Why do Democrat Congressional members in deep blue districts seem to lack the part of the brain that grasps that they can only garner power if, with every action, they take into account their Democratic colleagues in purple and red districts?
The signs by back bench Dems were pathetic. It had such loser choir kid/hall monitor energy, which is the exact problem with Dems right now. Did it even accomplish spot lighting the issues they are protesting about?
I don’t think it was politically wise to do any protest during the speech but at least Al Green’s made more sense becuase he was clear what he was protesting and was unequivocal about it.
I think the signs about Musk stealing social security and protecting Medicaid were at least on message. Worse would have been something like Save Ukraine.
Yeah, who gives a single f**k about Ukraine, right? Only losers get themselves invaded by a stronger neighbor! America is for WINNERS, not LOSERS! The biggest, most beautiful winners.
I care about Ukraine. I hope we continue to give them weapons as long as they want to fight, it's a win win.
I also think a lot of Americans were disturbed by Trump's performance in the oval. I also don't think Democrats need to virtue signal about supporting Ukraine, it's not a winning issue.
Some things are worth standing up for despite the fact that 50 something year old blue collar person in small city suburb in the Midwest with a poor media diet doesn't agree with it. Perhaps just once we can consider how to change their mind instead of adopting their view.
I'm surprised this seems to be becoming conventional wisdom, what is the right way to think about it? Intuitively I have felt like Democrats should emphasize the Ukraine thing more because (this was my belief) supporting Ukraine is actually popular, Trump's scheming to throw it under the bus is actually unpopular, and this is a good wedge issue for Democrats because lots of national-security types with generally conservative sympathies do not actually want to see our adversaries winning wars. Am I wrong about where public sentiment is on this issue? Or what's the strategy here?
One problem is that so many Dem politicians and staffers would be what a lot of people call, “pussies.” An even bigger problem is that instead of agreeing with that critique (even if acknowledging it is crass), a lot of those same politicians and staffers would be offended—not that you called them a pussy—but that calling someone a pussy implies a pussy is weak when they would say “pussies are strong.”
I find it so heartening that on a left-leaning substack, commenters are calling people "pussies" again. I can't imagine this 5 years ago in the shadow of wokeness and metoo. It's just a sign that Democrats are finally growing a pair (of balls or ovaries)!
I find this an extraordinary odd thing to be excited about. Its like saying "I'm glad we're swinging back around to men having their shirts open and showing lots of chest hair."
While I don’t disagree, I think it’s important to note that the Trump admin is totally stacked with people who would have been extremely unpopular in school — and who you wouldn’t want to have to hear autistically pontificating at a cocktail party today. Much more so than the dems.
There would be an equal number of people complaining if Democrats had sat there quietly. Can we just stop concerning ourselves with what a party with no power does?
I feel like, at the very least, the signs should've said "YOU LIE!" instead of "false". Then when they inevitably get questions about it and whether it was inappropriate/rude/childish they would have at least been able to say "what? We are just mirroring language used by Republicans during Obama's SOU address. How can you criticize us for being inappropriate? At least we weren't shouting it in the middle of his speech."
Trump did a lot to change the era, I think. He's more scandalous than everyone who ever issued a public apology, all put together, but not only is the word "sorry" not in his vocabulary, he has somehow managed to be elected president twice -- despite being unable to speak for five minutes without saying something that would once have merited a public apology, despite literally having more felony convictions than all the millions of federal employees put together (who would be disqualified by such a record), despite promising to be a dictator, etc.
If Trump goes unpunished for all that, if some voters love it when he brags that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue without losing a single vote, or that evading taxes just makes him smart; when the voters prove him right be re-electing an insurrectionist who campaigns on retribution and acting like a dictator, when he can scrap treaties at will, etc. -- people who worry about propriety just look like idiots.
I suspect that issuing public apologies was always a fool's game anyway. The people who demand public apologies are not appeased by them, they just take them as further evidence of your guilt. Other people who were not paying attention may see your apology too, and that's the first they hear of your alleged wrongdoing, which must have been true and pretty bad if you're enduring the public shame of confessing to it. Meanwhile, someone shameless enough can get away with any and all crimes, violate every commandment, every line of the Constitution, and every section of the US Code, as long as he's adamant enough in his belief that nothing is wrong when he's the one doing it.
Maybe it was different before the internet, when only the most famous people could issue public apologies? If you feel like you already know the person before they apologize, it's more like a private apology, which is often effective?
Maybe we've become so uncertain about what our norms are, or so lacking in consensus, that people judge how shameful an action is by how ashamed the doer is? If person A apologizes for a brief vocal outburst and quits their job, while person B is proud of inciting political violence and is never punished, then apparently A's actions are more shameful after all?
Or maybe it's something special about Trump, combined with the current political situation? It can be satisfying to see someone get away with stuff while having enemies in common with you -- he can say and do things you wouldn't dare, and if anyone has made you feel like a bad person for your small failings, having a president with such large and obvious moral failings seems to absolve lesser sins by comparison. How bad can I be if every new headline features the president doing something new that's worse than anything I've ever done? It might be that being so shameless and unapologetic allows Trump to cater to a specific niche of bad people who want the comfort of seeing someone much worse hog all the attention.
Is there a list of names of the people who held up the signs? I didn't watch the speech so that's step one for me in trying to figure out why they do this stuff. Who are they specifically?
I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a “one weird trick” to fix a lot of our political problems: make all primaries jungle primaries or all-party RCV (ranked choice voting).
This reform will be implemented in blue or purple districts, because they're the places where electoral reform gets implemented. And it won't be implemented in hard-red districts. And then you'll end up with even more MAGA.
I think the house should probably just be apportioned proportionally based on statewide elections (and not by districts), because we're well beyond the point where constituents vote for house reps based on local issues anyway, and it would eliminate gerrymandering.
It would actually establish the parties, i guess, but they're pretty established now. In fact it might even give smaller parties a better chance at getting people into congress.
Oh this is an interesting scheme. If anything it may actually increase a return to local issues, particularly in States with asymmetrical issues to particular regions. Right now a Congresswoman from say Eureka California doesn't really need to care that much more about water rights issues in Palm Springs than does a congresswoman from another state entirely. A generic California Rep would have to. Probably not a Constitutional problem per se, would seem to meet Art. 1 §2 still. Just a legislative one of repealing the Uniform Congressional District Act. I agree that the modern media environment has basically eviscerated localism but I think States are large enough and salient enough political units that you could see more state unity in a politically productive manner under such a system.
True multi member districts, the way they've been done in the United States before, still allow voters to pick individuals. Multi member districts doesn't necessitate party list voting
- The Rep is motivated by different factors than the ones you are considering.
What's the Ted Lasso line (ok, Walt Whitman really)? "Be curious, not judgmental"
At least explore the idea that they believe they are acting in their best interests, and follow that thread to look for underlying issues in the incentives...
I have attempted this thinking every time my Senator (Warren) chases down a camera. Yet she underperforms in her deep blue state electorally and would lose if someone from within her party to her left or to her right were to challenge her.
Grok gave me a long good-sounding answer, portions below:
"Warren has built her brand as a progressive advocate who uses visibility to amplify issues like consumer protection, economic inequality, and corporate accountability. Her publicity efforts—whether through high-profile Senate speeches, social media engagement, or detailed policy proposals—aren’t just about personal attention; they’re a tool to shift public discourse and pressure institutions... Her style also reflects a belief that big, structural change requires a loud, persistent voice. Unlike senators who might prioritize quiet negotiation or incremental wins, Warren often opts for bold confrontation... This can look like grandstanding to some, but it’s consistent with her view that moral clarity and public momentum can force action where backroom deals fall short."
I can believe Warren's behavior follows rationally from a mission to rile people up and start a movement, in a kind of underdog/long-shot way. Even if I don't agree with her on some things, I actually find her more sincere than many other elected officials.
It's a bit unfortunate that she missed her window, so she's just kind of there in the Senate, pursuing the same media strategy from a decade ago. The energy that was wasted on two failed Sanders primary campaigns, the Squad, the Sunrise Movement, and a lot of online heat about neoliberalism would probably have been better served being behind Warren on something about consumer protection or redistribution, but instead it just generated more heat than light.
The iron law of institutions gets at something else here—more conservative democrats winning elsewhere gets the party more power, but erodes blue-district dems' power within the party. Consciously or not, they're making a choice to weaken the party in order to have more power within it.
When right wingers start babbling about the "woke mind virus" there is a kernel of truth. The truth is that many progressives are detached from material reality and are mostly concerned about feeling validated by holding "correct" beliefs rather than resolving material issues.
Of course those babbling are usually even more detached from material reality.
It's a semi-autobiographical "coming of age" graphic novel that's infamous for featuring several panels depicting sexual activity that are explicit enough network television news programs will blur them during broadcasts about the subject. (I'm personally very pro-free speech, but let's be blunt -- it's a terrible hill to choose to die on to fight to preserve access in a public school library to a graphic novel that, if you released it as a film consisting of nothing but successive still images of the actual artwork, would be guaranteed to get an "R" rating.)
It's especially stupid because it takes attention off of Trump! Instead of "Trump said some crazy things", the general view of that speech becomes "Trump said some crazy things, but Democrats were acting pretty crazy, too".
Too many Democrats are pathologically unable to just letting Trump's words speak for themselves. They always feel the need to have to do something to signal that they are bad, which if anything probably backfires since, after all, the Democratic Party is one of the only entities less popular and less trusted than Donald Trump right now.
It seems like a much bigger deal than the Dem members interrupting or Trump's predictable partisan speech that in less than ten days, we could have the first partial shutdown in my lifetime that Congressional Democrats eagerly "own." Am I overthinking this? For as long as I've read about politics, it's Republicans who are known in mainstream reporting as the "cannot be whipped into votes" people in Congress. And in some technical sense, it is literally true that they have the House majority and have several hardliners who will not go along with a continuing resolution of spending as is.
But in the actual politics, is an actual vibe shift around the corner? There's talk of Democrats having a Tea Party faction pissed off at incumbents[1]. But there's no Tea Party without a painful TARP vote, and while I'd be foolish to predict one, at the least it looks like DOGE's maneuvers against civil service employees could create a significant change in *Democratic* legislative politics. To take it from a senior legislative reporter at Politico[2]; "What might be even harder for House Democrats, though, is figuring out an endgame." Maybe I'm just crazy though and seeing things from a Republican view.
That has never been true for the Republican caucus; they garnered power just fine without members in deep-red districts taking into account their Republican colleagues in purple and blue districts. At least, they did the last two cycles.
If you're pissed at deep-blue left Dem House members for this, that, or the other thing, I sympathize. They are often obtuse people in a bubble--as are many "centrists", by the same token.
But our current political calamity has little, if anything, to do with their actions.
Not sure i agree. Dems have to work harder at a big tent because of the structural disadvantage of the Senate and the fact that we currently live in a center-right country.
This is a confusing take. The current political calamity has largely been caused by the Democrats' decline in the Midwest, which in turn has a lot to do with the national party's brand. Like, what's the winning playbook if you are the Democratic Party of Iowa?
I know we'd all be happier if everyone just agreed with us, but given that's never going to be true, maybe grant everyone a little more grace in disagreeing with you and arguing for their position?
"behave like swing members" is a straw man. I am asking why they don't take the median voter in the median district into account with their actions because being in a minority party means you lose on all your issues.
I am not "just asserting". I am taking the word of Democrats who have won in swing districts like Jared Golden or Conor Lamb. Look how the left treated Manchin, a gift to Democrats. An article like this is one of
Swing voters and moderates also exist in the Bronx. Trump got nearly 30% of the vote there! Few areas of the country swung more to the right than the Bronx.
The ethos behind a goofy troll fraternity is that they're silly, not particularly PC, but also clever and relatively harmless.
Trump embodies that from time to time because he's actually funny. But the rest of the GOP comes across as the least funny try hard in the frat who is just over the top cruel to people because he thinks that makes him cool.
Of course, Dems are synonymous with cringe. But actually have more individual members who are pretty cool.
I'll take cringe and uninspiring any day of the week and thrice on Sunday over the unbelievable shit show we have right now, but I know that's just because I'm a scoldy, pointy-headed elitist.
Firmly and confidently standing up to a bully in a muscular way is very different and much more effective than scolding and shrieking.
It's not about being better or worse than the bully, it's about how you handle yourself when confronting them, in the eyes of others. The Democrats do not inspire confidence or project strength at the moment.
"The best part of the speech, by far, was when he ran down the list of goofy-sounding grants that DOGE has cancelled. It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste."
Except that typically, such "goofy-sounding grants" tend to sound less goofy when they're described accurately.
I thought that was just a cheap shot by Matt at Biden. These type of bad sounding small expenditures are always present. They have been in every modern administration. They will be in this one. Yes, the executive branch should be exercising judgment and diligence, but an organization is never going to get everything right, and these are di minimis in the list of things a President should be concerned about. Every single one of these things somehow sounded right to somebody at some time.
Should they have received greater scrutiny, sure, but let's not pretend they are anything more than the exhibition of human mistakes in an organization of human beings.
Matt needs to get past his anger at Joe Biden. He was a decent President and accomplished some good things for the country. Look at him just in comparison to his most recent peers. He didn't start an unnecessary war that caused thousands of American military deaths and cost a trillion dollars, he didn't mismanage a pandemic, and he wasn't a morally corrupt authoritarian wanna be who is surrendering our allies to Putin's Russia while wrecking the federal government, and probably screwing up the economy.
It's not actually Biden's fault that people walked into the voting booth and pulled the lever for Trump. The American people had agency and exercised it.
Was the Biden administration actually trying to stop those types of expenditures? I very much get the feeling they weren't. And their rhetoric suggest otherwise.
Contrast that to the Clinton administration that vocally tried to make government more efficient and wise with their spending.
It’s true that a lot of goofy sounding stuff is important (who cares about Gila monster venom!) but a big issue with Dems is that they will appear to defend absolutely any grant the government has made even when it sounds dumb. Some willingness to call even a tiny fraction of grants dumb I think would go a long way!
Ironically research into Gila monster venom is directly responsible for the development of the latest blockbuster category of drugs (GLP-1s). Funny how that works.
"$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma, $8 million for LGBTQI programs in Lesotho ("which no one has ever heard of"), and $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"
I think it's safe to say none of these will produce the next GLP-1.
And while you aren't going to balance the budget from these things, they certainly do add up.
First of all, the previous poster didn't list any of those, and I had better things to do last night than watching the speech. Second, pretty much anything can sound absurd and pointless if you try hard enough to frame it that way.
I don't know what the intended outcome of those grants and programs were, but I expect the people who planned them did, and they should be debated on the merits of the outcomes they were trying to achieve and not a soundbite made out of their title by a source that is obviously untrustworthy.
Not sure if this came through in the original, but clearly it can be difficult to see (especially from the outside) what research will pay off in advance. Gila monster venom research led to possibly the most important pharmaceutical products in a good long while.
That being said, I do think that an absolute blanket willingness to defend every single grant boxes you into a corner you might not wish to be in. I say this as someone who worked in an NIH-funded research lab for several years. A complete unwillingness to re-evaluate your grant-giving structure is in my opinion not a good way to function. These processes aren't always optimal, or they can become vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors–Alzheimer's research comes to mind. I'm very in favor of doing plenty of research of that sounds stupid in a bulleted list, but I think brushing off every critique reflexively is also not good.
>It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste.<
Speaking of low-hanging fruit not gathered by Joe Biden, I can't be the only one thinking it's a pity the former president didn't declare English the official language as Trump has just done. Mind you I'm not a fan of this idea on the merits. It's 99% theater (California long ago made English official, and it's probably our most multilingual state!). But normies love it, I believe, and, paired with some get tough EOs on the issue of border security back in 2021, it might have made a difference. And yes, The Groups would have hated it, and complained bitterly. So there's your added value right there.
The primary impact of that EO is in lifting the requirements (and presumably resources) that legal documents be made available in multiple languages. I don't know off hand how many people are impacted by this but my guess is it will have some genuine negative impact.
I don't think it's a good idea to deny people documents or services they need in languages other than English. But Congress can require multiple languages (and in many cases already does) regardless of whether the president likes it. The Civil Right Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Affordable Care Act, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act and the Fair Housing Act all mandate accommodation of non-English speakers. And so, needless to say, do numerous policies and laws at the state and local levels.
Trump issued an executive order. He didn't sign an "English Only" bill into law.
Yes, "Executive Order" is a fancy term for "The President's personal opinion which you are free to disregard unless you work for him and he can fire you".
Yes, but the negative impact will very plausibly be outweighed by the positive impact of nudging all Americans into being able to communicate with eachother.
I would rather make important government forms that people need to access critical benefits be available in a language they understand. To not do this is simply cruel and un-American.
I will defer to the great politician of our time on this one:
"I agree that immigrants should learn English," Obama said. "But instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language."
I am very open to the idea that both English and Spanish should both be official languages, but you still have to draw the line somewhere. No one can actually learn all human languages.
I don’t think that there are that many people who are not learning English because government forms are available in other languages. You still need to know English to talk to your coworkers, neighbors, etc. Without English-only government forms there are still very strong incentives to learn English.
But the forms being available in other languages is helpful while you’re in the process of learning English. You wouldn’t want someone to mess up on enrolling their kid in school because their English reading skills weren’t up to par yet but the form was only in English.
Due to high levels of immigration from Latin America there are definitely parts of the country where you can get along just fine without knowing English.
Most of Southern CA for example. I know I've been to stores where everything is in Spanish and the clerks known little or no English
I would assume the same applies in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico
Do you think that people who weren’t able to learn English by just being around English speakers will be significantly motivated by a few government forms they probably need their grandkids to read to them anyway?
No. I don't have much hope of Trump doing so, but a policy of English being the official language could be implemented well, with things like greater resources for ESL learners etc.
Oh, I'm not a fan of the idea myself (just ruminating on the potential political upside). But by "former president" I was referring to Biden, of course, not Obama.
The low hanging fruit I’m annoyed Trump gobbled up is plastic straw bans. I don’t order drinks with straws that often, but the mouthfeel of paper straws is horrible. I spend the entire time consuming my iced coffee with a plastic top and paper straw annoyed at liberals for passing laws based on fake facts invented by an 8 year old.
The next Democratic President really ought to make creative use of EOs as Trump has done to score some cheap populist political points. Can't blame Democrats for starting it, and can't expect Democrats to unilaterally disarm. Paper straws don't personally bother me, but something that does annoy me is liberal efforts to deny hardworking Americans super-sized sodas.
I never even knew this was a thing people were asking for. To me, it feels like the Gulf of America thing, but maybe there's this latent desire I was unaware of.
