It can not be bygones and quiet relief. Democrats must try to remove Trump from power, even if Republicans block them, because he's shown he'll hold the whole world hostage.
Once again Brian - scream this from the rooftops!!!!
I find worrying about what the so called median/swing voter may or may not think here useless. All Trump and his pathetic enablers everywhere think when there are no consequences is that what they’re doing is fine. And it will continue to escalate until the worst eventually comes to pass.
My sister sometimes sends me the Substack of Zev Shalev, who I usually think is a bit alarmist. Here's his post today. Either I'm too dense or haven't had enough coffee, but I can't really follow the whole thing. Nonetheless, he says that this whole debacle was a successful effort to game the oil market, that people knew of impending threats and ease-ups ahead of time. "They bought on the pump and sold on the dump." I'm curious as to whether people here, including Brian, find this at all plausible. I certainly wouldn't put it past Trump.
There's enough "inside baseball" reporting to make me think the likelihood that Trump's moves/rhetoric is based on manipulating markets to make a profit is low. Its imparting some sort of strategic medium/long term thinking on the part of Trump that is just absolutely not there at all and hasn't been there for really a decade now. It's one of my criticisms of Matt Yglesias' insistence that Trump won by moderating stuff like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. I actually don't think he's completely wrong on this, but unfortunately he's "right" for the wrong reasons. Precisely because he's a lunatic just winging it and using the two only talents he actually has (completely shamelessness combined with incredible ability to read a crowd), his pronouncements on all sorts of things are so all over the place and clearly so driven by his own pettiness and fragile ego, it has the deranged effect of making him more palatable to swing voters who don't really pay attention to the news. Basically, if you're only somewhat pay attention to the news, you can convince yourself Trump agrees with you or agrees with your priorities precisely because his stream of consciousness thinking is so all over the place. Even news junkies/pundits are making a category error when they ascribe even a scintilla of strategic thinking to Trump's actions.
But advisors like Howard Lutnik or Scott Beasant. Or the Trump kids? Or basically anyone who has inside knowledge of what's really going on or know that they can be the "last one in the room with Trump" and get him at least for 24 hours to do what they want? Yeah, not at all hard to believe they're basically making millions on market manipulation and that this influencing any advice they are giving Trump.
I agree, I have been thinking, Iran friend of Russia, Russia friend of trump. trump has no problem wasting the resources of the USA money or People. When I see who is benefitting from this debacle it is clear it is not U.S.
There's still seven months to midterms. If ceasefire holds and gas price go down in a month median voter will forget it. Some negative vibes will persist, but not as strong as now. Impeaching Trump now is bad idea because
1. He just got a big success in eyes of many voters - impeaching places democrats as the party that punishes making America great again.
2. By the time democrats come around to vote for impeachment proceedings the Iran debacle will be half forgotten. Impeachment could replace Iran as main news piece. Trump would happily amplify it as distraction. Voters won't connect impeachment with war, many will believe democrats do it because they are angry that trump is anti trans, anti immigration etc.
The "ifs" you cite are massive -- the ceasefire is extremely wobbly less than 24 hours in, and there's no sign that the strait is actually opening up. A big part of the reason Trump debacles are quickly forgotten is because Democrats allow them to be. If Democrats would stay on message about this over time, it will eventually sink in, the same way Republicans made Benghazi a thing, for instance, or the way a few Democrats keep hammering on Epstein.
Democrats lack media tools, skills and internal cohesion to sustain such messaging campaign. They need different tactics to work around this deficiencies. Also, Trump regularly generates new content so old one becomes stale. If he leaves nato next week, and then in May invades Cuba people will (rightly) concentrate on that instead of iran.
"Our greatest Cold War nightmares seldom contemplated the possibility that the Soviet empire might fall, through succession crisis, into the hands of a madman who’d begin hot wars with enemy client states, decapitate their governments, and threaten to nuke their civilian populations."
Obviously not the point of your post, but I actually am pretty sure this was actually "war gamed" and was a real worry about what would happen with the break of the Soviet Union. And to be frank, I dare say this pretty much happened. I don't think Putin is as much a "madman" as Trump, but as clearly just demonstrated that is a low bar. And he very much started wars and decapitated governments (or tried to) and not just Ukraine. And if reporting is to be believed, is absolutely paranoid and surrounded himself with complete sycophants which is one of the reasons his Ukraine war has gone so badly (sound familiar).
Once again Brian - scream this from the rooftops!!!!
I find worrying about what the so called median/swing voter may or may not think here useless. All Trump and his pathetic enablers everywhere think when there are no consequences is that what they’re doing is fine. And it will continue to escalate until the worst eventually comes to pass.
