Working Towards Tolerable

So we have this:

There was a lot of “Trump is mad because his parade sucked” responses on BlueSky. As the song goes: perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Another possibility is that Trump has a stupid, blunt instrument approach to politics, but it works for him. He takes a maximalist position, and then retreats when it doesn’t work. Over the last few days, he’s been hearing from MAGA voters who are mad that their farms, construction businesses and restaurants will be deprived of cheap immigrant labor. So he course corrected, while throwing plenty of raw meat to the urban-hating base.

He does this a lot. TACO is one way to put it, but that’s a counterproductive as a long-term political slogan because the stuff where he chickens out is bad for the country. (It’s great as a taunt, though, and I’m not second-guessing people who say it.) The politics of dealing with a maximalist who constantly changes his position, in our current media environment, aren’t no-brainer. The main strategy I’d suggest is the “I told you so” or “You did what we wanted, great, do more!” gambit. Some Democrats have been predicting that Trump’s immigration policy would be a disaster, and if I were one of those few, I’d be saying two things: First, I’m glad Trump finally came around to what Democrats have been saying about the importance of hard-working immigrants, now let’s see a work program instead of random enforcement. Second, there are a lot of Republicans in cities who employ immigrants, Democrats don’t desert people who vote for them like Trump does.

Also, I’m behind on posting mail, but I’ll get to what everyone’s sent me, and I do appreciate it.