I know this is my hobby horse around here I just wanted to disagree with #9 "You just obviously don’t accomplish that much in a few weeks! And, indeed, Trump has not accomplished very much."
I think he has actually gotten a huge amount done in the arena of making the US Federal Government an untrustworthy counterparty in any negotiation. As much as I hate it, it's real and will have long lasting effects. Four examples I've mentioned around here before:
1. Imagine USAID is re-funded in four years and they start doing things like supporting clinical trials again. Who would sign up for one knowing that they might capriciously get kicked out in the middle of a treatment. Or even worse, in the middle of an infection and not get the treatment!
2. Imagine you're a bright young lawyer or scientist. Why would you apply for a job at with the federal government when you can randomly get fired or had your life made hellish when a new administration rolls in? The tradeoff with federal jobs in sectors that compete for expertise used to be: steady hours, job security and prestige in exchange for lower salary. But if you take away all the good parts and keep all the bad parts it is not rational to take one of these jobs!
3. Imagine you're another country negotiating a trade deal with the US. Why would you bother, knowing that the next President might rip it up. Trump is even shredding deals he himself made in his first term!
4. Imagine you're a proud boy who wants to have a "big beautiful protest" in the Speaker of the House's office. It's OK though, the President will probably pardon you if you can make sure he wins. Now extend this logic to any executive branch official who breaks the law and can receive a shameless pardon. The implications of this are very bad.
A lot of these things turned out to be a bunch of norms dressed up in a trench coat masquerading as a system of government. But once they're gone, they're gone, for at least the next 20+ years. The things this administration is doing is far beyond a few reasonably toothy executive orders and likely failed (or irretrievably compromised) legislative agenda. Another way of putting this is if you look at the things they've constructed in the first 100 days as Matt is wont to do their track record is bad. But if you look at the things they've destroyed I think it really is unprecedented.
This really is the presidency that made high school civics class obsolete. Laws are a dead letter if the courts and Congress aren't willing and able to do anything about enforcing them.
At this stage we are basically reduced to praying to John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett to save us (lord know Mike Johnston and John Thune aren't going to do anything useful).
There's all this nonsense about Trump's slim majority in Congress, but as long as Congress is unwilling to impeach/remove him, he might as well have a majority as big as FDR's. The purpose of this presidency isn't to build things, it's to tear them down, and to do that you just need to sit in the oval office and issue executive orders.
Yeah, Trump has made massive progress in destroying the credibility of the government and large progress in undermining its functioning. These are important.
"The best part of the speech, by far, was when he ran down the list of goofy-sounding grants that DOGE has cancelled. It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste."
You have GOT to be kidding me.
Remember, back in the innocent days of 2008, when Sarah Palin made fun of "federal money used for research on fruit flies, I kid you not!" And a bunch of scientists patiently explained that fruit flies ae actually a good genetic model system for studying various human diseases, and such projects have been funded by the NIH for a long time. But I'm sure it would have sounded stupid to someone who doesn't understand biology or genetics.
And now Matt Y approves of a latter-day Palin pointing and laughing at silly-sounding grants. Ha, ha, dumbass scientists studying effing fruit flies! How stupid! Why didn't Sleepy Joe cut them off?
I refused to watch last night's fecal fiesta, but from reading the commentary, Trump complained that government was spending money on making "transgender mice." The poster said (and I'm inclined to agree, although in fairness I don't know for sure) that Trump mixed up "transgender" with "transGENIC," a widely used technique where you put bits of foreign DNA into lab mice. My husband uses transgenic mice in his studies of how the brain develops; they're very useful. You can make transgenic mice that have green or red fluorescent protein in specific subsets of neurons, and then you can take images of mouse brains with specific neurons glowing red or green, it's super cool! Likewise, I have transgenic, red or green fluorescent protein-expressing fruit flies in my lab.
But of course the clueless dumbass in the White House doesn't understand the difference between transgender and transgenic and doesn't care to learn, because it's much easier and funner to just have a laugh at someone's expense! "Ha, ha, those pointy-headed elitists with their trans mice, can you believe how arrogant and stupid they are? Good thing Elon is there with his chainsaw!"
FFS.
And it's not just about science and fruit flies and mice, I'm sure there are plenty of, say, USAID projects that sound stupid/nonsensical in a one-line summary that actually make sense when you look at them in more detail and understand the context.
Having Matt Y approve of a display of ignorance and call it the "best part of the speech" is dispiriting as hell, IMHO.
I certainly agree with you that a lot of important science occurs in areas that might not be obvious to people that aren't interested in facts or learning such as our friend C. elegans the worm.
And personally, I would love to double NIH funding. Scientific research is the key to progress. It's the borrowed money that could actually generate returns.
On the flip side, things like this are clearly problematic.
"$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma, $8 million for LGBTQI programs in Lesotho, and $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"
Unless of course that's just code for CIA black opps
The grants list might make good political theater (I didn't watch) but a big problem with the efficiency of the US government is trying to avoid politicians dunking on individual grants by creating tons of additional procedures instead of just running the programs the way their administrators think is right.
Accountability is good, and mostly better than proceduralism, but "we're going to fire anyone who approves any grants we don't like" is what _produces_ proceduralism. The solution is "hire good people and look at broad outcomes which you decided were important ahead of time".
Why are those signs of bad judgment? Isn’t Burma a place that is undergoing genocide, and thus a place where a small expenditure on DEI might be helpful? And isn’t Lesotho a place where lgbtq people are persecuted? If we want to develop a world that is safe for freedom and American values, aren’t these plausible expenditures?
I would of course want to see that these produce results - there are actually people who get these grants and make some improvement to their society as a result.
I don't think cultural imperialism is good actually.
And I don't know what to say to
"Isn’t Burma a place that is undergoing genocide, and thus a place where a small expenditure on DEI might be helpful?"
The State military is ethically cleansing a minority population while a coalition of militias is fighting an insurgency, so we're giving money to...the government schools, for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion scholarships?
The same government that's killing their own people?
Is that what’s actually going on? I haven’t actually seen any of the description of what is being funded beyond the briefest summary mentioned above. Have you looked into what schools are actually involved, and how people were selected?
It's obviously true that those grants can be demagogued. But that's of course not a rigorous assessment of their value. And my point is that "make sure no one ever says anything politically controversial about a grant" is actually one of the big causes of government waste, not a way to avoid it.
You can't run an effective and efficient government while evil and ignorant people try to demagogue everything; virtue is actually required.
>...and we’ve never seen that more clearly than in some of the sophomoric protest measures House backbenchers took during Trump’s speech.<
Right. Not that this would be without controversy given the gravity of the crisis we're in, but perhaps a more effective tactic in terms of optics would be dozens of House backbenchers (and some big wigs, too) doubled over in uncontrollable, mocking laughter.
I'm trying to imagine a single action that Democrats could take that wouldn't make at least 45% of their supporters declare it a horrible idea and flock to social media to talk about what a failure their party is, and I'm pretty sure there are none. Can we just talk about the party that actually has the power to do things, and is? We can worry about Democrats next year, when they have to win elections. (And hopefully not "worry about them" in the form of bitching about them constantly.)
You guys realize that the supporters of a party calling their party a terrible failure all the time, even if you are being "nuanced," is bad politics, right? Right?
“supporters of a party calling their party a terrible failure all the time”
Only one party does that! (The other just complains about “RINOs” - interesting that “DINO” never really stuck, even though I think I heard it first, and it has the advantage of associating the person with an animal destined to be eliminated.)
She lost because the public is woefully misinformed by a coordinated right wing campaign to control media. If you want to take that as a given and say that governing better could have been enough to overcome it, sure, fine.
You can be correct about inflation and immigration being high and still be misinformed in a zillion ways. I’m not going to explain the most basic-ass elements of 21st century media theory to you.
Again, this logic doesn't follow. Why would Republicans continuing to win mean that it wasn't an information problem? Couldn't it just mean the information problem wasn't solved?
(I would not call it a "messaging problem" per se when the message is not being received.)
I am willing to argue but you are not actually arguing with anything I'm saying.
>Speaking of obvious untruths, right at the top of the speech, Trump said, “We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four or eight years.”
I strongly disagree. What Trump said here was true, one of the truest things he ever said, right up there with "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters."
Trump accomplished much more than probably any previous administration in living memory, in the same way that an arsonist who sets a house on fire achieves more in one day than a whole team of skilled men accomplished in the six months it took to build the house.
Behold what he's done in such a short time!
-destroyed an 80-year-old political order in which the US is the "leader of the free world"
-aligned us with Putin's Russia instead
-proved that America's word to its allies is shit (the Budapest Memorandum? What's that?)
-got Canadians, nice, polite Canadians, so pissed off at us that they're booing our national anthem at sports games
-cut off foreign aid that means thousands if not millions of people will die of starvation/disease
-he's done lots of other things, but I don't have to list them all, because the list above suffices to make my point!
Truly, the most accomplished POTUS in our lifetimes! The biggest, bestest, most beautiful accomplishments, believe me, bigly!
>>The really nasty partisan tone was new for this stage, different even from Trump’s first term. Conservatives seem to love this, but fundamentally, it’s what prevents him from ever becoming more popular or finding a way to secure big legislative wins. One view is that maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe we’re in a new era where trolling and executive orders is all that matters.<<
That's been Trump's way from the getgo. It seems his strong instinct is to cultivate intense loyalty—adulation, really—from his base, his supporters and his political allies, and the particular degree to which he aspires to accomplish this not only precludes reaching across the aisle, but absolutely necessitates partisan pugilism.