1000%
My sister sometimes sends me the Substack of Zev Shalev, who I usually think is a bit alarmist. Here's his post today. Either I'm too dense or haven't had enough coffee, but I can't really follow the whole thing. Nonetheless, he says that this whole debacle was a successful effort to game the oil market, that people knew of impending threats and ease-ups ahead of time. "They bought on the pump and sold on the dump." I'm curious as to whether people here, including Brian, find this at all plausible. I certainly wouldn't put it past Trump.
https://www.narativ.org/p/exclusive-someone-knew-and-made-millions?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1581221&post_id=193564906&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4l5ok&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
There's enough "inside baseball" reporting to make me think the likelihood that Trump's moves/rhetoric is based on manipulating markets to make a profit is low. Its imparting some sort of strategic medium/long term thinking on the part of Trump that is just absolutely not there at all and hasn't been there for really a decade now. It's one of my criticisms of Matt Yglesias' insistence that Trump won by moderating stuff like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. I actually don't think he's completely wrong on this, but unfortunately he's "right" for the wrong reasons. Precisely because he's a lunatic just winging it and using the two only talents he actually has (completely shamelessness combined with incredible ability to read a crowd), his pronouncements on all sorts of things are so all over the place and clearly so driven by his own pettiness and fragile ego, it has the deranged effect of making him more palatable to swing voters who don't really pay attention to the news. Basically, if you're only somewhat pay attention to the news, you can convince yourself Trump agrees with you or agrees with your priorities precisely because his stream of consciousness thinking is so all over the place. Even news junkies/pundits are making a category error when they ascribe even a scintilla of strategic thinking to Trump's actions.
But advisors like Howard Lutnik or Scott Beasant. Or the Trump kids? Or basically anyone who has inside knowledge of what's really going on or know that they can be the "last one in the room with Trump" and get him at least for 24 hours to do what they want? Yeah, not at all hard to believe they're basically making millions on market manipulation and that this influencing any advice they are giving Trump.
Well said. It combines the facts of Trump's impulsiveness and stupidity with the shameless greed of those around him.
I agree, I have been thinking, Iran friend of Russia, Russia friend of trump. trump has no problem wasting the resources of the USA money or People. When I see who is benefitting from this debacle it is clear it is not U.S.
Excellent piece Brian, Thank you!
I’m sure this is happening. And not just with the oil market.
There are a lot of skillful grifters in this regime.
Moreover, all of this constant Dem capitulation makes us look like liars. We SAY Trump is a threat, and then we do nothing to actually stop him.
There's still seven months to midterms. If ceasefire holds and gas price go down in a month median voter will forget it. Some negative vibes will persist, but not as strong as now. Impeaching Trump now is bad idea because
1. He just got a big success in eyes of many voters - impeaching places democrats as the party that punishes making America great again.
2. By the time democrats come around to vote for impeachment proceedings the Iran debacle will be half forgotten. Impeachment could replace Iran as main news piece. Trump would happily amplify it as distraction. Voters won't connect impeachment with war, many will believe democrats do it because they are angry that trump is anti trans, anti immigration etc.
The "ifs" you cite are massive -- the ceasefire is extremely wobbly less than 24 hours in, and there's no sign that the strait is actually opening up. A big part of the reason Trump debacles are quickly forgotten is because Democrats allow them to be. If Democrats would stay on message about this over time, it will eventually sink in, the same way Republicans made Benghazi a thing, for instance, or the way a few Democrats keep hammering on Epstein.
Democrats lack media tools, skills and internal cohesion to sustain such messaging campaign. They need different tactics to work around this deficiencies. Also, Trump regularly generates new content so old one becomes stale. If he leaves nato next week, and then in May invades Cuba people will (rightly) concentrate on that instead of iran.
One reason Democrats are ineffective is that they think and act like this.
"Our greatest Cold War nightmares seldom contemplated the possibility that the Soviet empire might fall, through succession crisis, into the hands of a madman who’d begin hot wars with enemy client states, decapitate their governments, and threaten to nuke their civilian populations."
Obviously not the point of your post, but I actually am pretty sure this was actually "war gamed" and was a real worry about what would happen with the break of the Soviet Union. And to be frank, I dare say this pretty much happened. I don't think Putin is as much a "madman" as Trump, but as clearly just demonstrated that is a low bar. And he very much started wars and decapitated governments (or tried to) and not just Ukraine. And if reporting is to be believed, is absolutely paranoid and surrounded himself with complete sycophants which is one of the reasons his Ukraine war has gone so badly (sound familiar).