Yes, it’s real: Trump is collapsing. Can the MAGA faithful save him?
How do you know it’s all wishcasting? When they start with “Yes, it’s real”. They’re pushing that Narrative hard; I guess the faithful really need a pick-me-up.
Even Republicans are unhappy with Trump’s vicious, failing agenda. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to bail
Or, Karen discovers why they’re called “The Stupid Party”. Being unhappy with the GOP’s “vicious, failing agenda” is just what Republican voters do. Here’s a partial list of non-Trump Presidential candidates the GOP faithful have supported this century: George W. Bush (twice). Jeb Bush. John McCain (twice). Mitt fucking Romney. Herman “Godfather’s Pizza” Cain. Ted Cruz. Ben Carson. Marco Rubio. And I’m just talking about the guys who won enough primaries to get noticed. And I’m deliberately not talking about the girls, although The Media rushed to inform us that Republicans took the likes of Carly Fiorina and Nikki “War Karen” Haley very, very seriously (and for the sake of our collective sanity, let us not discuss Sarah Palin’s impact on the McCain campaign).
Notice a pattern there, Chauncey? Milquetoasts at best, obvious fucking Judases at worst. I guess you can’t really say that the likes of Mitt Romney “sold out” his voters, because that would imply Mitt Romney is capable of “selling out”. You have to have a baseline of integrity for that phrase to apply. Metallica can “sell out” (oh boy, can they!); the Backstreet Boys, by definition, cannot. Mitt, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, Paul Ryan (can’t forget him! he was Mittens’ veep choice), Marco Rubio … that’s the shittiest boy band of all time, and like shitty boy bands they had their moments in the sun, but if that’s not enough to convince you that GOP loyalists simply don’t know when to fold ’em, I don’t know what possibly could.
Trump’s softening support is amplified by growing rumors about his health and reports on his reduced public schedule. Even the mainstream media noticed that he repeatedly appeared to fall asleep during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. While he sends out numerous social media posts in the middle of the night, he seems increasingly disconnected from real-world events by daylight. Any appearance of physical weakness or frailty in a man who is nearly 80 years old, threatens to undermine his carefully constructed persona as a vital and dynamic political strongman.
See what I mean about The Stupid Party? We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen it for the entirety of the 21st century, in fact. It’s the “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me, and sticks to you!” theory of political discourse. Like kindergartners on the playground, the Left simply cannot let anything go. They must respond by flipping the accusation. “Nah-AH, I’m not stinky, you’re stinky!” is tedious coming from five year olds, and putative adults should never do it, but that’s where we are here in AINO. Knowing that … I mean, Jesus, guys, it’s not hard. All you had to do is accuse Joe Biden of being too vigorous, too competent, stuff like that, and you’d have The Media inadvertently singing Trump’s praises …
But, of course, see above, about “all they ever do is sell out”. Thus landing us in the most hilarious situation of The Current Year, in which the GOP never fails to fail, even when they’re trying to fail. It’s what an intra-squad scrimmage must look like for the Washington Generals — everyone’s trying so hard to lose, but somebody has to be ahead when the buzzer sounds …
When voters are asked which party they will vote for in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats now lead Republicans by 14 percentage points. That historically large gap suggests that Democrats are well-positioned to win a House majority, and perhaps even the Senate (although the latter is less likely for structural reasons). Democratic voters are also more enthusiastic than Republican voters; if we view November’s off-year elections as a de facto referendum on Trump’s presidency, the results were almost unanimous.
No, that’s backwards. The problem isn’t Trump. The problem is that Trump, personally, pulls voters, but the Republican Party in general does not. “MAGA” will enthusiastically pull the lever for the Orange Man; they can’t be arsed to do it for some generic GOP shitweasel, and do you see why, Chauncey? You’re stupid — so, so stupid — so I’ll spell it out for you: It has to do with the fact that when you’re asked to pull the lever for some generic GOP shitweasel, you are, in actual fact, voting for a generic GOP shitweasel. See how that works?
And again, I know you’re stupid — so very, very stupid — but those of us who don’t enjoy making shapes with pudding have to wonder: If the GOP is so bad, and they’re failing so much, if their agenda is so obviously “vicious”, and whatever else, why do you keep losing to them? I’ll give you a hint. Here’s a far from exhaustive list of major Democrat Presidential candidates in the 21st century:
Joe Biden. Kamala Harris. John “the Silky Pony” Edwards. Howard Dean. Bernie Sanders (twice). Barack Obama (twice). Hillary Clinton (twice). Dennis Kucinich. Al Gore. John Kerry. Pete Buttigieg (we’ll go ahead and say twice, because you know he’s running in 2028). Again, we’re only talking
guys galspersyns who won a primary or three. Notice a pattern there? If the GOP runs only milquetoasts and Judases, you guys always manage to top them by running the most ludicrous, unfathomably corrupt people you can find. Frankly I don’t know how the world survived the contest of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry; the planet’s collective IQ must’ve dropped ten, fifteen points. If the Fake and Gay Singularity were real, instead of a theoretical construct posited by our most jaded astrophysicists, the faceoff between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would’ve caused our universe to disappear up its own vajazzled asshole, and prolapse into another.Ponder that: Barack Obama was, somehow, the least ridiculous person on that debate stage.
Severian, “The Year-End Blues”, Founding Questions, 2025-12-08.
March 9, 2026
QotD: Why they’re called “The Stupid Party”
February 22, 2026
“[T]he trans cult … attracted many mentally ill people [offering] instant visibility, attention, and status”
In the visible-to-cheapskates portion of his Weekly Dish post, Andrew Sullivan tries to point out how the Democrats can salvage something from their decade-long, all-in approach to all things trans (warning, contains Andrew Sullivan):
I had dinner this week with a young gay man who was castrated and had his endocrine system permanently wrecked as a result of “gender-affirming care” for minors. He was super girly as a kid and had an undiagnosed testosterone deficiency which delayed his male development. He liked playing with girls, seemed to act like one, and when he socially transitioned as a teen, he passed easily. Suddenly all the sneers of “faggot” he’d endured as a boy went away. In today’s “gender-affirming care” environment, that was enough.
“Compassion” and “science” took a gay boy, flooded his young male body with estrogen, and removed his genitals — because the docs and the shrinks determined he was too effeminate to be a “real man”. Only when he personally figured this out as an adult and got himself off estrogen and onto testosterone did everything change. He felt energy and mental clarity for the first time. And his life as a man could finally begin — although his body will never be fully repaired.
Readers keep telling me to shut up about this topic (I can hear your groans now). I’m obsessed, you say, and this is a trivial (boring) matter. I’ve lost some good friends who feel very much that way, and my social life has shrunk. But then I meet someone like Mike (a pseudonym) — and I’ve met many others, gay and lesbian — and realize not a single gay group or resource is on his side. In fact, the “LGBTQIA+” lobby all but denies he exists, or dismisses him as transphobic — a dreaded “detransitioner”.
I was thinking about Mike as I read the latest polling — out this week in a liberal online mag, The Argument. The poll shows what we well know: 63 percent of Americans want to protect trans people from discrimination. This isn’t a transphobic country. But, equally, 62 percent oppose transing minors (50 percent strongly), 60 percent support banning transwomen competing against women in sports, and 53 percent want to ban gender ideology in elementary schools. These numbers have gone up the more the debate has raged. The backlash is so intense it has even reversed the public’s previous opposition to bathroom bills.
Now check out the liberal response. Bluesky erupted in fury that the poll was published at all. “Please help us,” one X member tweeted with direct appeals to Tim Cook and McKenzie Scott, who have bankrolled this campaign. Jill Filipovic complained that the “Dems … should have focused on things like ending discrimination in housing and employment”, rather than sports and kids, unaware that the Bostock decision already did that with employment. Most liberals have literally no idea that trans people already have civil rights. Off-message.
In this air-tight ideological bubble, where Bostock is unknown, the Dems flounder. “This isn’t happening” was the first gambit. Good try. Then: “this has all been ginned up by the far right, and Dems did nothing”. Did they miss the Obama and Biden Title IX diktats, Admiral Levine’s removal of lower age limits for transing kids, Biden’s “nonbinary” official Sam Brinton stealing dresses, or other embarrassments like the White House invite to Dylan Mulvaney? Then they say it’s a tiny issue. But it helped Trump massively in 2024. And if it’s tiny, why not compromise? After that, it’s just MLK-envy all the way down, the desire to be the next Rosa Parks. But it’s odd to campaign for “civil rights” when you already have them.
After trying to debate, you come to realize it’s pointless. The woke mind is not really a mind; it’s more like a bunch of synapses. Presented with an actual argument, they snap shut. This is part of what Eric Kaufmann calls the “sacralization” of minorities. For the woke, the “oppressed” are sacred. And in the social justice hierarchy, no minority is as oppressed and thereby as sacred as trans.
And so what sacred trans people say they want — or rather, what a tiny group of trans activists say they want — is all that matters. Anything else is illegitimate or “hate”. And any opponent is a bigot. Try arguing your way out of that dogmatic thicket. It’s like trying to disprove the Holy Trinity. I’ve given up.
But the real world keeps intervening. We just saw a ground-breaking lawsuit that won a $2 million judgment for a double mastectomy at 15. And this month saw two awful mass shootings by mentally unwell men caught up in the trans craze. Between Tumbler Ridge, Canada, and a Rhode Island hockey match, 12 people are now dead, including 6 children. And this is no longer a shock. Ask yourself what the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting, the 2025 Annunciation Catholic Church shooting, and even the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump, have in common.
Yes, it’s categorically wrong to link trans people to mass killings. That’s false and dangerous. But you’d be dumb not to worry that the trans cult of the last decade may have attracted many mentally ill people into a space where they have instant visibility, attention, and status. We have set up an open-ended subjective category — anyone who says they’re trans is trans, period — almost designed to attract delusional narcissists, and, with every safeguard thrown away, there’s no way to distinguish the nutters from the genuinely in need.
February 20, 2026
Stephen A. Smith as a Democratic Trump
It’s been noted many times that the Democratic Party has had a logjam of aged boomers at the top of their “bench” for future leadership positions. This is a serious problem for the self-described “Party of Youth”, that they have remarkably few viable Gen X, Millennial or Gen Z rising stars who might be future presidential candidates. Donald Trump took the political insiders by surprise in 2015/16, because he was an outsider with no political track record but a huge media profile. He may be the template that Stephen A. Smith hopes to follow on the Democratic side:
Stephen A. Smith at The Moody College of Communications, 23 January 2021.
Wikimedia Commons.
Stephen A. Smith is flirting with a run for president. In a recent CBS News interview, the telegenic ESPN commentator openly entertained the possibility of seeking the Democratic nomination in 2028. He offered additional comments on policy that were striking in their normalcy. He dismissed the idea that racism defines contemporary American life, rejected “defund the police”, and emphasized economic flourishing as the surest path to social stability.
Smith has a gift for performance, a fondness for hyperbole, and a resume devoid of elective office. Historically, that would have made him an unorthodox fit for the White House. But since Donald Trump’s 2016 election, those facts do less to disqualify a figure than to clarify his potential appeal.
And Smith seems to be taking the possibility seriously. His CBS interview builds on previous comments criticizing politicians who support income caps or engage in class-war rhetoric, framing prosperity as a moral and civic good, and condemning the Democratic Party’s excesses on cultural matters like transgenderism. In these comments, Smith captured the sensibility of millions of voters who feel alienated by the ideological vocabulary of contemporary Democratic politics.
While it’s tempting to write off Smith’s flirtation as unserious celebrity theater, that impulse overlooks the weakness of the Democratic field. Kamala Harris enters the cycle as the nominal frontrunner, but her standing reflects name recognition more than enthusiasm. Gavin Newsom commands attention through media savvy and partisan combativeness but carries the burden of California’s abysmal policy record. Other prospective contenders — none of whom have managed to crack double-digit support — may offer competence without excitement or excitement without coalitional appeal.
A primary defined by such choices creates space for an outsider, especially one who can command attention and articulate a distinct political persona. Smith lacks the accumulated baggage of conventional politicians. Even more importantly, he speaks like someone accustomed to unscripted confrontation. Two decades of live television have trained him to think quickly, read audiences, and project conviction. While such skills cannot substitute for governing experience, they matter a great deal in an era where voters evaluate authenticity and affect alongside ideology.
In fact, Donald Trump demonstrates that a candidate who pairs ideological flexibility with rhetorical aggression can reshape a party. Trump softened Republican orthodoxy on entitlement reform, health care, and even social issues — like gay marriage, guns, and abortion — at various points. Yet he maintained the loyalty of a base that valued his willingness to fight. That in turn forced GOP insiders to capitulate to many of his views. Smith shares Trump’s intensity, and could by the same method push the Democrats to moderate.
At the same time, his nascent platform could complicate Democratic coalition politics. The party’s donor and activist classes exert powerful pressure against moderation. These interests remain influential in candidate recruitment, messaging, and resource allocation. That influence often produces nominees who align with activist priorities even when those priorities diverge from median Democratic voter preferences.
February 13, 2026
QotD: The Democrats re-focus on the youth vote
That’s why it might work. Young people’s lives are simpler; it’s one of the great things about being young. That’s not me, the old guy, knocking the kids; it’s just the way it is. If that’s the way they decide to go — Jungvolk uber Alles — then that’s how they’re going to have to do it. Mamdani, the young, vigorous, exotic, foreign-born socialist weirdo — you know, a Barack Obama for The New Generation.
Which is why I’m tempted to write it off. After all, Obama was just a Bill Clinton for The New Generation. Who was just a JFK for The New Generation. Who — we forget this — was just FDR for The New Generation. Most of the idiot Boomers who voted for Bill Clinton as “the New JFK” barely remembered JFK. Nor did JFK himself win “the youth vote” by all that much — or at all — because “the youth vote” wasn’t a thing back then. For one thing, the voting age was still 21. I’m in History, not math, but even I can do Historian math, and 1960 – 21 = 1939. Most of JFK’s voters had clear memories of The Depression; even his youngest voters remembered the tail end of WWII. JFK sounded like an East Coast patrician, just like FDR did, and as opposed to that young parvenu from California, Richard Nixon.