I think Trump's political instincts are correct, to the extent he's not interested in legislating. He's interested in power, and in protecting himself from threats, and in seeking revenge on those who dared to oppose him.
Also: Trump is no long worried about reelection, so broad political popularity is something he prioritizes even less than during his first term.
Finally, like it or not (I don't!), much of the radical change his people are pursuing apparently *can* be accomplished via executive order and normal, daily decision-making, especially if, as seems worryingly likely, they're willing to push judicial oversight to the limit (and maybe even breach that limit). To point out one obvious example, US foreign policy is undergoing its biggest revolution since 1941, with barely a peep from Congress, much less substantive input or legislation.
The fact that he got elected twice (which was the part he wanted more than actual responsibility) meant he never had to learn that the skills required to run a private family business with your name on it weren't the same skills to pass legislation.
To be clear, he was bad at running the family business too. Had the apprentice not come along, Trump's mismanagement would have made the family less and less wealthy. Both the actual salary he received and the additional endorsements he was able to garner made up for the terrible decisions and burning of cash that he was actually doing.
Oh definitely. I've said here before that I've talked to people connected to the contracting world in tristate buildings trade before Trump became a politician and people used to do things like win negotiations by just hanging up the phone when Trump started lying. His persona was a bit of a shibboleth for separating out the people who knew about business and wealth in the Northeast vs. those who knew about celebrities and entertainment.
Trump's time away has seemed to energize him in ways that are hard to understand. A 100 minute speech, sprinkled with asides and full of his typical showmanship? Oh, that Biden could have done something similar [big sigh].
Biden didn't have THIS amount of energy and engagement even in his first 2 years. Trump is different.
We'd be better off if Trump had Biden's energy level and mental acuity issues. Instead, he is Trump 2.0 with more motivation and energy than Trump 1.0, which is a fresh enough horror for 2025.
It helps when you hand over a lot of your job to Elon and spend a big chunk of your day shitposting on Xitter and golfing. Then you can save your energy for a big beautiful speech!
What came out is how the Democrats have surrendered the narrative to Trump and although Biden was a good man with some accomplishments, his body of work has delivered us Trump 2. I find myself thinking that Biden’s presidency was worse than I thought.
It doesn't matter how good his legacy could theoretically be, since his most fatal mistake (trying to run again/guaranteeing a trump restoration) arguably undermines everything else that he accomplished. The ol' RBG legacy treatment.
Sanity check: had the vote gone 1.5 percentage points the other way, we would be talking about how Biden was a wise and noble statesman who saved us by stepping aside for Harris.
Or another alternative scenario - about 200,000 fortuitously distributed more votes for Harris and she would have won the electoral college while losing the popular vote by 2 million. What would be going on if that had happened?! Imagine - El Caudillo has made the mess of idiocy and betrayal (nice knowing you, Ukraine) he's made having won. I can only assume that he'd be leading a violent mob if he'd lost that way.
Oh, I’m pretty sure there would have been violence, but the institutions almost certainly would have prevailed, and hopefully there would be enough evidence that Trump was behind the violence to throw him in the slammer for a good few years. One can dream!
I've said this before, but I think we would have been better off today if Trump had just won legitimately in 2020. No Big Lie, No J6, no 2nd impeachment, no "lawfare," although probably a slower pandemic recovery. Perhaps he would have continued to purge the remaining Republicans with redlines that held his baser insticts at bay, but it would not have been a full reset staffed with cranks and syncophants. Maybe even Putin doesn't invade Ukraine? Biden had one job and it resulted in a half measure.
If Trump had won in 2020 and then presided over inflation (suppose less inflation than Biden presided over) and the overturning of Roe the GOP would’ve been wiped out in the midterms and a Democrat would’ve won a landslide in 2024.
Putin absolutely would have still invaded Ukraine. If anything, a pro-Russian U.S. president would have meant that Ukraine would have never gotten any aid, and Putin's job would have been much easier.
But you still had normal generals like Milley in his ear. 2nd term Trump is 2020 going nuts because of the pandemic and forgetting to check in with his FSB handler.
I hope Dems lean away from the "poor fired federal workers" messaging. I'm a huge fan of federal workers and feel terrible for those losing their jobs, but focusing on "this person lost their job through no fault of their own" is just continuing the overarching, underperforming Democratic theme of "here are the classes of people you should feel sorry for." The message instead needs to be how they're arbitrarily crippling programs and institutions that serve a vital purpose for ALL Americans.
To me it’s just part of a broader pattern of Trump trying to demonstrate that he will not keep his word, and no one can make the federal government keep its word, so that no one should ever agree to a deal with the United States.
Democrats should be screaming -- and suing -- like crazy about the firing of federal workers, but you're right, the point shouldn't be about individual suffering. And it shouldn't even be about individual programs. It should be about 142 years of non-partisan Civil Service reform being overthrown, and the Spoils System being brought back in, ILLEGALLY.
Trump claims to be a fan of one Civil War veteran 19th Century President, William McKinley. Here's another: James A. Garfield. He rose to the rank of major general in the War, but only served six months as President because he was shot down by a disappointed officeseeker in 1881. We have a Civil Service because of our second Presidential assassination. We must not lose it because of our first Presidential felon.
Not focusing on illegal immigration earlier was a "huge mistake." Not cutting off some small-bore grants with silly titles? What good would that have done, denied Trump an applause line during his speech? It wouldn't have swayed the election one way or the other. "Well I was gonna vote for Trump, but Biden cut off USAID funding for LGBTQ+ opera in Bolivia, so that's it, I'm voting for Harris now!"
Why do Democrat Congressional members in deep blue districts seem to lack the part of the brain that grasps that they can only garner power if, with every action, they take into account their Democratic colleagues in purple and red districts?
The signs by back bench Dems were pathetic. It had such loser choir kid/hall monitor energy, which is the exact problem with Dems right now. Did it even accomplish spot lighting the issues they are protesting about?
I don’t think it was politically wise to do any protest during the speech but at least Al Green’s made more sense becuase he was clear what he was protesting and was unequivocal about it.
I think the signs about Musk stealing social security and protecting Medicaid were at least on message. Worse would have been something like Save Ukraine.
Yeah, who gives a single f**k about Ukraine, right? Only losers get themselves invaded by a stronger neighbor! America is for WINNERS, not LOSERS! The biggest, most beautiful winners.
😵💫
I care about Ukraine. I hope we continue to give them weapons as long as they want to fight, it's a win win.
I also think a lot of Americans were disturbed by Trump's performance in the oval. I also don't think Democrats need to virtue signal about supporting Ukraine, it's not a winning issue.
Some things are worth standing up for despite the fact that 50 something year old blue collar person in small city suburb in the Midwest with a poor media diet doesn't agree with it. Perhaps just once we can consider how to change their mind instead of adopting their view.
Telling people how and why they're wrong has utility, and someone should do it. Just... not someone who is trying to get elected to office.
This is absolutely true, but you need to develop standing with them first, a difficult process of building trust and respect.
I'm surprised this seems to be becoming conventional wisdom, what is the right way to think about it? Intuitively I have felt like Democrats should emphasize the Ukraine thing more because (this was my belief) supporting Ukraine is actually popular, Trump's scheming to throw it under the bus is actually unpopular, and this is a good wedge issue for Democrats because lots of national-security types with generally conservative sympathies do not actually want to see our adversaries winning wars. Am I wrong about where public sentiment is on this issue? Or what's the strategy here?
Because back bench Dems were probably hall monitors
One problem is that so many Dem politicians and staffers would be what a lot of people call, “pussies.” An even bigger problem is that instead of agreeing with that critique (even if acknowledging it is crass), a lot of those same politicians and staffers would be offended—not that you called them a pussy—but that calling someone a pussy implies a pussy is weak when they would say “pussies are strong.”
Matt Christman once identified the two parties as "Don't Be An Asshole" and "Don't Be A Pussy"
I find it so heartening that on a left-leaning substack, commenters are calling people "pussies" again. I can't imagine this 5 years ago in the shadow of wokeness and metoo. It's just a sign that Democrats are finally growing a pair (of balls or ovaries)!
I find this an extraordinary odd thing to be excited about. Its like saying "I'm glad we're swinging back around to men having their shirts open and showing lots of chest hair."
If No Labels would start at least informally referring to themselves as The Taints, they’d probably get more attention.
Well, 't'ain't a democrat and 't'ain't a republican, so you can take it both ways!
While I don’t disagree, I think it’s important to note that the Trump admin is totally stacked with people who would have been extremely unpopular in school — and who you wouldn’t want to have to hear autistically pontificating at a cocktail party today. Much more so than the dems.
There would be an equal number of people complaining if Democrats had sat there quietly. Can we just stop concerning ourselves with what a party with no power does?
I feel like, at the very least, the signs should've said "YOU LIE!" instead of "false". Then when they inevitably get questions about it and whether it was inappropriate/rude/childish they would have at least been able to say "what? We are just mirroring language used by Republicans during Obama's SOU address. How can you criticize us for being inappropriate? At least we weren't shouting it in the middle of his speech."
It's a sign of a change of era that it was regarded as scandalous when that guy shouted "You lie" at Obama, and he later apologized!
