The shortest honeymoon ever?
Left-leaning punditry is too often a GOP force multiplier. Back in the real world, Trump is already in trouble
Yes, I am deeply disappointed that Donald Trump won the election. No, history is not over, so saddle back up. We have work to do.
Life goes on, and left leaning punditry is too often a GOP force multiplier. As a first act in this new chapter of our struggle, turn them off.
Going into the election, 63-percent of the country said America was on the wrong track, and President Biden’s approval rating was stuck at 40 percent. In any normal year, the incumbent party would get wiped out. That didn’t happen.
Donald Trump won with less than half the popular vote. Democrats won four Senate seats in states Trump carried. It looks like the GOP House majority might grow by only one or two seats. Despite losing, Democrats actually over performed.
This gets entirely ignored as pundits, desperate to fill time on the air, bend over backwards to explain Trump’s victory. They blame Harris for not responding to every attack fast enough. They credit Trump for discovering young men. They say Democrats are too far to the left, or not progressive enough. Please, just stop.
Most of the professional Democrats I talk with, the folks who are actually out there talking with voters, organizing, and governing, are already back to work. They understand the urgent needs of the moment, even as they dive deep into the election data sets to better craft strategy for the next election. They are determined to thwart the most dangerous impulses of the incoming administration (and already, adios Matt Gaetz), and where they cannot do that, to make sure that the GOP pays a steep price.
Already we see in the formation of the new administration two traits that are likely to lead to the shortest honeymoon in Presidential history.
Photo Credit: Steven Hirsch/ AP
First, Mr. Trump’s nominees are breathtakingly bad. I get that the GOP is better at opposition than governing. But they caught the car and now they have to drive it. Instead, Trump’s appointments are so obviously unfit the only way to understand them comes from research on fascists: collectively, they are meant to demean the Senate, whose advice and consent is required. If the Senate falls in line, it becomes subservient and thus irrelevant to the incoming President. But the Senate’s dereliction is not irrelevant to the rest of us. Plus, Gaetz, Kennedy, Oz, Gabbard, Hegseth, et. al. are so unfit that they will fail badly and fast.
Second, the GOP and its media partners continue to pretend to be Daleks. They talk and act as if Mr. Trump leads an unstoppable power that will destroy its enemies. All that bravado unleashed by Mr. Trump’s campaign has boxed the new administration into a terrible corner: they now feel the need to actually do the terrible things Trump promised to do. Yet Americans, by large margins don’t want any of this.
The Daleks from Dr. Who
These two things are already causing the kind of chaos we saw in the first Trump Administration. GOP Senators are scurrying for cover. House Republicans can’t believe they have to go on record to bury their own ethic report on Matt Gaetz’ misconduct. Senior members of the US military and intelligence communities are expressing outrage about the appointments, and the promise of military tribunals to purge the armed forces of professional leadership.
I know we have some experience with Trumpist chaos. But usually this level of dysfunction, backstabbing, and incompetence takes a while to set in. Trump isn’t even President yet. And this time, partly because of Trump, the world is more dangerous and Americans more impatient.
How long before voters start to blame the GOP for its endless and nasty distractions and its increasingly craven efforts to cover up the new administration’s shortcomings? That depends on the rest of us. We can tune in and watch pundits blame Democrats for losing, or we can act like adults go back to work. I suggest the latter.