That’s just a wee bit different from “the Youth Vote” Bill Clinton appealed to. To say nothing of the later freaks.
I’m tempted to write it off, but I’m not going to. For one thing, Obama, Clinton … they all won, and look at the incalculable damage they did. More importantly, I want to return to an issue we tabled earlier: The fact that there’s no “middle age” cohort in the Donk Party. They really are the Volkssturm — kids and oldsters. Or, if you prefer, they’re the Bolsheviks — having shot all their “technical intelligentsia” during The Revolution, they have to go out there and reinvent everything. All their accumulated experience is gone, so their rookies don’t just make rookie mistakes, they make the kind of mistakes that anyone with the tiniest shred of experience could see coming.
You know, those “hmmmm, I wonder what this big red button does?” types of mistakes.
You see it in the business world. Z Man, may he rest in peace, used to talk about this all the time. The Boomers were retiring, the kids were just so epically clueless, and all the thousands of workarounds and jimmy-rigged stuff that makes any operation go were seizing up, for lack of maintenance. And even the smart, ambitious kids were having a hell of a time getting up to speed, because they were looking for a Policies and Procedures manual that simply doesn’t exist. There’s no Official Manual for jimmy-rigged workarounds.
Say what you will about the Boomers, they’re competent. They might well be the last competent generation …
… maybe the older, smarter half of Gen X, but a) there were never that many of us, and b) in politics, as in so much else, the Groovy Fossils just would. NOT. leave, and so the competent among Gen X had to go do their own thing, if they ever wanted a chance to move up. This leaves your big Legacy Systems — you know, like the Apparat — in one hell of a bind. The Groovy Fossils don’t want to leave, but eventually they have to — 90 may be the new 30, but dead is dead. And they’re the only ones who know how to operate the Legacy Systems, because there are two, three “generations” of people who, if they had anything on the ball, had to go their own way.
Those who stayed had no choice, and all they know how to do is push buttons and fill in blanks. Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Anyone 50 or older looks at her with horror, because we’ve all had to deal with that kind of kid. That’s the kind of person who has filled up every layer of the Apparat below Top Management. If they had anything at all on the ball, they’d be somewhere else … but they don’t, so now they’re all in Senior Management, because somebody’s got to do it, and they were better at pushing buttons and filling in blanks than anyone else who was available at the time.
But note that I’ve just been talking about candidates, politicians. The VOTERS are like that, too. See what I mean? That’s why it’s so dangerous … and very likely to succeed.
Severian, “Groovy, Baby!!”, Founding Questions, 2025-11-10.
December 11, 2025
US Democrats, like Canadian Liberals, love performative gestures but ghost on delivery
I’ve remarked many times that Canada’s federal Liberals love themselves some photo ops, sound bites, ribbon-cuttings, and making announcements in front of temporary stages … they can’t help themselves, they’re what happens to theatre kids who don’t have to grow up. The American Democrats seem to be falling into the same pattern of “putting on a show” rather than implementing policies that address whatever the declared problem really is:
In 2015, the City of Los Angeles announced an ambitious plan (led by the person we then referred to as Mayor Yogapants) to completely eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. It was a vision: Vision Zero, they called it. Ten years later, traffic deaths in Los Angeles have doubled. A wonderfully progressive local government announced a plan to eliminate something, so we got much more of that thing. A community group, @peoplesvisionzero, is now trying to carry out some version of the failed plan with guerilla traffic engineering, sneaking new safety infrastructure into place without city permission. Recent result:
In similar fashion, Gavin Newsom announced his ten-year plan to end California homelessness in 2008. I struggle with the math, but there’s a possibility that we’ve passed the ten-year mark since then. […]
Theater-kid governance is the empty-to-the-point-of-ruin declaration of a symbol-desire, a performance about what we want and don’t want. It doesn’t do anything; it’s a posture, not an action. To the extent that it does do any actual thing in physical reality, it creates pots of money to be looted by NGOs and metastasizing government bureaucracies.
Infamously, when California audited $24 billion in state homelessness spending last year, auditors couldn’t track where a bunch of the spending went, or figure out what it had paid for. See also the growing scandal over Somalian immigrant social services fraud in Minnesota. Facial expressions are made. Symbols are invoked. Money goes … somewhere. It’s a show, with a rich loot bucket, not an actionable set of policies that produce positive trends toward declared goals. By the way, it’s been fifteen years since the Obama administration and a Democratic-majority Congress made healthcare affordable.
California infrastructure is a persistent disaster, because the California legislature and our sociopathic idiot governor are deeply invested in signaling about warm and wonderful trans kids and standing up to Mean Orange Hitler. They don’t stoop to highways and bridges — they’re much too progressive. Related, the increasingly sharp near-term projected decline of fuel production in California is becoming a national security problem in a state that needs to gas up a lot of military traffic. The state performs constantly against Big Oil and its mean climate change agenda, and somehow keeps losing refineries. The endless symbol-gestures cause the loss of real things.
November 22, 2025
Democrats may come to regret their “refuse illegal orders” messaging
Many current and former military folks ridiculed the Democrats for their sudden discovery of the right (and obligation) to refuse illegal orders … which has been part of western military doctrine since the end of World War Two. I poked some fun at them as well, but J.D. Tuccille points out that it’s a weird stance for the party that is always fully in favour of government agents’ maximizing their powers:
I favor government employees defying orders and sabotaging the instruments of the state as much as the next libertarian (well, maybe a little more). But I suspect the Democratic lawmakers urging members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders” haven’t entirely thought through their positions. While their advice is commendable so far as it goes, as officials of a political party known for its expansive view of the role of government their words are likely to come back and bite them on their collective asses. It’s hard to imagine them being so enthusiastic about a reboot of this message directed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and IRS agents under a Democratic administration.
Lawmakers Say: Refuse Illegal Orders
In a video message released this week, Democratic Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Jason Crow of Colorado, introduce themselves with emphasis on their past roles in the military and intelligence agencies.
“We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community,” they say. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. And right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”
That’s a nice lead-in. Then we get to the heart of the message: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
Stirring stuff. And accurate. Referencing a Vietnam War-era atrocity, retired General Philip M. Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told NewsNation regarding the video, “Since My Lai, the way we have interpreted this is, as a combatant, as a military officer, you are not obligated, not obligated, to carry out an illegal or an immoral order. You simply refuse the order.”
[…]
Take Advice to Refuse Illegal Orders Seriously, and Apply It Universally
So, if we’re to take seriously — and I believe we are well-advised to do so — the six Democratic lawmakers’ advice that “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” there are interesting implications for our political culture. That’s because much of what the federal government does on a daily basis flouts constitutional protections and offends human decency.