Trump did a lot to change the era, I think. He's more scandalous than everyone who ever issued a public apology, all put together, but not only is the word "sorry" not in his vocabulary, he has somehow managed to be elected president twice -- despite being unable to speak for five minutes without saying something that would once have merited a public apology, despite literally having more felony convictions than all the millions of federal employees put together (who would be disqualified by such a record), despite promising to be a dictator, etc.
If Trump goes unpunished for all that, if some voters love it when he brags that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue without losing a single vote, or that evading taxes just makes him smart; when the voters prove him right be re-electing an insurrectionist who campaigns on retribution and acting like a dictator, when he can scrap treaties at will, etc. -- people who worry about propriety just look like idiots.
I suspect that issuing public apologies was always a fool's game anyway. The people who demand public apologies are not appeased by them, they just take them as further evidence of your guilt. Other people who were not paying attention may see your apology too, and that's the first they hear of your alleged wrongdoing, which must have been true and pretty bad if you're enduring the public shame of confessing to it. Meanwhile, someone shameless enough can get away with any and all crimes, violate every commandment, every line of the Constitution, and every section of the US Code, as long as he's adamant enough in his belief that nothing is wrong when he's the one doing it.
Maybe it was different before the internet, when only the most famous people could issue public apologies? If you feel like you already know the person before they apologize, it's more like a private apology, which is often effective?
Maybe we've become so uncertain about what our norms are, or so lacking in consensus, that people judge how shameful an action is by how ashamed the doer is? If person A apologizes for a brief vocal outburst and quits their job, while person B is proud of inciting political violence and is never punished, then apparently A's actions are more shameful after all?
Or maybe it's something special about Trump, combined with the current political situation? It can be satisfying to see someone get away with stuff while having enemies in common with you -- he can say and do things you wouldn't dare, and if anyone has made you feel like a bad person for your small failings, having a president with such large and obvious moral failings seems to absolve lesser sins by comparison. How bad can I be if every new headline features the president doing something new that's worse than anything I've ever done? It might be that being so shameless and unapologetic allows Trump to cater to a specific niche of bad people who want the comfort of seeing someone much worse hog all the attention.
Is there a list of names of the people who held up the signs? I didn't watch the speech so that's step one for me in trying to figure out why they do this stuff. Who are they specifically?
Probably, their constiuents want that so maybe not so hard to determine why they did it.
Because they are more afraid of primaries than the general elections :(
I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a “one weird trick” to fix a lot of our political problems: make all primaries jungle primaries or all-party RCV (ranked choice voting).
Primaries are essentially unknown outside of the US and/or more than 50 years ago. You can run completely functioning democracies without them!
Jungle primaries without RCV are really bad. Even with runoffs you end up with really unpopular candidates winning over more popular candidates.
This reform will be implemented in blue or purple districts, because they're the places where electoral reform gets implemented. And it won't be implemented in hard-red districts. And then you'll end up with even more MAGA.
I think the house should probably just be apportioned proportionally based on statewide elections (and not by districts), because we're well beyond the point where constituents vote for house reps based on local issues anyway, and it would eliminate gerrymandering.
It would actually establish the parties, i guess, but they're pretty established now. In fact it might even give smaller parties a better chance at getting people into congress.
Oh this is an interesting scheme. If anything it may actually increase a return to local issues, particularly in States with asymmetrical issues to particular regions. Right now a Congresswoman from say Eureka California doesn't really need to care that much more about water rights issues in Palm Springs than does a congresswoman from another state entirely. A generic California Rep would have to. Probably not a Constitutional problem per se, would seem to meet Art. 1 §2 still. Just a legislative one of repealing the Uniform Congressional District Act. I agree that the modern media environment has basically eviscerated localism but I think States are large enough and salient enough political units that you could see more state unity in a politically productive manner under such a system.
True multi member districts, the way they've been done in the United States before, still allow voters to pick individuals. Multi member districts doesn't necessitate party list voting
Carrying a dopey sign that gets tooled on by most normal voters wouldn't seem to be constructive in preventing a primary challenge.
From that observation, you can make two theories:
- The Rep has made a mistake.
- The Rep is motivated by different factors than the ones you are considering.
What's the Ted Lasso line (ok, Walt Whitman really)? "Be curious, not judgmental"
At least explore the idea that they believe they are acting in their best interests, and follow that thread to look for underlying issues in the incentives...
I have attempted this thinking every time my Senator (Warren) chases down a camera. Yet she underperforms in her deep blue state electorally and would lose if someone from within her party to her left or to her right were to challenge her.
Grok gave me a long good-sounding answer, portions below:
"Warren has built her brand as a progressive advocate who uses visibility to amplify issues like consumer protection, economic inequality, and corporate accountability. Her publicity efforts—whether through high-profile Senate speeches, social media engagement, or detailed policy proposals—aren’t just about personal attention; they’re a tool to shift public discourse and pressure institutions... Her style also reflects a belief that big, structural change requires a loud, persistent voice. Unlike senators who might prioritize quiet negotiation or incremental wins, Warren often opts for bold confrontation... This can look like grandstanding to some, but it’s consistent with her view that moral clarity and public momentum can force action where backroom deals fall short."
I can believe Warren's behavior follows rationally from a mission to rile people up and start a movement, in a kind of underdog/long-shot way. Even if I don't agree with her on some things, I actually find her more sincere than many other elected officials.
It's a bit unfortunate that she missed her window, so she's just kind of there in the Senate, pursuing the same media strategy from a decade ago. The energy that was wasted on two failed Sanders primary campaigns, the Squad, the Sunrise Movement, and a lot of online heat about neoliberalism would probably have been better served being behind Warren on something about consumer protection or redistribution, but instead it just generated more heat than light.
Same.
The tyranny of the iron law of institutions.
The iron law of institutions gets at something else here—more conservative democrats winning elsewhere gets the party more power, but erodes blue-district dems' power within the party. Consciously or not, they're making a choice to weaken the party in order to have more power within it.
I mean, no one is going to remember this stunt in two years. Heck, no one will remember it in two weeks
When right wingers start babbling about the "woke mind virus" there is a kernel of truth. The truth is that many progressives are detached from material reality and are mostly concerned about feeling validated by holding "correct" beliefs rather than resolving material issues.
Of course those babbling are usually even more detached from material reality.
Mental and political hygiene has become pretty important on both the left and right wing.
See, e.g., continuing to defend keeping the "Gender Queer: A Memoir" graphic novel in public school libraries.
I have no idea what this is but I am guessing it is nutty
It's a semi-autobiographical "coming of age" graphic novel that's infamous for featuring several panels depicting sexual activity that are explicit enough network television news programs will blur them during broadcasts about the subject. (I'm personally very pro-free speech, but let's be blunt -- it's a terrible hill to choose to die on to fight to preserve access in a public school library to a graphic novel that, if you released it as a film consisting of nothing but successive still images of the actual artwork, would be guaranteed to get an "R" rating.)
Worst suspicions confirmed.
I am glad we are mostly past the period when lefties would dogpile you for pointing out defending and promoting this stuff is weird.
Can we come up with a name for the Mind Virus that Elon is operating under?
You mean Ketlon.
Putinphilia?
It's especially stupid because it takes attention off of Trump! Instead of "Trump said some crazy things", the general view of that speech becomes "Trump said some crazy things, but Democrats were acting pretty crazy, too".
Too many Democrats are pathologically unable to just letting Trump's words speak for themselves. They always feel the need to have to do something to signal that they are bad, which if anything probably backfires since, after all, the Democratic Party is one of the only entities less popular and less trusted than Donald Trump right now.
It seems like a much bigger deal than the Dem members interrupting or Trump's predictable partisan speech that in less than ten days, we could have the first partial shutdown in my lifetime that Congressional Democrats eagerly "own." Am I overthinking this? For as long as I've read about politics, it's Republicans who are known in mainstream reporting as the "cannot be whipped into votes" people in Congress. And in some technical sense, it is literally true that they have the House majority and have several hardliners who will not go along with a continuing resolution of spending as is.
But in the actual politics, is an actual vibe shift around the corner? There's talk of Democrats having a Tea Party faction pissed off at incumbents[1]. But there's no Tea Party without a painful TARP vote, and while I'd be foolish to predict one, at the least it looks like DOGE's maneuvers against civil service employees could create a significant change in *Democratic* legislative politics. To take it from a senior legislative reporter at Politico[2]; "What might be even harder for House Democrats, though, is figuring out an endgame." Maybe I'm just crazy though and seeing things from a Republican view.
[1] https://split-ticket.org/2025/02/21/the-democratic-disconnect/
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/04/house-democrats-shutdown-doge-00205584
Because it's not true.
That has never been true for the Republican caucus; they garnered power just fine without members in deep-red districts taking into account their Republican colleagues in purple and blue districts. At least, they did the last two cycles.
If you're pissed at deep-blue left Dem House members for this, that, or the other thing, I sympathize. They are often obtuse people in a bubble--as are many "centrists", by the same token.
But our current political calamity has little, if anything, to do with their actions.
Not sure i agree. Dems have to work harder at a big tent because of the structural disadvantage of the Senate and the fact that we currently live in a center-right country.
This is a confusing take. The current political calamity has largely been caused by the Democrats' decline in the Midwest, which in turn has a lot to do with the national party's brand. Like, what's the winning playbook if you are the Democratic Party of Iowa?
Doesn't this apply to Republicans as well?
