Five Deep Breaths

Image of President Biden winning the 2020 election, courtesy of Politico

It’s Friday morning, and it feels like a storm just swept through and the clouds are clearing. That’s a great time to pause and take stock.

These times are certainly anxiety-inducing, with multiple crises—in democracy, world peace, our climate, and even our basic civil rights and freedoms—dominating the headlines.

Today, I take a look at where our politics stand and invite you to take five deep breaths with me. I want to be realistic about the threats to our system and our way of life, but I also want to demonstrate that there is also good reason to hope. There are wins we can celebrate today and positive future outcomes that are very possible, even likely. And that should lift our spirits.

So let’s float peacefully in a rainbow-striped hot air balloon, looking down upon the field of American politics. Take in the clear sky, the warm sun, and the promise of the moment, and breathe these five considerations in!

Debt crisis averted

A few months ago, the GOP led a full-scale assault upon our economy and targeted the most vulnerable among us, threatening to default on our debt for the first time in U.S. history unless we gave in to their extremist demands for across-the-board spending cuts. Their bill would have decimated benefits to veterans, the elderly, the disabled and the poor.

It turns out, they were all bluster. The deal approved between the negotiators and now both chambers of Congress does none of those things. Importantly, it takes away the GOP’s most powerful weapon—the debt ceiling threat—until well past the next presidential election. As I wrote about when the deal was first announced, the rest of the bill looks more or less like what the parties would have negotiated as part of the regular budget process.

Progressives grumbled, but the far-right of the GOP howled at the outcome. The bill passed with more Democratic votes in the House and Senate than Republican, making Speaker McCarthy look like a very poor negotiator for the GOP. 

But while President Biden is no doubt pleased with the outcome, he’s not waving it triumphantly in the GOP’s faces. Instead, the budget deal feels like his other major bipartisan accomplishments, from infrastructure to the CHIPS and PACT bills, where cooperation was the hallmark. Biden consistently signals to the vast middle of the country that you can trust him to get things done and not turn Washington into a circus. It’s about compromise and moving forward, the way government is supposed to operate.

For that, we all deserve a deep breath. (No, I mean it. Close your eyes, take a breath in, and understand that the worst economic crisis of Biden’s presidency is now comfortably behind us.)

The House of few cards

Without the threat of the debt ceiling, Republicans are going to quickly find they have few tricks left to play. Extreme legislation will go nowhere, given the Democratic-controlled Senate and Biden’s veto power. And the budget battles set for this fall have their limits already in place due to the deal the sides just passed.

That means that “more hearings” are the Republicans’ next best option to try and stay relevant. But we’ve already witnessed their utter incompetence at running investigations and chairing those hearings. So far, the public “weaponization” hearings have been a bust; their alleged whistleblowers show up with lots of baggage or the GOP loses their informants completely. Or, we’re back to Hunter Biden’s laptop, which is only interesting to people who are addicted to Fox and other far-right media outlets.

Their latest efforts to subpoena the FBI—for (checks notes) a document accusing Joe Biden of corruption that was part of a set obtained from serial liar Rudy Giuliani—is a prime example. That subpoena was met with a hard “no” from the FBI’s Republican, Trump-appointed head, Christopher Wray, a man whom Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis have both now said they would fire one day one if elected. But sure, support law enforcement! Wray offered to let Congressmembers see the document, but out of concerns about revealing confidential sources, refused to turn it over. The GOP angrily refused, then fumbled the moment further, with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) admitting on Fox, “We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden [sic.] are accurate," arguing instead that the question is whether the FBI fulfilled its obligation to investigate.

And now, they (checks notes again) want to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the document he just offered to let them see in person. This from a party who refused to honor subpoenas around January 6. Also, good luck getting that contempt of Congress charge approved by the Department of Justice.

I can guarantee that over the coming months, the hearings will amount to so much sound and jury, signifying nothing. As a second deep breath moment: Close your eyes and turn all that predictable GOP table pounding and shouting into little chipmunk tail slapping and squeaking sounds. Because that’s all it will amount to.

Accomplishments over cruelty

The spring legislative sessions in several states are drawing to a close, and the results could not be more stark. In the blue-controlled states, there were massive advancements in civil rights, including abortion access, trans sanctuary laws and expansion of voting rights. There were victories for labor, for the climate, for gun control and for family leave. 

Contrast that to places like Florida and Texas, where red-controlled governments focused on criminalizing abortions, targeting migrants, whitewashing history, banning books and basically being as cruel as possible to the LGBTQ+ community. These are grievance and culture war issues that don’t help average families in the slightest.

Now that they’ve passed these laws, the red states will be on the defensive, both in the federal courts and from grassroots activists who will take on their agenda. It will not be hard to demonstrate that the GOP is the party that wants to restrict personal choice and freedoms, police thought in schools and public libraries, and scapegoat the most vulnerable. 