So, how would Slotkin and Kelly, and Deluzio, Goodlander, Houlahan, and Crow, respond to campaign a few years from now under the next Democratic administration urging ATF and IRS agents, federal regulators, and general workers to refuse orders? How would they treat an attempt to recruit more whistleblowers like Manning and Edward Snowden?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the advice the lawmakers offer is praiseworthy. But I look forward to seeing it applied universally and becoming a permanent feature of our dealings with government. I suspect that likelihood hasn’t occurred to those six legislators, but thanks to them for showing the way.
In counterpoint to my original take on the issue, on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Cynical Publius expresses his belief that the Democrats are actually encouraging disobedience to legal orders that they happen to dislike:
I’m not sure I’ve ever been angrier at Democrats than I am right now.
As a career Army officer, I take this latest nefarious chicanery from these filthy Congressional Democrat veterans quite personally,
It is loathsome and disgusting. You know, I know, they know and even their brainwashed acolytes know that what they are REALLY doing is encouraging active duty service members to refuse to follow lawful orders under the guise of pretending the orders are “unlawful”.
What these Democrat filth are doing is encouraging a form of military coup where service members get to decide not to do things they disagree with politically by pretending those otherwise lawful things are “unlawful”.
This is the greatest threat to US internal stability since the last time Democrats started a civil war. A military ruled by politics is no military at all. Instead, it is a group of armed thugs akin to the South American military juntas of the 1970s.
I cannot overstate what an extreme threat this situation is to our nation.
This is a precursor to civil war, initiated and deliberately created by traitorous elected officials hiding behind the honor of the uniform they once wore but now disgraced.
I have never been angrier.🤬
November 19, 2025
US Democrats issue clarion call to the military: “You must refuse illegal orders”
Well, thank goodness that someone remembers Nuremberg! Apparently President Trump has been issuing illegal orders to the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, and these brave legislators are putting their careers — and even their lives — on the line to defend democracy. I’m unaware of what these specific orders may be, but as Chris Bray points out, he’s the Bad Orange Man so pretty much anything he orders must be illegal:
Note what they don’t say. They say that the American military is being “pitted against” their own countrymen, and they say to servicemembers that “you can refuse illegal orders …”
… they don’t say, even once, even in a pretty clear hint, precisely what illegal orders Trump has issued. He’s being vaguely bad, so you don’t have to obey him. The serious version would look like this: On [date here], the President of the United States ordered [unit name] to enter [place name] for the purpose of [specific action], and that order violated [explicit citation of US Code]. They mushmouth around a set of feelings-signals about Mean Orange Something, but they never quite manage to spit it out. What’s the illegal order anyone is supposed to disobey, and what makes it illegal? News reports suggest that they mean to refer to the boat strikes, but click on that link if you want to see more vagueness and weak hinting.
This is exactly what the Catholic bishops just did in their own stupid virtue performance, the precise mark of an absence of seriousness in a coven of drama queens, as they declared that they’re very concerned about questions that have arisen regarding certain situations involving immigrants. More mush from the wimps. Donald Trump is very bad, because mumble mumble mumble. Be precise and clear, or be silent.
This is an age of unseriousness, and here’s another heaping plate of it. Soldiers, you don’t have to obey the orders of your military superiors if you feel that they, that they, uh, oh hey look at the time anyway I have to go. It’s passive-aggressive bad girlfriendspeak as politics. I guess if you feel like you have to obey, that’s fine. No, it’s fine! I’m not mad! Let’s just go to dinner!
We want to speak directly to members of the military, but we don’t actually have anything to say. Just, you know, disobey the president. Small thought, not a big deal.
High school drama club president Elissa Slotkin has been banging on this drum in an especially insistent way, as she holds town hall meetings with veterans who mumble their own vague slogans about Trump bein’ against the Constitution real hard and stuff.
But all of their descriptions are stupid. Sending a few hundred National Guard troops to a city of hundreds of thousands of people with narrow orders about protecting federal facilities and personnel or patrolling to deter violence isn’t military conquest of the population or the militarization of all law enforcement. The hyperbole renders the argument insane. Related, the veterans in Slotkin’s video talk about the “systematic removal” of military leaders, and the “purge of the generals”. The US military has over 800 flag officers; the Trump administration has removed about 15. There’s a desperate stupidity to all of this panic-mongering that just renders it deeply tiring.
Actual servicemembers will be familiar with the rhetorical style of the shithouse lawyer, the idiot in the barracks who tells you that akshully they can’t order you to do that, it’s totally illegal.
You should just tell your drill sergeant that you refuse! He can’t even do nothin’ about it! He’ll just back right down!
November 6, 2025
Mamdanimentum – NYC gets its very own Justin Trudeau clone
It’s been decades since I last visited New York City, so I don’t know if they really deserve what they’ve just voted for, but I guess we’ll all get to find out over the next few years. On the City Journal substack, Reihan Salam weighs in on the newly elected mayor and what to watch for:
New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani photographed in Assembly District 36, 10 February 2024.
Photo by Kara McCurdy via Wikimedia Commons.
A year ago, not even the most perfervid Astoria leftist would have thought that Zohran Mamdani would soon be elected mayor of New York City. Back then, it was easier to imagine Eric Adams coasting to reelection on the strength of declining crime, or state attorney general Tish James, who came close to running for mayor in 2021, swooping in to unite a fractious Democratic coalition. With Adams badly damaged by a federal indictment and James anxious about what a mayoral bid would mean for her ongoing battle with President Donald Trump, however, the path was seemingly clear for Andrew Cuomo to make a dramatic comeback.
Though it was no secret that Cuomo had real weaknesses, thanks to his polarizing tenure as governor, his name recognition and formidable fundraising machine were enough to freeze out other serious contenders. As a result, the Democratic mayoral field was so bereft of talent that Mamdani — an obscure, hard-left state assemblymember with no legislative or professional accomplishments to speak of — was able to cut through, buoyed by surging anti-Israel sentiment and a series of half-baked pseudo-solutions to the city’s very real affordability crisis.
From one vantage point, then, Mamdani is best understood as an accidental mayor. If federal prosecutors had declined to prosecute Adams, if James had jumped in and Cuomo had stayed out, if Hamas had surrendered its hostages a few months sooner, if moderates and conservatives had consolidated behind a single candidate in the general election, or if any of a number of other possibilities had obtained — the outcome of New York City’s 2025 mayoral race would have been quite different.
In another sense, however, Mamdani’s victory represents the culmination of New York’s larger leftward turn. The shift started in 2018 with the dissolution, at Cuomo’s behest, of the state’s Independent Democratic Conference, an eight-member coalition of centrist Democratic senators who caucused with the Republicans. Their subsequent replacement heralded a broader takeover of Albany by progressives who — again, with Cuomo’s assent — passed a series of ideologically inflected bills: bail reform, the “most aggressive climate change legislation in the nation“, and a major overhaul of tenant protection statutes, to name only a few.