I know we'd all be happier if everyone just agreed with us, but given that's never going to be true, maybe grant everyone a little more grace in disagreeing with you and arguing for their position?
They hold both Houses of Congress and the White House so their approach seems to be working.
"behave like swing members" is a straw man. I am asking why they don't take the median voter in the median district into account with their actions because being in a minority party means you lose on all your issues.
People, famously, don't do a sober weighting of all relevant factors and then act accordingly.
I am not "just asserting". I am taking the word of Democrats who have won in swing districts like Jared Golden or Conor Lamb. Look how the left treated Manchin, a gift to Democrats. An article like this is one of
many on the subject. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-democrats-pelosi-election/2020/11/05/1ddae5ca-1f6e-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html
Doesn't it help the 'moderate cred' of people like Golden or Manchin to be attacked by the left? I don't know why they're complaining.
Behavior by the camera chasing left costs them elections. Moderate cred is useless if the Democratic brand is toxic.
Swing voters and moderates also exist in the Bronx. Trump got nearly 30% of the vote there! Few areas of the country swung more to the right than the Bronx.
So those signs were helpful to win primaries in their home districts?
Republicans are in a goofy troll fraternity and Democrats are scientists at Cringe Research Labs.
The ethos behind a goofy troll fraternity is that they're silly, not particularly PC, but also clever and relatively harmless.
Trump embodies that from time to time because he's actually funny. But the rest of the GOP comes across as the least funny try hard in the frat who is just over the top cruel to people because he thinks that makes him cool.
Of course, Dems are synonymous with cringe. But actually have more individual members who are pretty cool.
Funny like a bout of diarrhea at a wedding reception.
What’s so “of course” about Democrats being “cringe”? Calling out Trump on his bs is “cringe” now?
Yes if it comes across like you’re a woke scold. Come on, you know the type.
I will never, and I mean ever, accept this mindset that “scolding” someone for being an asshole is worse than actually being an asshole.
Standing up for people who need Medicaid is “woke” now? WTF?
No, in general many prominent Democrats come across as cringe and uninspiring.
I'll take cringe and uninspiring any day of the week and thrice on Sunday over the unbelievable shit show we have right now, but I know that's just because I'm a scoldy, pointy-headed elitist.
Firmly and confidently standing up to a bully in a muscular way is very different and much more effective than scolding and shrieking.
It's not about being better or worse than the bully, it's about how you handle yourself when confronting them, in the eyes of others. The Democrats do not inspire confidence or project strength at the moment.
“It’s not about being better or worse than the bully…”
Of course it is!
If we go all in on moral relativism, on “nobody is worse than anybody else,” then this country is truly lost.
"The best part of the speech, by far, was when he ran down the list of goofy-sounding grants that DOGE has cancelled. It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste."
Except that typically, such "goofy-sounding grants" tend to sound less goofy when they're described accurately.
I thought that was just a cheap shot by Matt at Biden. These type of bad sounding small expenditures are always present. They have been in every modern administration. They will be in this one. Yes, the executive branch should be exercising judgment and diligence, but an organization is never going to get everything right, and these are di minimis in the list of things a President should be concerned about. Every single one of these things somehow sounded right to somebody at some time.
Should they have received greater scrutiny, sure, but let's not pretend they are anything more than the exhibition of human mistakes in an organization of human beings.
Matt needs to get past his anger at Joe Biden. He was a decent President and accomplished some good things for the country. Look at him just in comparison to his most recent peers. He didn't start an unnecessary war that caused thousands of American military deaths and cost a trillion dollars, he didn't mismanage a pandemic, and he wasn't a morally corrupt authoritarian wanna be who is surrendering our allies to Putin's Russia while wrecking the federal government, and probably screwing up the economy.
It's not actually Biden's fault that people walked into the voting booth and pulled the lever for Trump. The American people had agency and exercised it.
Was the Biden administration actually trying to stop those types of expenditures? I very much get the feeling they weren't. And their rhetoric suggest otherwise.
Contrast that to the Clinton administration that vocally tried to make government more efficient and wise with their spending.
Also note that Clinton got elected twice.
Right, and there's a history of Democrats opposing dumb expenditures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award
If it is anyone's fault it is the media/media environment. But when you're part of the problem it is easier to blame Biden.
It’s true that a lot of goofy sounding stuff is important (who cares about Gila monster venom!) but a big issue with Dems is that they will appear to defend absolutely any grant the government has made even when it sounds dumb. Some willingness to call even a tiny fraction of grants dumb I think would go a long way!
Ironically research into Gila monster venom is directly responsible for the development of the latest blockbuster category of drugs (GLP-1s). Funny how that works.
"$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma, $8 million for LGBTQI programs in Lesotho ("which no one has ever heard of"), and $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"
I think it's safe to say none of these will produce the next GLP-1.
And while you aren't going to balance the budget from these things, they certainly do add up.
First of all, the previous poster didn't list any of those, and I had better things to do last night than watching the speech. Second, pretty much anything can sound absurd and pointless if you try hard enough to frame it that way.
I don't know what the intended outcome of those grants and programs were, but I expect the people who planned them did, and they should be debated on the merits of the outcomes they were trying to achieve and not a soundbite made out of their title by a source that is obviously untrustworthy.
Not sure if this came through in the original, but clearly it can be difficult to see (especially from the outside) what research will pay off in advance. Gila monster venom research led to possibly the most important pharmaceutical products in a good long while.
That being said, I do think that an absolute blanket willingness to defend every single grant boxes you into a corner you might not wish to be in. I say this as someone who worked in an NIH-funded research lab for several years. A complete unwillingness to re-evaluate your grant-giving structure is in my opinion not a good way to function. These processes aren't always optimal, or they can become vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors–Alzheimer's research comes to mind. I'm very in favor of doing plenty of research of that sounds stupid in a bulleted list, but I think brushing off every critique reflexively is also not good.
You're correct of course, but the point I think is winning elections, not making the most effective grants.
Less importantly, I thought it went on for far too long. He should have stuck to 3-5 goofy but mainly accurate grants
>It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste.<
Speaking of low-hanging fruit not gathered by Joe Biden, I can't be the only one thinking it's a pity the former president didn't declare English the official language as Trump has just done. Mind you I'm not a fan of this idea on the merits. It's 99% theater (California long ago made English official, and it's probably our most multilingual state!). But normies love it, I believe, and, paired with some get tough EOs on the issue of border security back in 2021, it might have made a difference. And yes, The Groups would have hated it, and complained bitterly. So there's your added value right there.
The primary impact of that EO is in lifting the requirements (and presumably resources) that legal documents be made available in multiple languages. I don't know off hand how many people are impacted by this but my guess is it will have some genuine negative impact.
I don't think it's a good idea to deny people documents or services they need in languages other than English. But Congress can require multiple languages (and in many cases already does) regardless of whether the president likes it. The Civil Right Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Affordable Care Act, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act and the Fair Housing Act all mandate accommodation of non-English speakers. And so, needless to say, do numerous policies and laws at the state and local levels.
Trump issued an executive order. He didn't sign an "English Only" bill into law.
Yes, "Executive Order" is a fancy term for "The President's personal opinion which you are free to disregard unless you work for him and he can fire you".
Isn't learning English a requirement to become a citizen?
If so why should there be voting documents in a different language.
I don't know the specific provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Maybe it deals with voter registration?
Yes, but the negative impact will very plausibly be outweighed by the positive impact of nudging all Americans into being able to communicate with eachother.
I would rather make important government forms that people need to access critical benefits be available in a language they understand. To not do this is simply cruel and un-American.
I agree that there are hard trade offs here, but it also seems un-American to me for someone not to learn to communicate with his fellow citizens.
I will defer to the great politician of our time on this one:
"I agree that immigrants should learn English," Obama said. "But instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language."
I am very open to the idea that both English and Spanish should both be official languages, but you still have to draw the line somewhere. No one can actually learn all human languages.
I don’t think that there are that many people who are not learning English because government forms are available in other languages. You still need to know English to talk to your coworkers, neighbors, etc. Without English-only government forms there are still very strong incentives to learn English.
But the forms being available in other languages is helpful while you’re in the process of learning English. You wouldn’t want someone to mess up on enrolling their kid in school because their English reading skills weren’t up to par yet but the form was only in English.
Due to high levels of immigration from Latin America there are definitely parts of the country where you can get along just fine without knowing English.
Most of Southern CA for example. I know I've been to stores where everything is in Spanish and the clerks known little or no English
I would assume the same applies in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico
To be an American citizen you need to learn English. Why are all these people getting government support if they aren't citizens?
Do you think that people who weren’t able to learn English by just being around English speakers will be significantly motivated by a few government forms they probably need their grandkids to read to them anyway?
No. I don't have much hope of Trump doing so, but a policy of English being the official language could be implemented well, with things like greater resources for ESL learners etc.
Obama was against English as the official language.
Oh, I'm not a fan of the idea myself (just ruminating on the potential political upside). But by "former president" I was referring to Biden, of course, not Obama.
The low hanging fruit I’m annoyed Trump gobbled up is plastic straw bans. I don’t order drinks with straws that often, but the mouthfeel of paper straws is horrible. I spend the entire time consuming my iced coffee with a plastic top and paper straw annoyed at liberals for passing laws based on fake facts invented by an 8 year old.
The next Democratic President really ought to make creative use of EOs as Trump has done to score some cheap populist political points. Can't blame Democrats for starting it, and can't expect Democrats to unilaterally disarm. Paper straws don't personally bother me, but something that does annoy me is liberal efforts to deny hardworking Americans super-sized sodas.
