Why is someone donating this much money?

Kos of Daily Kos posted a piece titled Why Democrats need their own Trump. He admitted that was a poor choice for a title. But his point is a good one: The nasty guy has been the most effective recent president. Alas, what he’s done is all to benefit himself and not the country.

The reason is simple: Trump doesn’t believe in constraints. He doesn’t care about norms, traditions, public opinion, elite opinion, or whether anyone thinks he should be doing what he’s doing. ... Trump has shown that all those traditions and conventions were nothing more than artificial constraints on the power of the presidency. All those Democrats before him who claimed they couldn’t do this or that? It’s all been shown to be bulls---. The office has extraordinary power, now with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval. ... Trump has exposed something that many Americans—and certainly many Democrats—never fully appreciated: The modern presidency is far more powerful than anyone admitted. For decades, Democratic presidents treated many of those powers as off-limits, constrained by norms and a fear of backlash from the wealthy and powerful interests most invested in the status quo. Sometimes public opinion mattered too. But more often, caution was treated as wisdom because the people who benefited from inaction demanded it. Trump has demonstrated that most of those constraints were voluntary.

Too often Democrats used their time in power to make small adjustments while explaining why they can’t make bigger changes. I see that as a big reason why voters are so annoyed with Democrats. To succeed in 2028 Democrats much actually use power. Anything less and voters are caught between Republicans who break the government and Democrats who restore the status quo. There is the illusion that good things can’t happen quickly. That illusion benefits the wealthy – and we now have a trillionaire. Kos knows what kind of candidate he wants out of the dozens who will run for the Oval Office in 2028. He knows what kind he doesn’t want. Anyone who talks about the old Congressional camaraderie, who wants to make sure the other party has a voice, who accepts that the Supreme Court can’t be fixed – instant disqualification. I add: Yes, Democrats have been too constrained. But in many cases we need that constraint. We need a president who spends money according to how Congress allocates it, who brings Congress with him when he thinks war should be declared, who respects the right to vote and its outcome, who protects the little guy from the big guy instead of the reverse, who works for democracy instead of breaking it. That post prompted a second. In the comments of the first post many said the nasty guy and Republicans smash things. Democrats need to build. Kos agrees that Democrats need to build – housing, clean energy, infrastructure, health care that actually works, an economy for all people. But before building, Democrats need to smash a lot of things too, to make all the building possible. They have to stop protecting the machinery that created and protects today’s extreme inequality. Kos lists more than a dozen things Democrats should smash and says in his first draft of the post the list went on for pages. Here’s just a few things from his list.

+ The Senate filibuster + Citizens United and the campaign finance system it unleashed + Corporate monopolies + The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington + Social media algorithms designed to maximize outrage instead of informing people + Major media outlets owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires + Private prison companies

These things exist because they protect the people with money and power. Democrats need to stop treating them as if they were inscribed on stone tablets – that was the party’s big mistake between the two nasty guy terms. Democrats like to say change takes time. Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York because he was able to say here is part of the solution we can implement right now. Obama accepted the conventional limits to the presidency. The nasty guy tested every limit. Don’t mistake the status quo for progress. Robert J Petersen of the Kos community posted Hunter Biden’s advice to Democrats prior to the New York primary earlier this week. Here are a few of his points:

+ Authenticity is measurable. Voters can smell a focus group from a mile away. + Conviction beats caution. The candidates who said hard things about rent, about who pays for what, about Gaza, they won. The triangulators lost. + Cost of living is everything. Everything else is wallpaper. + If you want to lead a party you have to be willing to fight inside it. Mamdani didn’t ask permission. He took the field.

In a third article Kos wrote that conservatives are sicker and die younger than liberals. We remember their antics during the pandemic when they refused masks and other things that could keep them healthy. But this study includes data from the mid-to-late 2010s. One reason for the disparity might be that less healthy people became more conservative. See how the right responded when Michelle Obama suggested children eat vegetables. Another reason might be more disturbing: “Conservative politics itself may now be a health risk.” People on the right are more skeptical of medicines, not just vaccines. They’re more distrustful of the “institutions and professionals trying to keep them alive.” They’ve been told expertise is the enemy and are hostile to it.

And to add insult to injury, liberals are now subsidizing those ridiculously unhealthy conservatives through higher health insurance premiums, just like rural red America wouldn’t survive without blue states and cities subsidizing them.

Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos, assembled by Greg Dworkin, features several quotes about the New York primary I mentioned. The short answer is that the candidates that Zohran Mamdani endorsed won. Below that Dworkin included tweets by Jamie Dupree:

Senate rebukes Trump over the Iran war, voting 50-48 to approve a House-passed resolution directing the President to remove U.S. military forces from hostilities against Iran. 4 Republicans voted Yes, 1 Dem (Fetterman) voted No. Trump cannot veto this war powers resolution on Iran - because the form it was in (a concurrent resolution) does not go to a President for signature. In essence, it is a non-binding vote by Congress.

Axios commented on US House races in Maryland suburbs to Washington. The summary: There is such a thing as spending too much on a candidate. It leads to people asking, “Why is someone donating this much money?” Down in the comments. ClimateHawk reported on the number of formerly Confederate states won by Republicans (the party that freed the slaves) from 1880 (after Reconstruction ended) to 1948. In those 18 presidential elections Republicans took zero of those eleven states, except for 1920 when they took 1 and 1928 when they took five (Hoover). They took 3-5 states from 1952-1965, two of those were for Eisenhower. Then Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965. He said he was doing the right thing but would lose the South for a generation. In the 15 presidential elections since then (much longer than a generation) Democrats have taken 0-3 states except when voting for Carter after Watergate, when all Southern states voted for him, and when Clinton took 4 of 11 states. In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Robert Jimison and Michael Gold of The New York Times:

“Hours after President Trump angrily confronted Senate Republicans for joining Democrats to approve a war powers resolution rebuking his handling of the war in Iran, Republican leaders brought another, nearly identical measure to the floor. In a 50-to-47 vote, with one senator voting “present,” they defeated the measure in a largely symbolic move that did nothing to change the resolution the Senate had narrowly approved a day earlier. Instead, it served as an unmistakable gesture to mollify a furious president who had just berated them. ... Ultimately, the maneuver did not undo Tuesday’s vote, which was the first war powers measure approved by both chambers since the war began and remains adopted. Wednesday’s vote neither rescinded nor superseded it. Still, Republicans sought to characterize the procedural move as a chance to “re-vote,” even though the initial action cannot simply be erased through a subsequent vote on different legislation.”

Jay Michaelson of Forward wrote that Israel is now pretty much isolated in the world and is doing a good job of alienating its allies in the US.

And for what? For what bowl of porridge did Israel sell its birthright as a member of the civilized world? For nationalist pipe-dreams of Gaza wiped off the map? For keeping Bibi’s coalition alive so he doesn’t go to jail for bribery? For messianic dreams of Greater Israel? For the most hawkish possible interpretation of Israel’s legitimate security needs? For revenge?”

I saw images of this elsewhere (which I can’t find now). The Independent in Britain reported that in 2014 a French TV channel showed a fictional weather report for August 2050 to show the effects of climate warming. It showed France hitting 43C (109.4F). That prediction was surpassed 24 years early. France and much of Europe and Britain are in a heat wave and the temperature in Paris hit 42.6C (108.7F). And that happened in June. This is a big problem because only a quarter of homes in Paris are air conditioned.