The Mamdani revolution was led by downwardly mobile elites — children of the professional class struggling to make ends meet and entranced by the promises of frozen rent and fare-free buses. They were fired by the same ideas that animated those Albany progressives: that some New Yorkers have been handed the short straw, that soak-the-rich policies can correct these imbalances, and that New York’s private sector was resilient enough to sustain a further ratcheting up of punitive taxation and regulation.
The voters of NYC are not the same demographic distribution as of old … among other things, the Jewish population has shrunk while the Muslim population has grown to nearly the same over the last 25 years, although Jewish women probably voted more similarly to women generally in this election:
October 26, 2025
The financial gap between Zohran Mamdani’s promises and what NYC can afford
Short of a couple of political earthquakes, Zohran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York City. He has, as Andrew Sullivan admits, a lot going for him with Democratic voters, but he’ll have to get some special magic formula working to fund all the things he’s promising:
New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani photographed in Assembly District 36, 10 February 2024.
Photo by Kara McCurdy via Wikimedia Commons.
It is not hard to see the appeal of Zohran Mamdani. He is, after all, not Andrew Cuomo — another corrupt, old, Democratic sexual harasser who’s already spent years in power and thinks he’s entitled to be mayor because of his last name. He doesn’t appear steeped in petty corruption like Mayor Adams. He’s not as obviously nutty as Sliwa seems to be. And he has done politics, pace Ezra, the right way: listening to the other side, earning people’s votes one by one, talking to people on the street, and, of course, mastering our new collective replacement for civil discourse: 30-second videos on TikTok.
Those videos are fantastic. Check out this one in favor of freezing rents in NYC, with the man, in full suit and tie, jumping into a freezing bay and out again. Or this one about “Halalflation” — on how licensing food carts has become a grift for middlemen. Or this one, when he sits down with two old white men — one for Adams and one for Cuomo — and tries to talk them into an alternative. If I were a Democrat, I’d be thrilled to see someone this fresh, this approachable, and this likable as a new face of the party. He’s young and charming and upbeat in a party lacking in all three.
He’s also right to focus his campaign on the question of affordability. New York City is ridiculously expensive in every way; the toll that high taxes and inflation have taken on working-class residents has been huge. Capitalism isn’t working the way it should, and we need to reboot our economic policies to address that as a priority. Trump has promised this but is delivering the opposite. Just this morning, we see an accelerating inflation rate. An opening beckons.
So I get why Mamdani is popular. And I have little doubt he will be the next mayor, as well as a major national figurehead for the Democrats — a nice dose of youth to a party debilitated by seniorityitis. He will define the Democrats nationally — certainly if the GOP has any say in it. And in many ways, he is the perfect candidate for today’s Dem elites: wealthy, woke, with a degree in “Africana studies.” His only problem is not being female — but since he denies that the category of female exists, no big deal I suppose. He will give the MSNBC/Bulwark crowd a new lease on self-righteousness.
But to be honest, when I read his proposals, at first I thought I was reading a high-schooler’s essay. Free everything! I mean: why not? Free universal childcare for kids as young as six weeks old. Free buses for everyone. Rent control for everyone already privileged by it. Subsidized collective supermarkets. $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030 — up from $16.50. Woohoo! And arresting Bibi as an added bonus. (I have to say the last plank might even tempt me to vote for him.)
The problem, of course, is how to pay for it. And a NYC mayor, quite simply, cannot. Mamdani simply won’t have the power. None of the tax hikes he proposes — a new 2 percent tax on everyone earning over $1 million a year, and jacking up the corporate tax to 11.5 percent — can be passed by his council. Albany has the final say, will almost certainly say no, and the Democratic governor, Hochul, opposes the hikes.
So a lot of this is purely performative, no? He has a good chance to create his Soviet bodegas and, in all likelihood, freeze rents if he replaces members of the board. (That will, of course, make housing availability and expense even worse.) He may be able to wangle some increase in NYC’s minimum wage — by trying to bypass Albany. But doubling it in five years? Meh. All of the economic stuff is iffy because of the very probable lack of funding. Maybe a big victory will change the dynamics and allow a big tax hike in one of the most highly taxed cities on earth. But it’s hard to believe it.
So what’s left? What’s left is cultural leftism on hormones. You may get daycare — but it will come with full woke indoctrination of kids from the earliest years on. No more “boys” or “girls” allowed! Mamdani, as we all know, regards the police as the enforcers of “white supremacy“, supports the end of Israel as a Jewish state, will subsidize the transing of children with no safeguards, and has erased gays and lesbians from our own history, re-marginalizing us as “queers”. There’s no one the woke left hates more than an empowered and integrated person who just happens to be gay or lesbian.
Like all good critical-theory racists, Mamdani believes in a racial hierarchy with whites, Jews, and Asians as oppressors, and blacks and Hispanics and “queers” as victims; he wants to make NYC “the strongest sanctuary city in the country” — i.e. go to war with ICE — and kill the educational programs that help gifted poor kids in kindergarten — because most turn out to be of the oppressor races. A racist, in other words — to his fingertips.
And he is a near-perfect foil for Trump. “Queer liberation means defund the police,” he once tweeted — though he says he no longer wants to defund the cops. It’s the kind of 2020 slogan almost designed to ensure MAGA control of the national discourse forever. And if I were a show-runner on the Trump show, Mamdani would be central to provoking the kind of real fascist putsch that Trump and Miller are itching for, if they can find a suitable provocation. Mamdani is that provocation. He will go to war with ICE in NYC, and Trump will go to war with him. And broadcast it every day.
October 25, 2025
Red tribe versus Blue tribe
David Friedman responds to a recent post by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten, discussing the differences between the bicoastal “blue” and flyover “red” tribes in US culture and politics:
A pair of images from a search for “Red tribe versus Blue tribe”. I assume this is from a TV show.
One commenter on my post observed that both I and the majority of my readers are culturally closer to the bicoastal elite than to flyover country, to Blue than to Red by Scott’s terminology. That started me thinking about how one could tell. What are the markers for tribal membership? On how many of them am I Blue, how many Red?
Here is my list. “Blue Tribe does X” does not mean everyone in Blue Tribe or even a majority do X, it means most people who do X are Blue Tribe — a marker not a definition. Similarly for Red Tribe. Someone who has many markers for Red Tribe and few for Blue Tribe is probably Red and similarly for Blue.
What You Own
Red Tribe drives a pickup truck, SUV or sports car, Blue Tribe drives an EV or at least a hybrid, probably a Prius. A cybertruck, both EV and pickup truck, codes Red.
Red Tribe owns guns. Blue Tribe doesn’t own guns, thinks that people who do are being stupid.
Blue Tribe owns sailboats, Red Tribe power boats.
Philosophy and Religion
Blue Tribe believe that they are moral relativists, take seriously the “you shouldn’t stop the Eskimo from putting his grandfather on an ice floe to die because in his moral system that is not wicked” argument. Like almost all humans they are actually moral realists, take it for granted that their moral beliefs are true, including the belief that you shouldn’t … Red Tribe are also moral realists but it never occurs to them that they shouldn’t be.