I never even knew this was a thing people were asking for. To me, it feels like the Gulf of America thing, but maybe there's this latent desire I was unaware of.
I know this is my hobby horse around here I just wanted to disagree with #9 "You just obviously don’t accomplish that much in a few weeks! And, indeed, Trump has not accomplished very much."
I think he has actually gotten a huge amount done in the arena of making the US Federal Government an untrustworthy counterparty in any negotiation. As much as I hate it, it's real and will have long lasting effects. Four examples I've mentioned around here before:
1. Imagine USAID is re-funded in four years and they start doing things like supporting clinical trials again. Who would sign up for one knowing that they might capriciously get kicked out in the middle of a treatment. Or even worse, in the middle of an infection and not get the treatment!
2. Imagine you're a bright young lawyer or scientist. Why would you apply for a job at with the federal government when you can randomly get fired or had your life made hellish when a new administration rolls in? The tradeoff with federal jobs in sectors that compete for expertise used to be: steady hours, job security and prestige in exchange for lower salary. But if you take away all the good parts and keep all the bad parts it is not rational to take one of these jobs!
3. Imagine you're another country negotiating a trade deal with the US. Why would you bother, knowing that the next President might rip it up. Trump is even shredding deals he himself made in his first term!
4. Imagine you're a proud boy who wants to have a "big beautiful protest" in the Speaker of the House's office. It's OK though, the President will probably pardon you if you can make sure he wins. Now extend this logic to any executive branch official who breaks the law and can receive a shameless pardon. The implications of this are very bad.
A lot of these things turned out to be a bunch of norms dressed up in a trench coat masquerading as a system of government. But once they're gone, they're gone, for at least the next 20+ years. The things this administration is doing is far beyond a few reasonably toothy executive orders and likely failed (or irretrievably compromised) legislative agenda. Another way of putting this is if you look at the things they've constructed in the first 100 days as Matt is wont to do their track record is bad. But if you look at the things they've destroyed I think it really is unprecedented.
This really is the presidency that made high school civics class obsolete. Laws are a dead letter if the courts and Congress aren't willing and able to do anything about enforcing them.
At this stage we are basically reduced to praying to John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett to save us (lord know Mike Johnston and John Thune aren't going to do anything useful).
There's all this nonsense about Trump's slim majority in Congress, but as long as Congress is unwilling to impeach/remove him, he might as well have a majority as big as FDR's. The purpose of this presidency isn't to build things, it's to tear them down, and to do that you just need to sit in the oval office and issue executive orders.
Yeah, Trump has made massive progress in destroying the credibility of the government and large progress in undermining its functioning. These are important.
"The best part of the speech, by far, was when he ran down the list of goofy-sounding grants that DOGE has cancelled. It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste."
You have GOT to be kidding me.
Remember, back in the innocent days of 2008, when Sarah Palin made fun of "federal money used for research on fruit flies, I kid you not!" And a bunch of scientists patiently explained that fruit flies ae actually a good genetic model system for studying various human diseases, and such projects have been funded by the NIH for a long time. But I'm sure it would have sounded stupid to someone who doesn't understand biology or genetics.
And now Matt Y approves of a latter-day Palin pointing and laughing at silly-sounding grants. Ha, ha, dumbass scientists studying effing fruit flies! How stupid! Why didn't Sleepy Joe cut them off?
I refused to watch last night's fecal fiesta, but from reading the commentary, Trump complained that government was spending money on making "transgender mice." The poster said (and I'm inclined to agree, although in fairness I don't know for sure) that Trump mixed up "transgender" with "transGENIC," a widely used technique where you put bits of foreign DNA into lab mice. My husband uses transgenic mice in his studies of how the brain develops; they're very useful. You can make transgenic mice that have green or red fluorescent protein in specific subsets of neurons, and then you can take images of mouse brains with specific neurons glowing red or green, it's super cool! Likewise, I have transgenic, red or green fluorescent protein-expressing fruit flies in my lab.
But of course the clueless dumbass in the White House doesn't understand the difference between transgender and transgenic and doesn't care to learn, because it's much easier and funner to just have a laugh at someone's expense! "Ha, ha, those pointy-headed elitists with their trans mice, can you believe how arrogant and stupid they are? Good thing Elon is there with his chainsaw!"
FFS.
And it's not just about science and fruit flies and mice, I'm sure there are plenty of, say, USAID projects that sound stupid/nonsensical in a one-line summary that actually make sense when you look at them in more detail and understand the context.
Having Matt Y approve of a display of ignorance and call it the "best part of the speech" is dispiriting as hell, IMHO.
Thank you for your service and for the aptness of your username at this moment.
I certainly agree with you that a lot of important science occurs in areas that might not be obvious to people that aren't interested in facts or learning such as our friend C. elegans the worm.
And personally, I would love to double NIH funding. Scientific research is the key to progress. It's the borrowed money that could actually generate returns.
On the flip side, things like this are clearly problematic.
"$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma, $8 million for LGBTQI programs in Lesotho, and $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"
Unless of course that's just code for CIA black opps
Are those things clearly problematic? On what criteria?
Problematic in that they help people they don't like.
Problem is we are using tax payer funds for it. If charities want to do it more power to them
That the US shouldn't be spending tax payer funds on them. And this is by FAR the majority position of voters.
I agree that voters mostly agree with that, but it is not at all a substantive assessment of the programs or the US national interest.
The grants list might make good political theater (I didn't watch) but a big problem with the efficiency of the US government is trying to avoid politicians dunking on individual grants by creating tons of additional procedures instead of just running the programs the way their administrators think is right.
Yes the solution isn't all the additional procedures, it's firing the people that approved those programs.
Accountability not just proceduralism.
Accountability is good, and mostly better than proceduralism, but "we're going to fire anyone who approves any grants we don't like" is what _produces_ proceduralism. The solution is "hire good people and look at broad outcomes which you decided were important ahead of time".
Yes you try and hire good people, but sometimes that doesn't work out. Sometimes somebody you thought was a great hire does something really stupid.
Those people should go.
To make government efficient people have to be able to be held accountable.
Right sometimes people do dumb things. But "funding a grant that can be described in an embarrassing way by a politician" is not one of those things.
Doesn’t that just get the same sort of CYA hesitation and avoiding doing anything but the most mealymouthed things?
Not necessarily. This is how it works in the private sector. You hire good people but also hold them accountable
That doesn't mean mistakes can't be made.
But if you demonstrate you don't have the judgement necessary for the job by say approving
"$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma"
or
"$8 million for LGBTQI programs in Lesotho"
well you gots to go
Why are those signs of bad judgment? Isn’t Burma a place that is undergoing genocide, and thus a place where a small expenditure on DEI might be helpful? And isn’t Lesotho a place where lgbtq people are persecuted? If we want to develop a world that is safe for freedom and American values, aren’t these plausible expenditures?
I would of course want to see that these produce results - there are actually people who get these grants and make some improvement to their society as a result.
I don't think cultural imperialism is good actually.
And I don't know what to say to
"Isn’t Burma a place that is undergoing genocide, and thus a place where a small expenditure on DEI might be helpful?"
The State military is ethically cleansing a minority population while a coalition of militias is fighting an insurgency, so we're giving money to...the government schools, for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion scholarships?
The same government that's killing their own people?
That seems like lighting money on fire.
Is that what’s actually going on? I haven’t actually seen any of the description of what is being funded beyond the briefest summary mentioned above. Have you looked into what schools are actually involved, and how people were selected?
I think it's quite clear that those are examples the VAST majority of Americans would disapprove of and would point to as government waste.
And they would be grade A advertising material for a Trump type candidate and be used to justify DOGE type activities.
If you can't easily see that then I think we must live in very different worlds.
It's obviously true that those grants can be demagogued. But that's of course not a rigorous assessment of their value. And my point is that "make sure no one ever says anything politically controversial about a grant" is actually one of the big causes of government waste, not a way to avoid it.
You can't run an effective and efficient government while evil and ignorant people try to demagogue everything; virtue is actually required.
>...and we’ve never seen that more clearly than in some of the sophomoric protest measures House backbenchers took during Trump’s speech.<
Right. Not that this would be without controversy given the gravity of the crisis we're in, but perhaps a more effective tactic in terms of optics would be dozens of House backbenchers (and some big wigs, too) doubled over in uncontrollable, mocking laughter.
The king craves respect. Don't give it to him.
It's probably more effective to paint Trump as weak than as scary.
I'm trying to imagine a single action that Democrats could take that wouldn't make at least 45% of their supporters declare it a horrible idea and flock to social media to talk about what a failure their party is, and I'm pretty sure there are none. Can we just talk about the party that actually has the power to do things, and is? We can worry about Democrats next year, when they have to win elections. (And hopefully not "worry about them" in the form of bitching about them constantly.)
You guys realize that the supporters of a party calling their party a terrible failure all the time, even if you are being "nuanced," is bad politics, right? Right?
This.
Much of the country is suffering from PTSD, and thus *nothing* Democrats do is ever smart or good or effective.
“supporters of a party calling their party a terrible failure all the time”
Only one party does that! (The other just complains about “RINOs” - interesting that “DINO” never really stuck, even though I think I heard it first, and it has the advantage of associating the person with an animal destined to be eliminated.)
Winning elections next year requires change now.
