Adjusting My Expectations

In my post on Trump’s grift vs. Elon’s main chance, I noted that my expectation was that Trump would be all about his petty grifts. I didn’t anticipate Musk being the King.

So I was way wrong, and a course correction is required. With that in mind, I’ve been searching out people who are stridently demanding more — more from Democrats, more from citizens, just more, more more. I’m thinking that’s the direction we need to go.

Let’s start with Senate Gabe. He’s a former staffer for Minnesota Senator Tina Smith. He’s disgruntled, but he clearly knows his shit. (Note that I fucking hate the Senate. I am a House guy, through and through, full disclosure.)

Anyway, Gabe has gone beyond pushing that the Senate should obstruct to saying Congress should impeach. And, of course, he’s right. The constitution anticipated a Trump, and the founders gave us a way to get rid of him. Unfortunately, they didn’t anticipate that the Trump’s party would be all-in for him.

A while back, Gabe posted a Congressional Research Service study about quorum and filibusters. I couldn’t find it on BlueSky so I DM’d him and he got back to me with a reference to this link. Here’s his color on that:

Now, I like Chris Murphy and I think he says a lot of the right things. Ditto for some other Senators. But quorum calls, as Gabe notes, would be hugely disruptive. And for all the good talk from Murphy et. al., they are unwilling to do this kind of obstruction.

My position now, since I’m Gabe-pilled, is fucking do it.

The second one is Oliver Willis. I've read him forever, but I lost touch with his stuff over the years. Oliver is consistently more strident than me. But I’ll be god damned if I don’t respect someone who puts in the work, and Oliver watched thousands of hours of Fox when he was working for Media Matters. And he posts regularly on DailyKos slagging on Republicans. So here’s an example of a post that I think is a little on the edge:

I think that Booker needs more gentle encouragement rather than correction. But I have to respect Oliver’s take. He knows more than me. He understands how right-wing media works, and how Democrats should respond in a way that gets attention similar to right wingers. So I am probably wrong, and he’s probably right. AOC, for example, would not make the point Booker made in the way he did.

My final name-check, hat tip to Kay in the comments on another blog, is the DSA. As a Democrat of a certain age, I should cringe at this stuff. But having a little play at a Tesla dealership in Seattle — why the fuck not?

Why not do whatever you can do to reach whoever is reachable? Will this work? No clue, and who cares? These people put in the time to do something that might grab some attention. I support them.

So, my conclusion is I support anyone who is moving “the discourse” in a direction of opposition to Trump. That’s my course correction. I hope you agree.