Blue Tribe are atheists, mainstream Protestants, Catholics who use birth control. Red Tribe are Evangelicals, possibly Fundamentalists, possibly Catholic. Preachers of both tribes preach things their tribe already believe in, but different things.
Blue Tribe believe in evolution, take it for granted that all reasonable people, including all their friends and acquaintances, do. Some but not all of them understand it except when understanding it leads to conclusions they don’t like.1 Red Tribe don’t believe in evolution, take it for granted that all reasonable people, including all their friends and acquaintances, share that belief, mostly don’t understand it.
Marriage and Children
Blue Tribe thinks having from zero to two children is fine, three a little odd, more than three weird. Red Tribe thinks there is something wrong with a couple that has fewer than two kids and that more is better.
Blue Tribe marries late, Red Tribe early. Blue Tribe sees a couple meeting in college, marrying after they graduate, as one possible pattern, marrying later than that another and perhaps more prudent. Red Tribe likes the idea of a couple meeting in high school.
What They Do
Red Tribe hunts. Blue Tribe doesn’t hunt and disapproves of people who do.
Red Tribe goes to football and baseball games, watches professional wrestling. Blue Tribe plays pickleball, drives their children to soccer games.
Red Tribe watches television, including soap operas, unashamedly. Blue Tribe watches soap operas ashamedly, leftish talk shows unashamedly.
Red Tribe listens to country music. Blue Tribe youth listens to rap, as do Red Tribe blacks. Blue Tribe approves of classical music but rarely listens to it.
Red Tribe males like to show off how strong they are. Blue Tribe, male or female, likes to show off how smart and well educated they are.
Blue Tribe drinks coffee in coffee shops. Red Tribe doesn’t.
- Such as that intelligence must be heritable or that the distribution of intellectual abilities is unlikely to be the same for men as for women since both are optimized for reproductive success and play different roles in reproduction.
October 23, 2025
Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-nothing tell-all” memoir of the Biden White House
In the free-to-cheapskates part of this post (i.e., outside the paywall), Matt Taibbi discusses the former White House Press Secretary’s book Independent as the author does the rounds of TV talk shows to boost it:
Independent, the new tell-nothing tell-all by former Joe Biden spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, is framed in the introduction as the patriotic diatribe of a once-loyal Democrat who’s now “free to speak for myself” and “eager to say what I think”, thanks to a dramatic decision:
After being a party insider for twenty years, I now believe I can fight harder for my country from outside the Democratic Party than from within it. From here on, I am politically an independent.
Just a few pages later, however, Jean-Pierre claims she only noticed something wrong with Biden once, during his infamous debate performance last June 27th. “Whoa … He must be sick,” she deadpans, then reframes Independent as an answer to a book she hasn’t even read:
CNN anchor Jake Tapper kicked off the debate. He later wrote a supposed tell-all about Biden, Original Sin … accusing [Biden] of a cover-up of his mental decline and how his aides quashed concerns. I was technically a part of the president’s inner circle and saw Biden every day and saw no such decline. I never read Tapper’s book and don’t ever plan to because that does not track with what I saw in the White House.
It’s all entertaining stuff (the “technically” is hilarious). Jean-Pierre announces she’s finally free to tell the truth, but begins by declaring that Tapper’s Original Sin — another book marketed as “the full, unsettling truth … told for the first time” — was wrong not because Tapper was lying about how long it took for him to notice Biden’s problems, but because Biden never had any problems to notice.
Jean-Pierre is generating significant negative Internet wattage this week, battered everywhere for insisting she never saw anything concerning in Biden’s private behavior. In a wild exchange with Gayle King of CBS, she doubled down on a book passage claiming she didn’t even see an issue with Biden before the critical debate, even though she traveled to it with him on Air Force One (“Maybe I was too nervous … to notice whether or not he was sniffling?”). Apparently, that trip was a rare instance in which Jean-Pierre not only didn’t talk to Biden on the plane, but didn’t have conversations with anyone who did. “I had no clue Biden had a cold and was off his game”, she wrote, “until he began to speak at the debate”.
Independent reads like an oxygen-deprived sequel to Tapper’s book. The humorous premise of Original Sin involved Tapper’s sources insisting Biden “stole an election” because if he’d stepped aside earlier, the party might have had a “robust primary” — exactly the scenario they spent years fighting to avoid, savaging challengers like Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson and smearing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directly into the arms of Donald Trump. The CNN man insisted “insiders” who had a “much better window into Biden’s condition than the general public” saw things that “shocked them” before last June’s debate, when the awful truth finally became obvious even to news media. But according to Tapper, the problem wasn’t so much that insiders lied, but were lied to. His first chapter was titled “He totally fucked us”, a quote about Biden by Kamala Harris aide David Plouffe.
Never mind that the world could see Biden was in drool-cup mode as far back back as 2019, or that Special Counsel Robert Hur made it legal record that Biden likely couldn’t be convicted because a jury would see him as incompetent, an “elderly man with a poor memory” who couldn’t find his own underpants, let alone classified papers he was accused of mishandling. No, the problem was, “Biden fucked us”.
Jean-Pierre has now one-upped Tapper by insisting nothing was wrong with Biden and that — get this — the real problem was that the press undermined the president, and not after the debate, but all along! “Pretty much since the day he’d stepped into the White House”, Jean-Pierre wrote, “the press had taken every opportunity to imply Biden was too old or mentally unfit for the job”. She is referring to the same press corps that insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack” for four and a half years, while he was serially sternum-poking voters, staring into space, walking off set in the middle of interviews, and turning every public ceremony into a potential Chevy Chase routine
October 12, 2025
A second American Civil War would not resemble the first one
The American Civil War, if you try to look at the big picture, started off with the states dividing as this Wikipedia map indicates (although no state was all secessionist or all unionist, of course):
Union states in blue (light blue for states that permitted slavery), Confederate states in red.
Map by Júlio Reis via Wikimedia Commons.
Potential lines of demarcation today, well, here’s a guess from a few years ago based on county voting patterns, and again it’s still an approximation:
Any civil strife on this modern battlefield will be very unlike the organized Union and Confederate armies of 1861-65 having stand-up battles against one another in the countryside. Tom Kratman wrote about a potential civil war breaking out several years ago and has reposted the first part on his Substack:
I can’t quite shake the feeling that the side that wins any new civil war, to the extent that anyone can be said to “win” such a frightfulness, will be the side that a) engages in as humanitarian a form of ethnic and political cleansing as possible, first, and b) shoots second. I say “as humanitarian … as possible” because, as previously discussed,1 we are not a nation of red and blue states. Rather, instead of red and blue states, we are, as discussed a couple of years ago, “counties and neighborhoods and streets and the couch versus the bedroom after an argument with a spouse or significant other over political matters”. In short, anyone who engages in really harsh internal security measures will tend to drive people who should be its friends over to the other side. Since I’m writing this on behalf of the more or less anti-bolshevik, anti-progressive, anti-SJW2 half of the country, let me emphasize that, when the northeast, the left coast, “Yes, we old retired farts can be bribed by robbing the future” Florida, “Under the Fairfax County Bootheel” Virginia, “Cannot control Baltimore” Maryland, and CorruptionRus Illinois, unchained from the restraints we’ve imposed on them, go full lunatic lefty, let them turn into Beirut of the 80s while we try to maintain something approaching civilization as long as we can. Yes, that means I think it would be easier for us to conquer or reconquer a California devolved into its own civil war if we can avoid the same in our areas.
