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On Saturday, in a post about the current state of and future of Trumpism, I said that a key reason for the slow deterioration of Trump’s 2024 support is his relentlessly backward-looking and self-centered focus. In other words, it’s the Big Lie and the ways in which the Big Lie has incorporated the Mueller probe, his impeachments and all of his other first term wounds and grievances. TPM Reader TS wrote in to say that while he agreed with my argument he wondered whether Jon Chait’s related piece modified or changed my view of this. Chait argued that the conventional wisdom, which holds that Trump needs to give up his fixation on the 2020 election, is plainly wrong. Not only does he not need to drop the Big Lie — in fact, it’s his best strategy for getting the 2024 nomination.

So who’s right?

I got this fascinating report from TPM Reader EK about the situation in Arizona’s 2nd district …

I wanted to share a closer look at one House race to get some insight into where Nate may be off.

FiveThirtyEight shows Walt Blackman with an 84% chance of winning over incumbent Tom O’Halleran in Arizona’s new 2nd Congressional District.

First, the Republican primary is in disarray. Blackman has proposed murder charges for women who get abortions. Trump came to Arizona to endorse Ed Crane, who has very few ties to Arizona. Trump was actually booed by the audience because they want Ron Watkins, who had a key role in forming Q Anon.

Attached is a flyer Crane supporters mailed to Republicans attacking Blackman for the Aug. 2 primary.

I’ve been noting in different posts that there are more disconnects than usual in making sense of the 2022 election. A lot of things don’t quite seem to fit. Is this the continuing upheaval of the last two years? A shift in the trend? Or just wishful thinking? Who knows. But TPM Reader YK noted to me recently a little detail that helps quantify that disconnect. Our friend Nate Silver’s 538 forecasts include three versions. One with a mix of polls, expert opinion and a mix of history, fundraising, voting patterns and more. It’s this last one that is usually treated as the canonical forecast. That one currently shows the Senate at 50%-50% between Democratic and Republican control. With the House it’s 85%-15% in favor of the GOP. (Technically, these are the percentage of times the computer simulation gives victory to each side.)

One great theme of reportage on the Trump presidency is that it took Trump almost his entire term of office to learn how to make the federal government run to his purposes, to bend it to his will. He learned to ignore his cabinet secretaries and operate through the lesser-known officials with their hands on the levers of power. He found ways to exploit the maze of loopholes, workarounds and unenforceable laws which essentially allowed him to ignore Senate confirmation and oversight. This week Axios published a big report on how Trump and his top advisors are planning to use this knowledge in a second term to gut the federal bureaucracy and restock it with an army of Trump loyalists. In other words, in term one, Trump’s very ignorance and laziness provided a critical insulation against his worst instincts and most malicious goals. In term two he will hit the ground running knowing exactly what to do.

While accurate in many regards, this view of the man and the trajectory of his presidency misses the essence of it. What hides from most, almost in plain sight, is that Trump now rarely discusses any political agenda — even in the broadest, most guttural and least policy-oriented sense of the term. There is no agenda other than revenge and payback for the injustices and injuries he personally suffered in his first term: the Democrats, the RINOs, Mueller, the impeachments, the “fake news”, what he memorably calls “Russia, Russia, Russia,” “Big Tech.” Remember that “fake news” wasn’t part of Trump’s 2016 campaign argot. That was appropriated from the growing discourse of campaign misinformation he profited from and retrofitted for use against what he perceived as an unfriendly press. Grievance and payback have always been the central touchstones of Trumpism. But this is distinct. To appreciate his arc we have to go back to the beginnings of the Trump presidency.

I wanted to flag again that the congressional generic ballot continues a small but steady creep in the direction of the Democrats. The shift is basically since the leak and then official release of the Dobbs decision. To be clear, Democrats are still very much the underdogs in the battle for the House, though they’re close to tied in the congressional generic ballot. The two prognostication sites I watch put the Dems’ odds in the 15% or less zone. So, not good! But the movement is in their direction and there’s more than three months to go.

At the same time, conventional wisdom is moving strongly in the Democrats’ direction in the Senate. There have been a lot of signs of this that conventional opinion really missed because they were seeing things so much through the prism of a GOP wave election. One of these now sees a 55% likelihood of Democrats maintaining control of the Senate and the other 50%-50%. These have each moved significantly in the Dems’ direction just over the last week.

If you didn’t see the Jan. 6th’s committee’s (for now) final hearing, it was a powerful presentation. The two big takeaways, if you’re already pretty versed in what we know about that day, are these: the exfiltration of Mike Pence was probably a closer-run thing than we’d even imagined. Members of Pence’s Secret Service detail were apparently talking of calling loved ones to say final goodbyes before they decided to move him to the Capitol complex’s secure location. We also saw more of Trump’s alternatively sullen and desperate refusal to face reality — or, perhaps more specifically, refusal to dispel his supporters’ absolute belief that his “landslide” victory had been stolen. Just a pathetic, degenerate huckster capable of great violence and evil.

The Secret Service text destruction story has been a sort of slow burn. As Kate Riga and I discussed in the new podcast episode, I think this is due to the fact that a lot of people in government and media are having a hard time making sense of the story. They keep wanting to hear more because the current facts don’t make any sense. More to the point, both the guilty and the innocent versions of events seem equally absurd. Is it really possible that the Secret Service would purge its records of Jan. 5th and 6th and somehow not think anyone would notice or care? It seems too over-the-top and brazen even for some of the most cynical of observers. At the same time, the Secret Service’s explanation seems even more absurd. Let’s take a moment to walk through what that story is.

* I wanted to note for your attention that the full slate of fake Trump electors in Georgia for the 2020 election have now gotten “target letters” (sub req) from the office of Fulton County (Atlanta) District Attorney Fani Willis. A target letter doesn’t guarantee someone will be indicted. But it generally means, be ready to be indicted.

* Another number in a collection of data points that don’t fit the standard narrative about the 2022 midterm: Democratic Senate candidate are wildly out-raising their GOP competitors among small donors (less than $200). That margin will likely be largely made up by big donors. But it’s still providing a significant advantage for Democrats and belies the narrative about flagging enthusiasm.

When Roe was overturned, it took with it a series of legal doctrines that undergirded other Court-mandated rights like the right to same sex marriage (Obergefell), to contraception (Griswold) and, less directly, the right to marry regardless of racial categories (Loving). Congressional Democrats have been pushing in recent days to pass new legislation to protect these rights by statute. For Democrats, it’s a win whatever the outcome. If Republicans block it in the Senate, as seems likely, it’s another issue to run on. If they don’t and it passes, great: a whole swath of Americans in jeopardy from the Court’s corruption get their rights confirmed by law.

This afternoon House Democrats brought a bill called the Respect for Marriage Act to a vote. But something unexpected happened.