Some Thoughts On What Comes Next

It's been a rough few weeks for us, but for Putinism-Trumpism too......

Morning everyone. Yes, I wake today feeling a bit battered and bloodied, probably like a lot of you. The word I keep coming back to this morning is betrayal. The ferocious betrayal of America, of our democracy, of the American people by Trump, Roberts and their allies just feels overwhelming, shocking, medieval, maniacal, and really not f-cking OK………

Many moments got us to where we are today, where we are experiencing the further descent of the party of Lincoln into this wild orgy of white supremacist illiberalism….Bush v Gore; the outrageous GOP redistricting of 2012; Trump’s collaboration with the Russians in 2016; the attempt to overturn our election in 2021 and Trump’s exoneration by Republicans in the Senate; the corrupt Roberts’ Court ongoing enabling of extremism……

Here is Marc Elias this morning:

Despite notable setbacks, the pro-democracy movement continues to rack up key court wins, and Donald Trump’s poll numbers continue to sink. But we make a mistake in thinking the GOP will be satisfied simply with targeting minorities. They are happy to see democracy burn to the ground. They are in the thrall of a man who wants to be a dictator.

What has me worried — what we all need to focus on — is that something important in our democracy broke last week, and we are only beginning to see the fallout. The winners will be a Republican Party that is hostile to democracy.

And….

The Roberts Court did not invent the GOP’s war on multiracial democracy. But it keeps issuing the permits.

That is the lesson of Plessy. That is the lesson of the immunity decision. And that is the lesson of Callais.

Lawyers and commentators need to recognize that in Court opinions, the dog whistle is too often louder than the fine print. The culture moves before the next set of lawsuits can even be filed.

We are in that critical window right now. Republican legislators are already redrawing maps. In some cases, they’re redrawing maps mid-election. The DOJ has already signaled it will help them. And, most importantly, the media is already starting to use the GOP’s framing.

Stopping this assault on democracy is not primarily a legal task, though the legal fights can matter enormously. It is a cultural one.

The fire is not coming; it’s burning hot, and the GOP is fanning its flames. The question is whether enough of us are willing to stand up for free and fair elections — plainly, loudly and without qualification — before the permission structure of Callais hardens into culture, and the culture decides this is simply how things are.

As we pick ourselves up and get ready for the next phase of our fight for freedom and democracy here and everywhere a few things remain true today……

Trump remains wildly unpopular:

We are still favored to win the House, and have a legit chance of taking the Senate too. Republicans are likely to pick up 6 new seats this year through their post-Callais redistricting meaning we will need to win 9 to take control. If the twelve House candidates we’ve endorsed win this November this House flips - period, over and out. Which is why we need to stay so focused on this group.

A reminder of some of the encouraging polling we are seeing in Senate races:

We are going to get rough inflation reports this week - CPI tomorrow, PPI on Wednesday - that will remind Americans of Trump’s betrayal of his promise to bring costs down and make their lives better. This will further weaken the regime.

Like his initial tariffs Trump’s second round of global tariffs were found to be illegal last week, throwing his economic program into chaos and further weakening the regime:

But the most important ground truth in our politics today is the growing international understanding that both Trump and Putin are not winning - even losing - their wars, and that greater MAGA has begun to truly stumble. Orban fell; Magyar and Zelenskyy are ascendant; Putin had to scale back his parade, and get Trump to pathetically cover for him; and this sentiment as seen in the Economist is now the dominant sentiment in global media about Putin:

Though for Trump and the Republicans the big thing they are now going to have to deal with is the reality that Iran has bested Trump in the Middle East, and that he may have committed the gravest mistake of any President in our history. Here’s Robert Kagan this morning in a powerful new essay in the Atlantic:

More:

It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region.

Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.

………

The risk calculus that forced Trump to back down a month ago still holds. Even if Trump were to carry out his threat to destroy Iran’s “civilization” through more bombing, Iran would still be able to launch many missiles and drones before its regime went down—assuming it did go down. Just a few successful strikes could cripple the region’s oil and gas infrastructure for years if not decades, throwing the world, and the United States, into a prolonged economic crisis. Even if Trump wanted to bomb Iran as part of an exit strategy—looking tough as a way of masking his retreat—he can’t do that without risking this catastrophe.

If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close. In recent days, Trump has reportedly asked the U.S. intelligence community to assess the consequences of simply declaring victory and walking away. You can’t blame him. Hoping for regime collapse is not much of a strategy, especially when the regime has already survived repeated military and economic pummeling. It could fall tomorrow, or six months from now, or not at all. Trump doesn’t have that much time to wait, as oil climbs toward $150 or even $200 a barrel, inflation rises, and global food and other commodity shortages kick in. He needs a faster resolution.

But any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks that Trump has not so far been willing to take. Those who glibly call on Trump to “finish the job” rarely acknowledge the costs. Unless the U.S. is prepared to engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold; unless it is prepared to risk the loss of warships convoying tankers through a contested strait; unless it is prepared to accept the devastating long-term damage to the region’s productive capacities likely to result from Iranian retaliation—walking away now could seem like the least bad option. As a political matter, Trump may well feel he has a better chance of riding out defeat than of surviving a much larger, longer, and more expensive war that could still end in failure.

………

The American defeat in the Gulf will have broader global ramifications as well. The whole world can see that just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight. The questions this raises about America’s readiness for another major conflict may or may not prompt Xi Jinping to launch an attack on Taiwan, or Vladimir Putin to step up his aggression against Europe. But at the very least America’s allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.

The global adjustment to a post-American world is accelerating. America’s once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties.

Just as we’ve seen this growing global sentiment about Putin’s weakness and failure in Ukraine, the world is beginning to say the same about Trump and Iran as he prepares to limp into a Summit with China’s Xi later this week:

We’ve often talked here about how we are going to have good days and bad days. That our path isn’t linear, and that there would be set backs. Well we’ve some set backs these past few weeks, but so has Trump. What hasn’t changed is that job one for our pro-democracy movement is to stick together and go out and keep doing everything we can to expand the map, win elections, and win back power. Our next big election opportunity is May 19th, next Tuesday, in Georgia. Please do what you can to help here - the early vote is very encouraging, and flipping two Supreme Court seats in a place that Trump/DOJ have so heavily targeted (Fulton County) would be an uplifting response to this wave of post-Callais ugliness.

Finally, I think our pro-democracy movement here in the US has a lot to learn from Magyar, Zelenskyy, Kallas, Tusk and other leaders in Europe. Their grit, courage, and determination in countering greater Putinism-Trumpism is something that must inform and inspire us in the consequential battles ahead…..

Now, Let’s Get To Work Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map

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Keep working hard all. We have a country to save, and elections to win, together - Simon