Note that it’s a fine line we’ll have to try to walk, rounding up those who would turn us into Beirut, without rounding up those whose rounding up will cause their friends and family to turn us into Beirut. My suggestion would be using extreme measures for those who are certain enemies, but safe and comfortable lagering or exile for those about whom there might be some doubts.
Though I may find it distasteful, honesty compels that I not shy away from that other aspect of securing the base areas, ethnic cleansing. If this nightmare comes to pass then ethnic cleansing is going to happen, I am certain, to at least three groups, Moslems, Blacks, and Hispanics. Some of it will probably come in the form of self-exile, but I would be very surprised if more of it isn’t forced. So let me throw a little damper on the KKK/alt-white-wing of my readership, if any; Trump is leading by comfortable margins in Louisiana (over a third Black and Hispanic), Mississippi (close to 40% Black and Hispanic), and Alabama (over a quarter). He’s not leading in those places by the kinds of margins he is without a more than fair sprinkling of Blacks and Hispanics, who will not be much like the rioting for fun and profit thugs of Black Lives Matter (and White Lives Don’t). Those people are us as much as anyone can be. It would be a grievous and perhaps unhealable wound to your alleged souls if you don’t treat them that way.
- http://www.everyjoe.com/2015/01/12/politics/breakup-of-united-states-terrible-idea/#1
- SJW stands for social justice warrior. Unlike many such epithets, this one was coined by the people to whom it applies. Think of idiot PhDs who call canoeing “racist”, the universe of the trigglypuffs, and those who consider eating a taco to be a crime against Mexicans, if not even a crime against humanity, which latter classification expressly excludes whites.
Update, 14 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
July 5, 2025
NYC selects its own Justin Trudeau clone
The winner of the Democratic primary is almost always subsequently elected as the mayor of New York City, so it’s fair to assume that Zohran Mamdani is going to be NYC’s next mayor. And he’s an American version of ultra-progressive former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani photographed in Assembly District 36, 10 February 2024.
Photo by Kara McCurdy via Wikimedia Commons.
American politics often seem to balance themselves out in the worst possible way. Even as the GOP sheds its last vestiges of affection for limited government and free markets, the opposition Democrats openly embrace bigotry and crazy economic nostrums. Case in point: the rise in New York City of Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist who flirts with antisemitism, to represent the Democratic Party in this year’s mayoral election.
The primary race in New York was a snapshot of the Democratic Party’s woes. Despite the presence of other candidates seeking the mayoral nomination, the race ultimately came down to two candidates: Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York.
Before resigning over allegations of sexual harassment, Cuomo, the 67-year-old son of another former governor, was best known for a “controversial directive that told nursing homes they couldn’t deny patients coming from hospitals admission based on a COVID-19 diagnosis”, according to StatNews. He then covered up the large number of ensuing deaths. He was the favoured candidate of the Democratic establishment and the early front-runner for the nomination.
Standing out from the pack of political hopefuls facing Cuomo was Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and a Columbia University political science professor. Before being elected to the state legislature as a Democrat and a socialist, Mamdani tried his hand as a government employee and a rapper. His musical output included the song “Salaam”, which, as The Independent put it, “praised the ‘Holy Land Five’ — five men convicted in 2008 of donating over $12 million to Hamas”.
To say that New Yorkers are tired of Cuomo is a wild understatement. Like most Americans, New Yorkers are deeply sick of the old party establishment that rallied around Cuomo as well as the man himself. Yet, he was expected to walk away with the nomination and then cruise to victory in a largely one-party city.
But Mamdani sweetened the pot in the expensive metropolis with promises to freeze rent, make buses free, offer no-cost childcare, lower grocery prices with city-owned grocery stores, and use “public dollars” to build 200,000 apartments. He swears that he “knows exactly how to pay for it, too” with higher taxes on those making more than $1 million per year. Not explicitly part of his campaign, but on the record as his intention, is “the end goal of seizing the means of production”.
In the 2021 recording in which he advocated seizing the means of production, Mamdani endorsed BDS as an issue “that we firmly believe in”. The BDS movement — shorthand for “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” — aims to economically pressure Israel into withdrawing from so-called “occupied territories” and allowing Palestinians to settle throughout Israel. At its extremes, BDS seeks to eliminate the world’s only Jewish-majority state. It’s inspired by the movement against South Africa’s old apartheid regime.
April 6, 2025
“[U]pwards of 86 percent of Americans thought he was too old to serve another term. And no one did anything about it“
Andrew Sullivan reacts to some new books on the Biden administration just hitting the bookstores recently:
By April of last year, the health of the president had clearly declined. As with many older men in their eighties, this didn’t happen in a slow, predictable glide-path down — but in swift, turbulent declines. Suddenly he took a while to get out of his limo, and then would emerge “with a blank look in his face”, according to the new campaign book, Fight, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. By early summer, Biden was suddenly freezing up in public, staring motionless into the air. At a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Obama had to jump in to answer some questions, and then had to guide Biden off the stage by hand. We had already seen Joe wander weirdly off the set of MSNBC and during a Medal of Honor ceremony. His memory lapses mounted.
Everyone around him saw this. Everyone close to him had seen it for over a year by then. Everyone in his campaign knew that upwards of 86 percent of Americans thought he was too old to serve another term. And no one did anything about it.
Sometimes human folly is just human folly. Sometimes, even at the pinnacle of the world, you find flawed people struggling with familiar human problems, like how to tell a beloved but fast-aging man that he needs to leave the stage before he falls off it. Just because she was First Lady did not prevent Jill Biden from putting family before country; and just because he was president didn’t mean that Biden reacted to his own decline with denial, anger, pig-headedness, and arrogance.
Do we learn anything new in this book and another one, Uncharted, by Chris Whipple out next week? Not really. We know, in fact, that everything I guessed happened did actually happen. Among the unsurprising confirmations: Obama was so aloof he didn’t even watch the fateful June debate live; he and Pelosi then wanted an open primary and did all they could to get one. (“He goes. She goes” was their mantra.) Hillary Clinton defended Biden — not because she knew his health was fine, but because her health had once been questioned by the press too. Biden’s closest advisers were his wife and, yes, his son Hunter, and they routinely put their clan’s interests well before the country’s. His inner circle — Mike Donilon especially — were so blindly loyal and informationally siloed they couldn’t absorb what was staring them in the face.
The Democrats, even as late as July, could have found a fresh candidate capable of taking on what they said was a vital moment for democracy’s survival. We might have avoided our current abyss:
“It would have been very cheap. It would have been quick. A rocket ship for your career and no loss,” said one Democratic former governor. “If this had been a year earlier, twenty people would have gotten in,” said one governor who had kicked the tires on a 2024 bid.
