My god, how many years have we been promised this blue wave, the bluenami that would sweep away the chaff.
I thought it was a myth, like a brokered convention.
And now … what happens? I’m sure the governors’ races are a net win. It’s just frightening to think that all the Congressional power is on one side, isn’t it? Even if it’s ‘my’ side. I trust some of them, but power corrupts, and surely some individuals are out for revenge.
Are we just going to end up with the same uncooperative nonsense?
Well, the glow lasted almost a day, anyway.
2 responses to “Oh, it was a very very good election day, but now it’s tomorrow”
I mean, nearly anything is going to be better than “do whatever Trump wants and cash in as much as possible” – I share concerns about how much the people elected will in fact do the disagreeable work (limiting monopolies! restricting what they themselves can invest in or bet on while in a position to affect their own stock interests/bets! finding the corrupt garbage and eliminating it even if someone on ‘your side’ or a big donor benefits! getting social media companies to stop doing an extraordinary range of evil things even though they used to donate D!).
But a lot of fairly bonkers crimes have been committed, and I do not think that prosecuting those crimes (redacting Trump more thoroughly than *the victims* in the Epstein Files, which was extremely not the law that was passed; Tom Homan’s bribes; defying court orders and laws to rip down part of the White House without either environmental [heeey asbestos] or historical [heeey priceless artifacts] review; cash for pardons including cancelling out *the penalties those criminals were supposed to pay to their victims*; ignoring records-retention laws; ignoring US and international war crime law; etc.) is revenge or “getting even” – I do think restoring the rule of law and the presumption of regularity and, like, “the way to get ahead is to do a good job, not just cheat and be rich already” are very important things. If they start doing garbage like searching a naturalized citizen’s house for paperwork that their now-deceased father is asserted without evidence to have filled out correctly in a pre-dawn raid and seizing their phone in the process, sure, that’s probably revenge. But there’s a whoooole lot of low-hanging criminal fruit to pluck first (I mean: even if you go for immigration things: consider Musk, who has *bragged in public* about deliberately violating the terms of his academic visa and making money off that choice; this is… different… from “your father, when you were a small child, may have made some sort of minor error on the refugee paperwork, even though you’ve been a solid tax-paying citizen for decades now.”).
But there’s a lot of enthusiastically and knowingly committed felonies, some of them bragged about in public, to deal with. And a lot of legislation needed. Hopefully they can, as Warnock says, walk and chew gum. And hopefully they can avoid Big Business Thrall! And there’s no way of putting some of these Pandora’s Box things back in the boxes (i.e. strait of Hormuz; US as preferred global destination for extremely smart people; US currency as default second-currency for the world; US tech as default for most of the world; trust in the US). But also: it’d be REALLY remarkably hard to do worse than the R House and Senate, so there’s that. Also we can primary the heck out of the ones that don’t do good work while they’re in there. 🙂
If I had to pick – I would give up on policing the insider trading and fight bigger battles. That practice seems to be semi-allowed every other administration. I would ignore the loss of prestige. That will return when he leaves. The graft and pardons are embarrassing but you can point to any president and find an example. However …I want a) to get some honesty on the Epstein files. I want b) that grotesque ballroom replaced with something to scale, and useful like a new and improved East wing. And I want c) ICE abolished and every victim given triple restitution. Those are my top three if I have to pick my battles. Oooo and take away his name. Change it. The President formerly known as Trump.