all of you care if we New Yorkers — true Americans none of us — take a dirty bomb for your sins? From where I sit, this is no “cocoon.” Cocoons are supposed to be safe.
This is one America, like it or not. As much as we in New York may despise people in other states who campaign on the promise to get the teaching of evolution out of the schools, it never occurs to us to think of those people as non-Americans.
You think New Yorkers are arrogant? We think it’s the people who set themselves up as judges of others’ American-ness (and pretend that any Democrat elected must be an alien, or the Anti-Christ, or the beneficiary of a vote fraud conspiracy of continental proportions) who are arrogant.
It ceased being “respectable” to de-Americanize New Yorkers on a beautiful September day nine years ago. For shame!