This was a huge shift to the radical right by a party drunk on its own power and accountable to no one because of severe gerrymandering and political rigging. But today’s Republicans are vastly out of touch with ordinary Americans who still want the government to fix roads, educate and protect kids from gun violence, and not get between them and their family doctor.

The 2022 midterms even proved that the GOP was too extreme for a significant number of its own voters, who crossed party lines in droves or refused to vote for MAGA loyalists and election deniers. But instead of course-correcting, the Republican Party doubled down with even more draconian laws and restrictions. Not a smart move.

Third deep breath: The GOP has handed Democrats a powerful contrast to run on in 2024, in a national election that was already looking bleak for them.

The GOP is imploding 

Everywhere you turn in red America, there are scandals. The Tennessee House leadership is under investigation. The Texas Attorney General has been impeached by his own party. And the frontrunner of the Republican Party, who is already under indictment in New York, will soon likely face multiple federal indictments and state election interference charges in Georgia.

Rather than unite to stop Trump from being the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, which is a recipe for a repeat of the 2020 electoral disaster, the GOP is hopelessly fractured, with more candidates joining the race daily. To remain in the good graces of the MAGA base, these newcomers to the race are hesitant to criticize Trump. Indeed many even try to appear more extreme than him. Gov. DeSantis has recently tried to do so, but he’s got about as much personality as a doorknob. Why vote for Trump-lite when you’ve got the real MAGA deal right there? No one can out-Trump Trump. 

There’s also the math problem. Trump’s lock on some 30 percent of the base means that it is nearly impossible, due to the dominance of winner-take-all GOP state primaries, for any one else in a wide field of contenders to overtake Trump. Perhaps they are simply hoping that the weight of all the indictments will finally break him, but in all likelihood they will only endear his base more to him, and he will grow stronger in the primary race as a result.

Historically, when the primaries of either party produce someone too far left or too far right for America, the national election is a rout. Remember George McGovern? Or Barry Goldwater? Trump ranks up with them, if not easily surpasses them, in his own extremism. Yet the GOP can’t escape its own trap. 

Deep breath four: All the signs point toward the GOP continuing to lose voters and to nominating Donald Trump again. Deep breath in, remembering we beat him by seven million votes in 2020. Deep breath out, imagining that number growing even bigger.

It’s the math, stupid

But but but, what about national polls showing Trump and Biden neck and neck? Or what if something happens to Trump and it’s DeSantis we have to face? 

National polls don’t mean much this far out, but national votes don’t decide elections. Electoral college votes do, and that’s where the math is even worse for the GOP.

Trump won the 2016 election by flipping three key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden won the 2020 election by flipping those three states back and adding Arizona and Georgia to the blue column.

In 2022, political observers took keen note of the strength of the Democratic Party in the states Trump had flipped six years ago. In a midterm election, the results are supposed to favor the party out of power, in this case the GOP. But in those key battlegrounds, Democrats way outperformed, winning the governorships in all three and flipping the state Houses in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The GOP is now in disarray in those states.

That same election, Trump-endorsed GOP candidates in Arizona and Georgia lost as well, from Kari Lake in Arizona to Herschel Walker in Georgia. If Trump’s hand-picked candidates lost like that, what will voters do when the guy himself is on the ballot?

In 2023, a big test in Wisconsin came with the state Supreme Court race, the most expensive in the state’s history. The Democratic-aligned progressive candidates thumped the MAGA candidate by 11 points. That’s in a state where elections are normally won by a single percentage point, as they were in 2016 and 2020. 

Assuming, as we should, that Trump will not win either Pennsylvania or Michigan in 2024—because a cruel, authoritarian, malignant narcissist who boasts of killing Roe v. Wade just doesn’t sit well with suburban women voters—that means Trump would have to win all three of Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia to somehow win the election. 

That is some very tough math. If the GOP couldn’t win those states outright and solidly in 2022, the chances they will do so in 2024 are quite slim. The chance that they win all three with Trump on the ticket are very, very low.

By the way, the same goes for DeSantis, should some weird development put him at the top of the GOP ticket. DeSantis is Trump without the charisma, a dour and unlikeable guy who is untested and runs on unpopular, spiteful things. He would turn off voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in much the same way Trump does.

In sum, the map and the math since 2020 have shifted our way, as 2022 demonstrated beyond a doubt. And there is no reason to believe, based on what the GOP is doing now, that it will shift back toward them in 2024. What we therefore have is a historic opportunity to smash the GOP and its extremism in a national election in just under a year and a half. It’s a question now of by how much.

Deep breath five: Will it into being. We will win the presidential election in 2024 and keep America from tumbling into further chaos and fascism. It will take all hands on deck, but anything worth fighting for always comes with a fight. And we will be ready and positioned on very favorable high ground.

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My special Indictment Offer of 20 percent off the regular annual subscription to The Status Kuo remains good through June 5! By signing up as paid supporters, you are keeping me from having to take a legal gig so I can focus on my work here. And each new supporter this week adds to the indictment karma against Trump. I’m feeling pretty good about the chances, and I hope you are, too! Have a great weekend.