Bad Things Are Bad
Even if they don't have much to do with grocery prices.
It took a week, but Senate Democrats finally reached consensus on how to respond to Donald Trump’s impeachable day-one decision to pardon hundreds of violent January 6 rioters: A sense-of-the-Senate resolution condemning the pardons. They want to make Senate Republicans object to the condemnation, and maybe at some point force a vote on it.
The final Democrat to cosponsor the resolution was John Fetterman, who seems to have been bled of all fight by the results of the 2024 election. Upon adding his name to the measure, Fetterman said, “I love it. I do. We need more performance art votes, because that's really been very helpful before the election. But again, I am signing on for it. I am. I don't know if it's going to bring the cost of eggs lower, but I was on the record before that I would never support pardoning the people involved in the J6.”
As near as I can tell from the outside, there’s no leadership-sanctioned opposition strategy except this one: Make turnabout fair play anytime anyone happens upon an expensive staple good. Lodge passing complaints about Trump’s abuses of power on a case-by-case basis, but turn every conversation back to the cost of groceries.
Now comes Trump’s second impeachable outrage. On Monday evening he claimed the power to illegally “impound” funds Congress appropriated by temporarily pausing all federal grant, loan, and aid payments. The lawless order, first obtained by Marisa Kabas, takes effect today at 5 p.m.
This threatens to plunge the U.S. into crisis. Viewed exclusively through the pocketbook lens, though, it also threatens to depress demand, which, in turn, would achieve the supposedly pressing goal of lowering grocery prices.
Checkmate, Democrats! Perhaps that means Fetterman et al will pivot to observing that the economy Trump inherited from Joe Biden is actually strong, and Trump, through recklessness and corruption, threatens to destroy it.
As a strategic messaging shift, that would amount to a significant improvement. But you can see through these two scandals how a pivot-to-pocketbooks approach can generate incoherence. The whipsawing effect of Trump’s many abuses points to something that should be obvious: Democrats should fight the abuses on their own terms.
ALL EGGS IN A BASKET
Here’s what a considered, broad-spectrum opposition strategy might look like. I published that article yesterday, in response to Trump’s lawless purge of over a dozen federal anti-corruption watchdogs. But it applies to impoundment, too, and would compliment a legal strategy to block the Trump impoundment order.
That’s the nice thing about genuine, non-rhetorical opposition. Using power to hem Trump in can encompass multiple abuses, even ones that don’t have a nexus to grocery prices. And to the extent that Trump really does threaten to take a good economy and shatter it to bits, none of it precludes a robust economic message.
My many misgivings about the eggs dodge predate the impoundment crisis: