18 Comments

Two points. First, yes, the priority is to burn time, and scandals and infighting are the best way to do that. Good point, and something to work with the media and Dems in Congress on.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter as much this time that his Cabinet appointments are incompetent. The real problem is going to be the sub-cabinet appointments -- the ones that don't get much media attention and don't need Senate approval (I was one of those in the Obama administration.) I predict they have learned to appoint competent ideologues in those position. People who actually know how that agencies work and how to undermine them. I'm hoping that loyalty outweighs competence for those jobs as well, but I'm much less confident about that than I was during Trump 1.0.

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I’m hopeful there will be those opposed to the regime who aren’t vocal about it but will work to slow things down as best as possible from the inside.

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"I do not expect there will be nearly the same surge in small donor support for news organizations or advocacy groups."

I really disagree here - I think the *shape* of support is going to be very different. The pre-election WaPo mass-unsubscribe - while The 51st is fully funded and up and running - shows a bit of what I think the shape to come is. Legacy media are going to be *badly* buffeted by years of trolling their audiences and anticipatory compliance - lots of readers are going to unsubscribe. But media *entrepreneurs* are in a much better spot - in 2017 we had not yet seen that a full publication (a la Defector) could boot up from zero in a member-supported manner. Now we have and there are multiple (and expanding) playbooks for how to do new forms of media entrepreneurship.

Will this, in aggregate, be "enough" to make up for the ongoing losses in legacy media? Maybe not, but hell if I know. The (well, one of) Google antitrust suit that's about to proceed to remedies? Started under Trump! Google still might get split up (does Elon want this? probably!) and that alone could entirely shift the state of play for the information economy (in a positive way imo), but, as you say generally: one of many many wave functions that has not yet collapsed.

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Thanks Dave. Good and insightful as always. I'd say my mood isn't so much depressed as pensive. All the energy of resisting Trump I mostly yielded stress, wishful thinking and lack of sleep. That just doesn't seem constructive now. I want my emotional energy to be well-directed, and to be able to be morally and emotionally useful in the long haul.

As you mention "running out the clock" it puts in my mind the time in the 1990s when Princeton beat UCLA in the NCAA tournament by running a four-corners, slow-down offense. It takes a lot of discipline to do that--pass the ball, conserve energy, don't try to be the hero by draining a 3 pointer. Wasted energy isn't helpful.

I do think it's particularly important in all this to resist, above all, becoming the mirror image of the MAGAts. It's important to be human and compassionate and to have the energy available to help others heal, especially the ones most getting hurt.

Victoria Barnett wrote an excellent piece this week about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who was imprisoned and executed by the Nazis. She's an expert, refuting the premises of the recent film about him that's just out. "He was a decent man, trying to be decent in terrible times"

https://www.christiancentury.org/features/there-s-no-such-thing-bonhoeffer-moment

I also put a thread on Bluesky a few weeks ago about what William Stringfellow had to say about what he learned from WW2 Resistance leaders:

https://bsky.app/profile/drewkadel.bsky.social/post/3l7bgo5k5e424

I agree we're in the long game, and doing what we can to stymy the worst of Trump is the main thing we can do politically. But to do that we need to remain the best human beings we can be with as much integrity as we can muster.

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Damn it DALL-E, that is *pressing* and not *hovering*!

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When I read "But it does mean that we should operate from the assumption that all the most effective tactics in 2017-2020 will be blunted this time around.", I wonder a bit what those "effective tactics" even were.

You list "Beginning on inauguration day, there were massive, in-person protests. These protests received major media coverage, which was then extended by Trump freaking out and losing even the faintest hint of message discipline."

- but what did this achieve in terms of policy? About as much as BLM and pro-Palestine protests, I believe.

"Democrats also supported news outlets and progressive advocacy groups at record levels."

- well, the MSM outlet that you write are useless now were useless then. They focused on supposed Russia gate and the Mueller investigation and the impeachment process, all of which led exactly nowhere.

"There were government whistleblowers and corruption scandals."

- the fallout of which was what?

"Advocacy groups had real success challenging him in the courts."