Harris didn't lose because of her campaign. She lost because of 4 years of bad governance and policies
She lost because the public is woefully misinformed by a coordinated right wing campaign to control media. If you want to take that as a given and say that governing better could have been enough to overcome it, sure, fine.
You mean by doing things like reporting on the immigration crisis or inflation?
Maybe just tell voters to not believe their lying eyes?
If Biden had governed more like Obama or Clinton then Harris would be president right now.
You can be correct about inflation and immigration being high and still be misinformed in a zillion ways. I’m not going to explain the most basic-ass elements of 21st century media theory to you.
go ahead and keep believing it's a messaging problem. President Vance will thank you
Again, this logic doesn't follow. Why would Republicans continuing to win mean that it wasn't an information problem? Couldn't it just mean the information problem wasn't solved?
(I would not call it a "messaging problem" per se when the message is not being received.)
I am willing to argue but you are not actually arguing with anything I'm saying.
>Speaking of obvious untruths, right at the top of the speech, Trump said, “We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four or eight years.”
I strongly disagree. What Trump said here was true, one of the truest things he ever said, right up there with "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters."
Trump accomplished much more than probably any previous administration in living memory, in the same way that an arsonist who sets a house on fire achieves more in one day than a whole team of skilled men accomplished in the six months it took to build the house.
Behold what he's done in such a short time!
-destroyed an 80-year-old political order in which the US is the "leader of the free world"
-aligned us with Putin's Russia instead
-proved that America's word to its allies is shit (the Budapest Memorandum? What's that?)
-got Canadians, nice, polite Canadians, so pissed off at us that they're booing our national anthem at sports games
-cut off foreign aid that means thousands if not millions of people will die of starvation/disease
-he's done lots of other things, but I don't have to list them all, because the list above suffices to make my point!
Truly, the most accomplished POTUS in our lifetimes! The biggest, bestest, most beautiful accomplishments, believe me, bigly!
Yeah, I had the same reaction -- just because what been done has been overwhelmingly *BAD* doesn't make them not "accomplishments."
So Democrats delivered a rebuttal in Spanish condemning the declaration of English as the official language. [picardfacepalm.jpg]
With all the substantively terrible things Trump is doing (including to illegal immigrants) why inflame this stupid, losing, culture-war point?
>>The really nasty partisan tone was new for this stage, different even from Trump’s first term. Conservatives seem to love this, but fundamentally, it’s what prevents him from ever becoming more popular or finding a way to secure big legislative wins. One view is that maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe we’re in a new era where trolling and executive orders is all that matters.<<
That's been Trump's way from the getgo. It seems his strong instinct is to cultivate intense loyalty—adulation, really—from his base, his supporters and his political allies, and the particular degree to which he aspires to accomplish this not only precludes reaching across the aisle, but absolutely necessitates partisan pugilism.
I think Trump's political instincts are correct, to the extent he's not interested in legislating. He's interested in power, and in protecting himself from threats, and in seeking revenge on those who dared to oppose him.
Also: Trump is no long worried about reelection, so broad political popularity is something he prioritizes even less than during his first term.
Finally, like it or not (I don't!), much of the radical change his people are pursuing apparently *can* be accomplished via executive order and normal, daily decision-making, especially if, as seems worryingly likely, they're willing to push judicial oversight to the limit (and maybe even breach that limit). To point out one obvious example, US foreign policy is undergoing its biggest revolution since 1941, with barely a peep from Congress, much less substantive input or legislation.
The fact that he got elected twice (which was the part he wanted more than actual responsibility) meant he never had to learn that the skills required to run a private family business with your name on it weren't the same skills to pass legislation.
To be clear, he was bad at running the family business too. Had the apprentice not come along, Trump's mismanagement would have made the family less and less wealthy. Both the actual salary he received and the additional endorsements he was able to garner made up for the terrible decisions and burning of cash that he was actually doing.
Oh definitely. I've said here before that I've talked to people connected to the contracting world in tristate buildings trade before Trump became a politician and people used to do things like win negotiations by just hanging up the phone when Trump started lying. His persona was a bit of a shibboleth for separating out the people who knew about business and wealth in the Northeast vs. those who knew about celebrities and entertainment.
Oh, we had a peep from Congress. Chris Murphy convinced Zelinskyyyy that he should dump the agreement. Logan act anyone?
You gotta improve your information sources man. More slow boring, less catturd
What kind of miserable person begins their day like this?
Trump's time away has seemed to energize him in ways that are hard to understand. A 100 minute speech, sprinkled with asides and full of his typical showmanship? Oh, that Biden could have done something similar [big sigh].
Biden seemed fine for the first ~2 years. Who knows what fresh horrors face us in 2027?
Biden didn't have THIS amount of energy and engagement even in his first 2 years. Trump is different.
We'd be better off if Trump had Biden's energy level and mental acuity issues. Instead, he is Trump 2.0 with more motivation and energy than Trump 1.0, which is a fresh enough horror for 2025.
Be patient John, Trump’s could run out of gas anytime now. He’s going to be 79 soon.
Old men are often full of gas...
And he was up posting Truths before 6am that morning!
Evil grants preternatural energy and long life.
Speed is a wonderful drug man.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-white-house-drugs-speed-xanax-1234979503/
He and Elon are quite a pair that way.
That article uses the word “speed” a lot, but mainly seems to be talking about Xanax and modafinil.
I'm fine extending "speed" to modafinil. Having watched friends at BCG pop modafinil like candy ... there's not much daylight between then.
It helps when you hand over a lot of your job to Elon and spend a big chunk of your day shitposting on Xitter and golfing. Then you can save your energy for a big beautiful speech!
What came out is how the Democrats have surrendered the narrative to Trump and although Biden was a good man with some accomplishments, his body of work has delivered us Trump 2. I find myself thinking that Biden’s presidency was worse than I thought.
It doesn't matter how good his legacy could theoretically be, since his most fatal mistake (trying to run again/guaranteeing a trump restoration) arguably undermines everything else that he accomplished. The ol' RBG legacy treatment.
Sanity check: had the vote gone 1.5 percentage points the other way, we would be talking about how Biden was a wise and noble statesman who saved us by stepping aside for Harris.
Or another alternative scenario - about 200,000 fortuitously distributed more votes for Harris and she would have won the electoral college while losing the popular vote by 2 million. What would be going on if that had happened?! Imagine - El Caudillo has made the mess of idiocy and betrayal (nice knowing you, Ukraine) he's made having won. I can only assume that he'd be leading a violent mob if he'd lost that way.
Oh, I’m pretty sure there would have been violence, but the institutions almost certainly would have prevailed, and hopefully there would be enough evidence that Trump was behind the violence to throw him in the slammer for a good few years. One can dream!
I've said this before, but I think we would have been better off today if Trump had just won legitimately in 2020. No Big Lie, No J6, no 2nd impeachment, no "lawfare," although probably a slower pandemic recovery. Perhaps he would have continued to purge the remaining Republicans with redlines that held his baser insticts at bay, but it would not have been a full reset staffed with cranks and syncophants. Maybe even Putin doesn't invade Ukraine? Biden had one job and it resulted in a half measure.
If Trump had won in 2020 and then presided over inflation (suppose less inflation than Biden presided over) and the overturning of Roe the GOP would’ve been wiped out in the midterms and a Democrat would’ve won a landslide in 2024.
Putin absolutely would have still invaded Ukraine. If anything, a pro-Russian U.S. president would have meant that Ukraine would have never gotten any aid, and Putin's job would have been much easier.
But you still had normal generals like Milley in his ear. 2nd term Trump is 2020 going nuts because of the pandemic and forgetting to check in with his FSB handler.
I hope Dems lean away from the "poor fired federal workers" messaging. I'm a huge fan of federal workers and feel terrible for those losing their jobs, but focusing on "this person lost their job through no fault of their own" is just continuing the overarching, underperforming Democratic theme of "here are the classes of people you should feel sorry for." The message instead needs to be how they're arbitrarily crippling programs and institutions that serve a vital purpose for ALL Americans.
To me it’s just part of a broader pattern of Trump trying to demonstrate that he will not keep his word, and no one can make the federal government keep its word, so that no one should ever agree to a deal with the United States.
I've tried to liken the trump/musk plans to an addict stripping the copper wires out of the house to pay for another hit of that cryptocurrency.
Democrats should be screaming -- and suing -- like crazy about the firing of federal workers, but you're right, the point shouldn't be about individual suffering. And it shouldn't even be about individual programs. It should be about 142 years of non-partisan Civil Service reform being overthrown, and the Spoils System being brought back in, ILLEGALLY.
Trump claims to be a fan of one Civil War veteran 19th Century President, William McKinley. Here's another: James A. Garfield. He rose to the rank of major general in the War, but only served six months as President because he was shot down by a disappointed officeseeker in 1881. We have a Civil Service because of our second Presidential assassination. We must not lose it because of our first Presidential felon.
> It was a huge mistake of Joe Biden not to ever make this kind of effort to identify and cancel small-bore signs of waste
It was a mistake but do you really qualify this as "huge"?
Seriously!
Not focusing on illegal immigration earlier was a "huge mistake." Not cutting off some small-bore grants with silly titles? What good would that have done, denied Trump an applause line during his speech? It wouldn't have swayed the election one way or the other. "Well I was gonna vote for Trump, but Biden cut off USAID funding for LGBTQ+ opera in Bolivia, so that's it, I'm voting for Harris now!"