Editors’ Blog
The situation remains fluid in the South Korean capital of Seoul. But I wanted to update you on some breaking events.
A successful coup generally involves three things. One is securing the support of major national stakeholders — the military, security services, the business community, a major political party, etc. Coups aren’t democracies of course. But they seldom succeed without significant bases of support. Another is controlling access to major power centers and communications centers. Yet another is being able and willing to use force to back up that control.
President Yoon’s coup attempt seems not to be succeeding at any of these.
Read MoreA short time ago, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, claiming it was necessary to root out North Korean sympathizers in the the South. So far it hasn’t gone like your standard presidential coup. Unsurprisingly, the leader of the opposition denounced the move. But then so too did the head of Yoon’s own political party. Yoon is a Trump-like figure and he’s been mired in declining popularity, a series of scandals and budget stand-offs with the opposition. In other words, the “threat” seems more Yoon’s plummeting public support than any communist infiltration in the South. Militaries of course operate by their own logic. But absent a threat that military leaders find compelling — communism during the Cold War — they generally won’t join up with a President who is already flailing.
Read More
The Pardon 
Over the past couple weeks, the thought of President Biden pardoning his son entered my head a few times. I tossed it around: good or bad idea? I could see it both ways. I still can. But I am fine with his decision. I’m glad he did it. Biden learned the right lesson: no one gives a fuck about norms. It’s unquestionably true that Hunter Biden wouldn’t be in this position if not for his dad. That’s basically the justification Biden gave. And he’s right. It may sound angry or cynical to say “no one gives a fuck.” But I mean it both in a general way and in this particular way: the reason for Biden not to do this was to allow his son to remain collateral damage of the GOP war against his presidency and to leave him in the hands of the Trump DOJ for at least the next four years all to make a point of principle about being better, different, more righteous, more norm-honoring than Donald Trump.
Truly. No one gives a fuck. If anything, that logic I just laid out sounds like one of those fastidious, hyper-process-oriented and baroque bits of reasoning that have of late left Democrats mesmerized while the real world is passing them by.
Either you know the difference or you don’t. This doesn’t shift the balance in anyone’s head.
I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the TPM community. I hope you get to relax, spend more than a few moments with people you love.
I mentioned earlier this week that a big part of Trump’s MO is firing off ten flares, letting everyone react to everything and then hanging back to decide on his own timetable which of those flares he’s actually going to follow through on. It’s critical to take back that initiative. When Trump and Republicans have a trifecta there’s little direct impact Democrats can have on any legislative decision. Lots of things are important, damaging. Go after things that are clearly unpopular. Political power is unitary. Landing a punch on one policy front reduces the White House’s ability to act everywhere else.
One thing that we are absolutely sure is going to happen is an extension of the 2017 tax cuts. This is a dead certainty. There are already rumblings that the Trump White House will cut the Affordable Care Act proper to get the money. But they are openly saying they will cut Medicaid to do it. (In the Trumpite taxonomy, defense, Medicare and Social Security are supposedly off limits.) But here’s the thing. With Medicaid expansion, Medicaid is functionally part of the ACA. Maybe some policy wonk will tell you they’re separate things. That’s silly. They’re not. Don’t listen to that silly person. Cutting Medicaid — through whatever means you choose to do that — is cutting the ACA. That’s a big reason why there are currently a historically low number of people uninsured. Donald Trump is going to hand out tax cuts and pay for it by cutting the ACA. Simple.
A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To Your Phone: Thinking About Bluesky
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter two years ago, those who despise his evolving mix of predatory trolling, stunted emotional development and right-wing extremism have been hoping for an alternative. There was “Post”; Meta got into the act with “Threads”; another entity of at first uncertain origins actually got its start with one of Twitter’s former CEOs, Jack Dorsey. That was Bluesky. There was also Mastodon, a sort of Linux of social media networks. Part of the problem there was that you may not be familiar enough with Linux to understand the analogy. And if you do, you’re part of a potential community not nearly big enough to sustain a mass adoption social media platform. Each in succession thoroughly failed to dislodge or even make much of a dent in Twitter’s disordered and Frankensteinian dominance. It’s the power of network effects. Everyone can want to leave (or at least a big chunk of users can want that) and yet everyone is simultaneously trapped. It’s a collective action problem.
Read More
Our New World of Shiny Objects Rushing Across the Sky
A perennial feature of Trumpism is that Trump is constantly launching threats and shiny objects of all sorts. Some of those he’ll follow through on; most he won’t. They all put opponents back on their heels. And that is, of course, the point. Trump lets it all ride and acts on what seems to serve his interests in the moment. Or maybe he doesn’t. That’s also the point. He’s the actor; his opponents are the reactors.
That spurs a knock-on feature of Trumpism. His opponents are among the biggest proponents of the seriousness of his threats. We’ll come back to that.
Polls have come out in the days since the election showing clear majorities favoring Trump’s “mass deportation” plans. Or at least they seem to. One I saw over the weekend asked if respondents supported Trump’s plan start “a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.” 57% of respondents to a CBS/YouGov poll said they supported that. But let’s note that this is already U.S. government policy. There is a question of what’s prioritized, just what lengths the government goes to to find people. But the question in the poll described what is actually current policy. When asked how he plans to start “mass deportation,” incoming “Border Czar” Tom Homan says they’ll focus first on criminals and terrorist undocumented immigrants. Well, that is especially current U.S. policy.
Read MoreToday I read this piece in Vox comparing the 2004 and 2024 elections and discussing what Democrats today can learn about how the Democrats came back from defeat. Author Nicole Narea says Democrats did three things: 1) They pursued a 50-state strategy, 2) They reevaluated their messaging, 3) They sought to become the party of ideas.
There’s some truth to Item #1. A 50-state strategy is absolutely something Democrats should pursue. But none of these three things are actually what happened. And they’re not why Democrats scored two successive wave elections in 2006 and 2008.
The Vox article speaks of a “reckoning” the Democrats had to have then and another “reckoning” they have to have now. I absolutely see red whenever I see people using this word in a political context. In post-election terms, it appears to mean a kind of ash and sackcloth self-criticism session on the part of whoever you have decided is to blame for the Democrats’ loss.
No.
Read MoreA new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Matt Gaetz’s quick rise and fall, RFK Jr.-curious Democrats and the worst people in media this week.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
A Party of Institutions In An Era of Distrust
We’ve been discussing a lot of plans and ingenious new strategies for a Democratic comeback which are variously half-baked, hyperbolic, histrionic or merely silly. Here’s one that I believe is not. It’s not even a strategy. It’s simply identifying a real challenge, or a knot Democrats need to untangle.
A key reason that many people are Democrats today is that they’re attached to a cluster of ideas like the rule of law, respect for and the employment of science and expertise, a free press and the protection of the range of institutions that guard civic life, quality of life and more. On the other side, say we have adherents of a revanchist, authoritarian politics which seeks break all those things and rule from the wreckage that destruction leaves in its path. So Democrats constantly find themselves defending institutions, or “the establishment,” or simply the status quo. Yet we live in an age of pervasive public distrust — distrust of institutions, leaders, expertise. And not all of this distrust is misplaced. Many institutions, professions, and power centers have failed to live up to their sides of the social contract.
In short, Democrats are by and large institutionalists in an age of mistrust. And that is challenging place to be.
Read More