Never-Trump Charlie Sykes quotes Anthony Scaramucci, the 10-day director of cuckoo communications in Trump's first go-around of crazy: "We went from crony capitalism to crony imperialism in 16 days."
Adds Sykes, "Surely, this is what the voters really wanted when they put Trump back in the White House." To verify this claim he also quotes The Detroit News, from 11 Nov. 2024: "Trump won the presidential vote in the cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights in Tuesday's election on his way to winning Michigan after [he] courted voters in Metro Detroit's traditionally Democratic Arab American and Muslim communities." Need we wonder if these voters are still swelling with pride in their choice?
As for other quotable quotes, one such repeatable line — shared here, in part, yesterday — erupted from the aggressive mind of Sen. Chris Murphy: "[Trump has] completely lost it. He wants a U.S. invasion of Gaza," which would "set the Middle East on fire for 20 years. It’s sick."
Worse, the sickness has metastasized. For having performed their duties, Trump is firing government employees or pressuring them to resign; he's shuttering whole agencies — illegally; he froze funding to state governments and nonprofit organizations and he's demolishing the U.S.A.I.D. because of their missions to benefit humanity; Elon Musk now controls federal funding apparatuses and has access to Americans' private information; and Senate Republicans are confirming his unspeakably wacko lieutenants in a staggering ho-hum way.
The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait relates that "According to various reports, [Musk] is holed up in the Eisenhower Building with a small team of young engineers" — one, 19 years of age — "who possess neither government experience nor the authority to question his impulsive judgments, on the hunt for Marxist plots lurking within long-standing federal programs." (The Borowitz Report: "Treyson Parlow ... said he was 'pumped' to learn that he would accrue class credits for serving as Secretary of the Treasury under Musk.")
As Donald and Elon busy themselves with undermining and amputating congressionally authorized segments of the U.S. government, rank-and-file Democrats' blood pressure is seeing red. These civically minded and conscientiously engaged voters are asking — by now, less than politely — what their party representation in Washington is doing in the way of yoking the ox-brained duo.
"No one fucking cares about" conventional means of checks and balances, said a senior House Democrat to Axios. "People want us to be doing more aggressive actions." The publication notes that other House Dems complain that too many little people know too little of what the big boys and girls in D.C. are already doing. That could be; if so, nearly all the "aggressive" doers are killing the rank and file much too softly.
Financial Times columnist Ed Luce reflects that "we all, at some level in our brains, have the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here in our head." If not all, Democrats for sure. But America today is no novel. He recognizes the "coup that’s happening. It is happening here. It’s happening now." As Democratic voters are doing, Luce further reflects that America "lacks an opposition leader to spearhead the fight back."
Not so, observes journalist and civil rights activist David Badash. Once again, enter Sen. Murphy. "[He's] been leading the battle against" Trump and his murky band of "Ghostbuster"-like destructors, writes Badash. In agreement is political analyst Anand Giridharadas: "Chris Murphy has been someone who’s been a real leader early in this," as well as in his party's future. About that he's "been clearer and starker and more honest.”
Indeed the senator demonstrated those strengths in an interview with Giridharadas. "We need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis." At the very least we "should not be giving votes ... to legislation [such as raising the debt ceiling] until Republicans get serious about the crisis."
Fat chance. Which Murphy and every attentive American know. Politico reports that while a government shutdown looms until the drop-dead date of 14 March, Trump's "truculence" is dive-bombing the deadline and strafing the Dems' traditional agreement with his chief objective, the debt-ceiling lift. So Republicans are "nervous," says Politico. But not that nervous, it seems to me. Already they're unseriously laying blame for the shutdown that haunts on the only prudent party in town.
Outside of the aforementioned "very least,' what counteroffensive against the congressional GOP reckless and the astigmatic Red Barron does Murphy propose? “Democrats should be leading public gatherings all weekend, all across the country to bring Americans out to show Republicans if they will pay a price." And as they lead, elected Democrats must "speak in really stark terms about what is going on here" — "very, very simple and strong terms about what is happening," insists Murphy. They must speak "like our democracy is weeks away from disintegrating — because it is."
The powerful intellect of John Maynard Keynes seemed to coach today's meek Democrats by writing that "words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" (emphasis mine). The equal intellect of America's 19th-century (and far beyond) tutor, Alexis de Tocqueville, correspondingly urged, "Let us therefore have that salutary fear of the future that makes one alert and combative, and not that sort of soft and idle terror that wears hearts down and enervates them" (emphasis again mine).
If combative words inflicted on the unthinking are what street-soldier Democrats desire, which they do, then to them I say this bit of my own coaching, tutoring or merely proposing should be superfluous: Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is your best 2028 shot at the White House.
I say this with no hackery for, and lord knows no recompense from, the senator. I say it because Murphy is the most articulate, most informed and most pugilistic of the Democratic Party's most notable statespersons. He's made no noise about a '28 run, which I trust is due to early 2025 being two years too soon. What mildly disturbs is that I have yet to see Murphy's among the commentariat's names of probable candidates in the positively nastiest presidential contest since Jefferson's 1796 and 1800 clashes with Adams. That, however, may also be strategic.
In short, vote Chris Murphy. Until that time and with the clichéd abundance of caution (is anyone ever depleted of caution when it calls?), pressure the man into your voting for him.
* Title, properly italicized as The Plot Against America, is a Philip Roth book title.
Assuming an election in ‘28, it’ll be Pritzger.
Now I know why you support Chris Murphy so much. He would definitely have my support, even against my own governor who I'm pretty sure wants to run. Gavin Newsom is fine for California, the rest of the country, not so much. Especially because so many people hate this state, but I have been here my whole life and hope to die here when the time comes. But what if Senator Murphy doesn't want to run?