- I take you at your word here but what challenge made a meaningful difference?

"Besides tax cuts and judges, Trump couldn’t move much of anything through Congress."

- did he try, though? As you argue yourself, stuffing the judiciary was an extremely effective move, and if the only win you list are advocacy groups challenging him in courts, he used his first go around to shore up that flank.

The entire #Resistance theater the first time around was fully performative, and not much ground-game building happened in Trump 1. And Trump 2 is gonna be the same, especially since Democrats fear the left even more than Trump.

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I can't speak to every issue, but I've been doing health care advocacy for over 8 years - so during Trump I. And I can tell you that the resistance was not at all performative. Those of us who do this work professionally put our full lives (for better or worse) into the fight and we DID win - we blocked the legislative repeal of the ACA. And that gave the Biden-Harris Administration the ability to build ON it, not build it back. And then we spent 6 years making sure more people enroll through healthcare.gov and expand Medicaid. So now, in 2025, more people than ever are benefiting, states (even red ones) are getting more money, and it will be MUCH harder to undo it under Trump II.

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Thank you very much for that reply. Not even being in the US, this is what I'm simply missing: I have virtually no way of seeing things on the ground, and I even though I make an effort, I mainly see the things that get written up by relatively large outlets.

Given your experience, do you agree with Karpf that the tactics you used under Trump 1 will be blunted this time around?

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Some will, some won't. The courts are a huge concern. And it's very difficult to advocate for your position in a court case from outside. But we have much more opportunity to persuade in the House - more than last time I think - so that is where the real battle will be.

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Sorry, but… why are we assuming there are going to be legitimate elections in 2026 and 2028? In the world you’re describing, why wouldn’t JD Vance (or whoever’s running) just generate some incriminating AI videos as a pretext to have his opponent arrested? Or perhaps they’ll find a way to “un-rig” the voting machines to their liking, or perhaps find a dozen other ways to avoid relinquishing power.

When you listen to how they describe the opposition, it’s hard to avoid despair. I find myself wondering how we can speed-run to 1945 in the least destructive way possible.

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Some small comments: 1. I see Trump stepping down and JD taking over (pardoning Trump for every federal crime, including what he will be doing during the first part of T2. 2. Don't forget the disaster that can be the effects of his policies on the economy. 3. Don't forget about the geopolitical factors.

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Would calling his staffers and appointees "loyalty-aligned" make more sense than "ideologically-aligned"?

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As someone who does advocacy for a living (on health care specifically), I agree with the stall tactics. They really only have one year to do their worst - starting in 2026 all of Congress will need to start running again which means they will be distracted and gun-shy. But some of what worked in 2017 can work again. In 2017 they went big with the ACA repeal, and it took about 6 months to fight it back - and they were too distracted with this to do much else. And then when they lost that, they were severely weakened (for any major legislation, not just on health care). I see a potentially similar thing playing out on immigration - they'll focus so much on that for a few months, we fight like hell, then hopefully run out the clock for them to focus on much else.

The good news I cling to is this: Most of the big bad things he wants to do still takes an act of Congress (because it takes money and Congress still controls the purse strings) that will likely need 60 votes in the Senate (with the filibuster) which they don't have. In the House, at this point Speaker Johnson will have the slimmest of slim 2-3 vote majority. In 2017 they started with a 28 vote majority. It's not much comfort, but it's enough to keep me going.

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DOGE will not be operating on its own. There will be a House subcommittee set-up with MTG to be in charge. Having worked in DC for 2 trade associations, this to me is good news. That means that there will be both R's and D's on the subcommittee and lots of meetings. To me, it signals a balance. But then again I could be wrong. See https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/21/marjorie-taylor-greene-elon-musk-ramaswamy-doge.html I find it interesting that they are looking for persons to work 80 hours a week for free and be of high IQ. Kennedy tried that with McNamara and the whiz kids. And have seen that we will see livestream of the meetings. Nothing like preening for the camera!!!