Why didn’t they? That is a question that will reverberate through history. Wokeness was a factor. The only reason the embarrassingly mid Harris was made veep in the first place was to fill a slot Biden had already marked for a woman, and, in the wake of the Floyd murder, a black woman seemed the only option. Everyone, particularly Pelosi and Obama, knew Harris was a disaster about to happen, and her vice-presidency had the lowest approval ratings in history. Obama told friends directly that he thought she couldn’t win. The night after the epic debate, Pelosi gritted her teeth: “Oh my God. It’s going to be her.”
So yes, identity before merit was a principle the Dems clung to even at the expense of marching off an electoral cliff. “If you want to break the Democratic coalition, try to skip over the first African-American vice president,” Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin argued at one point. “I watched the black-white stuff start on Thursday night [after the debate],” said another lawmaker. Donna Brazile assembled a team of black women operatives who called themselves “the colored girls” to ensure Harris became the nominee. Jim Clyburn was also a critical supporter: “I’m going all in with Kamala. I don’t want to look back and y’all ain’t there,” he told the DNC.
The open primary therefore never happened. Harris became the nominee for one core reason in the end. Biden, who had previously used the awfulness of Kamala as a way to dissuade anyone from pushing him out, decided to endorse her after she pleaded with him the day he decided to quit. One source “close to both men” explained: “It was a fuck-you to Obama’s plan. At that moment, you have very few things you control, and that’s one thing he had control over, and he chose to stick it to Obama.” So much for putting the survival of democracy first.
And yes, they lied. Jill Biden was one of the worst offenders. She insisted in January 2024, “I see his vigor, I see his energy, I see his passion every single day. I say his age is an asset.” Before the June debate, Joe had been drained by grueling international travel, was catching a cold and couldn’t last more than 45 minutes in the practice debates. But the First Lady went out and told the world: “The president’s feeling great. He’s ready. We’re going to win this thing.” The woman who had covered up her husband’s decline for the previous two years now set expectations that were, of course, utterly ruinous.
March 22, 2025
Fundraising is much tougher for Democrats right now … and they’re not coping well
It’s not just Canadian politicians getting driven completely insane by the Bad Orange Man’s antics — he’s even doing it to his domestic opponents in the Democratic party as well:
“REMINDER: It Is Offensive And Possibly Illegal To Photoshop Anything On These Democrats’ Signs That Would Make Them Look Foolish.
The Babylon Bee.
Kansas City Star:
Democrats Suffer Blow Ahead of Senate Elections
It’s a goddamn slide show, but as it might be amusing I shall wade in. The things I do for you people …
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s retirement is expected to significantly impact the Democratic Party’s prospects for the upcoming Senate elections, amplifying pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The party’s challenges ahead have heightened with the departures of Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN). Democrats must regain four seats to reclaim the majority.
It sure looks like the Donks are planning to get clobbered in 2026. Or, more likely, they anticipate a series of bruising primary fights as the old grift-and-grin Democrats are challenged by True Believers, because as HGG has taught us — credit where it’s due — SJWs always double down. Batshit insanity is the hill they’ve chosen to die on — Trump keeps handing them 80/20 issues, and they keep jumping on the 20 with both feet.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza recently noted the Party’s challenges in the upcoming Senate elections. With the need for a net gain of four seats, Cillizza expressed concern over potential financial limitations that may hinder effective campaigning.
Yes. “Financial limitations”. Democrat donors are stupid — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be Democrats — but even they can see that 80 is way, way bigger than 20.
Oh, and also: It doesn’t help that you’re openly, gleefully endorsing no-shit terrorism against Tesla dealerships — and drivers! — calling for Musk’s assassination, and so on. It’s a bad look in general, and a bad look in particular, because now the guys with the big checkbooks are wondering if that kind of thing won’t happen to them if they get crosswise with the most lunatic members of the lunatic fringe (hint: It will. As the scorpion said to the frog: can’t be ‘elped, mate, it’s me nature).
Cillizza said, “The money that gets spent there playing defense, just to hold Democratic seats, means money that doesn’t get spent playing offense in, let’s say, a state like Ohio, where Democrats are trying to recruit Sherrod Brown, the former senator, to take on John Huston, the appointed Republican senator.”
Yes, a dwindling asset pool forces those kinds of choices. It also doesn’t help that you keep going back to the well like that. One assumes there’s a reason Sherrod Brown is a former senator. Do you have no one else?
Haha, just kidding, obviously you don’t have anyone else. That’s one of the biggest problems with gerontocracy — the Groovy Fossils are going to have to be carried out at room temperature, so anyone with anything on the ball has been giving Government a pass since the 1980s. Trump went around the Official GOP for lots of reasons, but not the least of them was: he had to. They have the same gerontocracy problem as the other side of the Uniparty. It’s turtles all the way down.
Cillizza concluded, “I just do not see it. I don’t see the money there. I don’t see the energy there. I don’t see the candidates there to expand the playing field”.
It won’t be for lack of trying, though. You’ve still got The Media in your pocket, and they can still do some damage. You’ll never get to the 80 side of those 80/20 issues, but you might get it to 50/50 — as has been done with abortion, gay “marriage”, and so on. On the other hand, those took 40, 50 years, and The Media hadn’t totally pissed away all its credibility back then. It’s a real corner you’ve backed yourselves into,
guysgalspersyns.It also doesn’t help that you’re stupid:
Democrats have identified potential pickup opportunities in Maine and North Carolina, targeting Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).
Holy breakdancing Buddha, why would you target them? Thom Tillis is the very definition of “RINO”; Collins is a Leftist, full stop. The next time they vote against the Democrats on any issue of substance will be the first time they’ve ever done it. It’s as predictable as sunrise, so much so that it’s a joke to anyone right of Mao — the GOP officially has X number of seats, minus Collins and Murkowski.
Vulnerabilities among current incumbents, especially Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), have added to the party’s challenges.
Oh, don’t worry about it — the GOP will find some way to throw it. Georgia, Georgia … hey, what’s Herschel Walker up to these days? Think he’s up for another run? Why not parachute in Alan Keyes or Ben Carson? They’re still alive, right? What about “Nikki” “Haley”? She’s gotta keep her arm loose for the 2028 primaries …
Some Democrats have remained optimistic despite the hurdles. Discussions have included potential candidates such as Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI) for key races. New Hampshire Democrats have prepared for competitive primaries, with Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) considering a bid for Shaheen’s seat.
As we know, when it comes to crime 13 does 50. When it comes to Leftism, though, it’s more like 20 does 100, and there’s no better illustration than New Hampshire. It should be the reddest state in the union, and people who live there tell me it really is… except for their Congresscritters, because the good people of New Hampshire didn’t shoot every Masshole they could catch. The fine folks in Oregon, Colorado, and (soon enough) Texas know what I mean — y’all didn’t introduce migrating Californians to wood chippers when you had the chance.
