Trump's Card

[ursus arctos]

Some men just want to watch the world burn

[Flynnie]

FDR tried to pack the Court

It didn’t go well for him.



Court-packing has long been thought to be a political Third Rail that would incinerate anyone who attempted it, but then tat was that kind of norm has never stopped 45. I can’t see the Democrats seriously consider it.

My favourite Nike bit was the guy who torched his trainers while wearing them and then tweeted out photos of his badly burned feet from hospital.

Not allowing a President to appoint a justice was also thought to be a Third Rail, but the Republicans did it and made off like bandits.

Allowing the court to overturn all sorts of protections on labor, privacy and more because of norms is a terrible idea. Appoint a bunch of people who make Sotomayor look conservative, cap the number, then whip the voting base into line. It would be exactly the kind of thing that would actually drive turnout.

[ursus arctos]

This is where the difference in our ages becomes apparent.

[Flynnie]

It's a gunfight and the Democrats insist on bringing a knife because it's more honourable.

This has indeed been noticed by people under 35.

[ursus arctos]

I don't think that we've even brought a knife. More like a strongly worded statement of disagreement and disapproval.

I also believe that US legal training (particularly "elite" training) inculcates in a large majority of people a sense that messing with the Supreme Court is a bridge too far. This clearly was not the case at SEC Law Schools, as evidenced by Messrs. McConnell, Sessions, et al.

[Flynnie]

The pump can always be primed. Kavanaugh overturns Roe and you'll find a lot of Democrats embracing packing the court IMO.

[ursus arctos]

I think that he's too savvy politically to overrule Roe directly (and that even if he was inclined to, that Roberts wouldn't agree).

What I expect instead is a series of rulings upholding legislation that effectively bans the procedure in certain states, along the lines of the Texas idiocy that the court struck down in Whole Women's Health.

[San Bernardhinault]

Fully overturning Roe would be a big problem for Republicans. A large chunk of their turnout advantage comes from people intent on Supreme Court picks with the intention of overturning Roe. If Roe is overturned, then the motivation to vote Republican will wane substantially.

They're clearly going to leave it on the books and - as ursus says - water it down to the extent that it becomes meaningless. But still maintain the fiction that they need more judges to fully overturn it.

[Snake Plissken]

My favourite Nike bit was the guy who torched his trainers while wearing them and then tweeted out photos of his badly burned feet from hospital.

For accuracy, that bloke was joking.

[ursus arctos]

Spoilsport

[Tubby Isaacs]

But we aren't talking about a presidential election.

We are talking about midterms, and just had a Florida Gubernatorial primary where none of the established polls gave more than 14 percent to the guy who won the Democratic nomination with 34+

How is that Florida Governor Primary like the US senate polls I've been talking about? I assume Andrew Gillum wasn't all that well-known, and that voters saw more of him in the last week than the rest of their lives before. That's not really true of Rick Scott v Ben Nelson. And anyway, switching to a different Democrat isn't like changing your party vote.

And I don't think I'm exactly going out on a limb by saying these two races are extremely close.

[Lang Spoon]

He’s going to get confirmed, isn’t he. Then we are fucked even if the House turns blue.

[San Bernardhinault]

I think you over-estimate how centrist Anthony Kennedy was. We're only marginally more fucked now (except on Roe) than we were before.

[ursus arctos]

I struggle to understand how anyone wasn't certain of this outcome as soon as the Presidential results were in.

Tubbs, I am refusing to engage with you on polling as a matter of principle. I might relax that position in October, but obsessing about polls is really a huge waste of your (and everyone else's) time.

[WOM]

My early polling predictions: an astounding number of people who would readily pronounce themselves 'proud Americans' will not bother to vote. And an astounding number of people will vote for the wrong candidate for the wrong reasons...again.

[Gerontophile]

Tax cuts (for corporations, and ergo, the donors), and banning abortions (for religious nutters) is the whole ball game. That's all they wanted.

They will then all die off quietly leaving the mess behind with no qualms whatsoever.

Oh, and by the way, hello President Pence in 2020.

[Gerontophile]

I've had a fucking shit day. I'm going to get Trump-faced.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I struggle to understand how anyone wasn't certain of this outcome as soon as the Presidential results were in.

Tubbs, I am refusing to engage with you on polling as a matter of principle. I might relax that position in October, but obsessing about polls is really a huge waste of your (and everyone else's) time.

I don't mention polls that often, seriously I don't.

But let's talk about something else, indeed.

[ursus arctos]

I appreciate that.

How have you seen the Kavanaugh hearing? I can't bring myself to watch.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm in the same boat as you on that one, I'm afraid.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I have been intrigued by this phrase "settled law". Intrigued, not reassured.

[ursus arctos]

It doesn't really mean anything, which you've probably cottoned on to.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's what I was thinking.

Is it a new phrase?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ha ha.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ost-since-2008

Canada's Trade Surplus With U.S. Widens to Most Since 2008

[WOM]

Op-ed in today's NYT. Just remarkable.


"I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans."

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.