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Trump didn't need to send the military after protesters in 2020 because Democratic governors like Tim Walz beat him to it. He didn't need to "build the wall," because Clinton, Bush, and Obama had built seven hundred miles of it already. Your silence on Gaza, as well as Biden's extension of Title 42 and suspension of the right to asylum, indicates that you don't actually mind the harms Trump will do, since many of them are bipartisan agenda items—you mind that he's loud about it.

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First, I highly recommend the "How to Stage a Coup" video on YouTube by Ordinary Things. It's insightful and interesting, and you can see billionaire extremists running the Republican Party running from that playbook. Ultra wealthy lunatics have tried it before in the US, probably more than we know, and have always failed. I don't think Trump and the weirdos behind him have what it takes to succeed at a coup.

Trump has really annoyed the military with antics like calling soldiers 'suckers', and you need the military on your side to pull a coup. Sure he has some loyalists within the military, but competent and respected generals and admirals from both parties have slammed him where usually they try to stay well out of partisan stances in public.

This is why I was rather shocked he won, because rule number one in US politics is to not mess with the military industrial complex.

There is talk that Trump is planning a purge of military officers who he considers enemies. Hundreds of them, and this alone made me assume Trump was going to lose.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/11/14/trump-purge-could-limit-military-manpower-pentagon-says-it-felt-effect-tubervilles-holds.html

This will absolutely wreck US military effectiveness as Trump and his band of incompetents either fail to replace the officers they purge or replace them with nimrods. While people try to compare Trump to Hitler one major difference is Hitler was a military man, and so were most of his allies, so he had the military on his side.

This can work out in a few different ways:

1. Trump wins. He purges the military, and gets his pets in the house to appoint replacement officers who've worked their way up the ranks who are also lunatics willing to wipe their ass with the constitution and bill of rights. The US military rapidly descends into anarchy and the US becomes a laughingstock. Trump loses huge in 2026 and 2028. Maybe he tries to stage a coup, but he'll fail because he's stupid though the fallout after that? God only knows. It's a possibility for sure, but seems unlikely.

2. Trump causes massive damage to the military, but doesn't get it all his own way. The military backs down less, but the US still ends up a laughingstock on the international stage. US allies may demand we close our military bases. Again the US swings back hard against Trump in following elections.

3. The military pushes back, and refuses to allow a purge. Each member of the Senate and Congress is given angry phone calls along the lines of 'Do you want us to close that base or end that military contract that benefits your district? No? Then tell the president to back off.' Trump goes non-linear and loses, because he can't win that fight. So things limp along business as usual. I expect this outcome as the most likely one.

4. Trump pushes too hard and the military decides 'fuck it, we're done being neutral' and demands their creatures in the house impeach trump, or bully congress into declaring him incompetent. I very much doubt the military will go this far unless Trump tries to issue an order so criminally unhinged they have no choice. A demand they nuke Paris because the French president snubbed him or the like. With Trump one could actually see this happening.

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It doesn’t make me feel much better to think that a plausible scenario is a military coup in the US.

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Possible rather than plausible. I'm no military analyst, and I sure as shit failed to predict the outcome of this election, the first time ever I full on predicted it wrong, but most of the time my prognostications are decently accurate.

Let's just say I won't be surprised if it turns out a bunch of corpses rolled out of their graves to vote for him. Unlikely, but not surprising.

I strongly suspect the third scenario is what we'll see. More of Trump trying to do criminally unhinged things, and even though the Republicans control all three branches of government the 'deep state' he whines and complains about will doorstop him before he does more than wreck the economy and impoverish millions and make the US a laughingstock on the international stage. Most of the Republicans are lifelong pols who still want a stable and predictable set of laws and system of government, because that's like... Their jobs on the line. Most of them (like his own Vice President) support Trump because they're weasels, not because they love the man or believe his nonsense, and that's a very fragile alliance to try and build a dictatorship on.

Plus which the people who voted for him are very different from the people who enthusiastically support him. Many people who voted for Trump did so out of ignorance, or because they wanted to punish the Democratic party for being incompetent boobs who seem every bit as much in the payroll of moneyed interests, which in fairness they are.

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