Good news: we’re up against morons
When sizing up your enemy before battle, you look for weaknesses. You hope for ineptitude. It’s a bonus if it turns out your enemy is too naive about the nature of the battle to even know how to fight it correctly. In that regard we just got some good news.
You’d think that, having spent a decade on the national political stage, Donald Trump would have some basic understanding of how politics works by now. But he most decidedly does not. He’s only back in power because the media has once again dishonestly put him there while chasing its own goals. It doesn’t mean Trump has any political competence whatsoever. For that matter his worsening dementia seems to have robbed him of what little he used to understand. And the people who are left around Trump at this point don’t appear to have any understanding of how politics works either.
Case in point: Trump’s cabinet picks. He started off by nominating a handful of Republicans who are well liked within their party, such as Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem. This worried me. The smart move for Trump would be to make picks that ingratiate him to the Republican Senate and Republican House, so that those two entities will be more willing to go along with his corrupt antics later.
But then Trump blew it all yesterday when he nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. These are two high profile laugh out loud inappropriate picks that won’t just play poorly with the public, they’ll play poorly with the Senators who have to confirm them. Especially Gaetz, because no one wants to be associated with his particular alleged crimes.
Obviously, Trump and his babysitters are hoping to make these picks happen as recess appointments. But for that to happen, the Senate has to be willing to go along with it. The way to make that happen would be to pick low profile no-names who could easily be slipped through without creating any hassles or controversy for the Republican Senate. Instead Trump just handed the Republican Senate the most high profile un-confirmable name ever to be nominated for such a position. Alleged underage sex trafficker Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? Come on.
So now Trump and his babysitters have just made a huge mess of their own secret evil genius plan. They were going to confirm the cabinet during recess and hope no one noticed. But then they went and nominated someone who can’t possibly get confirmed during recess without everyone noticing.
The “best” case scenario for Trump is that Gaetz somehow manages to get confirmed, and then Gaetz becomes a scandal-a-day disaster for Trump that drags down his approval rating into the mud. The other scenario for Trump is that the Senate refuses to rubber stamp Gaetz, and Trump suffers the immediate body blow of a failed Attorney General nominee right out of the gate, which also significantly weakens him.
This is the kind of uniquely naive and stupid mistake that only Donald Trump could make. He could have picked any low profile lackey for Attorney General he wanted, gotten that person easily confirmed, and then that lackey could have quietly gotten away with all kinds of corrupt things. Instead Trump and his babysitters did the dumbest thing possible.
This demonstrates that Trump and his babysitters are extremely naive about how politics works. They’re under the impression that the way you win in politics is to make the most high profile aggressive move possible, without regard for blowback or what kind of ammunition you might be handing the other side. The people helping Trump make these picks are as naive as the self appointed Twitter pundits who go viral with kindergarten-level simplistic magic wand ideas and then wonder why no serious people are taking them up on the idea.
Last time around Trump at least had the benefit of having some people around him who understood how politics worked. He didn’t listen to them often enough, but at least he was hearing competent political strategy in one ear. This time around he’s surrounded by people who naively think Twitter is real life and therefore have no idea how to make anything happen. So if you’ve been looking for a bit of good news, here it is: we’re up against morons. Which means we have a chance of winning a lot of these battles.
