Dont Allow Gaslighting And Fox Make You Forget Who's Responsible For The Chaos And The Dysfunction

And The Inflation

From time to time— like almost all the time— DWT seems obsessed with a character or a theme that keeps popping up on this blog day after day. You may have noticed we cover George Santos, Marjorie Traitor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Sam Bankman Fried a little more than is necessary. And that now we’re doing what we can to expose what the GOP has burdened America with as a speaker. But one of the themes we’ve been hammering away at for a few months is how Trump has worked with his allies in Congress to guarantee that the media would be filled with narratives that highlight chaos and dysfunction. People who pay attention understand that Trump and his MAGAty allies are the source of these stories and, more important, the source of the chaos and dysfunction. But people who pay attention… well that may be around 10% of the voters. The other 90% may well be mislead into believing all this chaos and dysfunction is Biden’s and the Democrats’ fault. I might add that at the moment similar tactics are being used by authoritarians and demagogues— particularly Putin, Xi, Modi, Lukashenko, Erdoğan and Orbán— all over the world.

But here in the U.S., Trump and his allies are constantly spreading misinformation and disinformation, undermining the credibility of the mainstream media and appealing to primitive emotions to gaslight and manipulate the public into believing that either their troubles are caused by Biden or if not that, is the fault of “both sides.”

Believe it or not, the MAGA/QAnon crowd still appeals to low-IQ followers to believe that Biden is to blame for the COVID pandemic, which has caused widespread economic hardship and social disruption, despite the fact that it began long before Biden took office and it was Trump's regime that woefully mishandled the pandemic response. Then there’s the systemic inflation that is driving voters nuts as they are bombarded by false Republican claims that a kind of inflation caused by supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and Trump’s spending, immigration and taxation policies is somehow Biden’s fault and the fault of the American Rescue Plan. Obviously, Trump's goal in blaming Biden is to sow discord and division. He wants to convince his supporters that Biden is incompetent and that the country is headed in the wrong direction. If he can successfully gaslight people into believing that Biden is responsible for inflation, it will be easier for him to win back the presidency in 2024. Since objective facts are of no interest to him or his followers, he routinely claims that inflation is higher than it actually is.

Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has caused energy prices to rise and has disrupted global supply chains. Trump gaslights his followers into believing that Biden is responsible for the war, even while Trump praises Putin. Even as NRA-GOP caused mass shootings increase,Trump actually gaslights his moron followers into believing that Biden and the Democrats are responsible. We’re not talking about critical thinkers here. As recently demonstrated by Congress’ inability tomelect a speaker or passing legislation to benefit working families, the U.S. is more politically polarized than at any time since the Civil War. Trump gaslights his followers into believing that Biden is responsible for the polarization, even though Trump has exacerbated the problem by spreading misinformation and offering people information that confirms their existing beliefs (confirmation bias helps explain the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020). As does Trump’s cult of personality and his use of fear and scapegoating that he learned from reading Hitler

"Speakers Of The House" by Nancy Ohanian

So… I was happy yesterday to read David Frum’s take on how the public is blaming Biden for the chaos and dysfunction that Trump and his allies are behind. “Whatever your theory,” wrote Frum, “it should take into account a curious coincidence: how closely Biden’s approval numbers have tracked the numbers from Obama’s first term. Obama’s numbers slumped in the second half of his third year, 2011. In the middle of that October, his disapproval number reached 41 percent, not very far off from Biden’s 37 percent at the same point in October 2023. The world of 2011 was a very different place from the world of 2023. The job market was weak, not red hot the way it is now. Immigrants were returning home, not arriving by the millions. China’s economy was booming, not slumping. Yet if the external facts diverged, the internal dynamics of U.S. politics 12 years ago bore many similarities to those of today. Republican leaders in the House faced a mutiny from their radical fringe. Then, as now, that fringe was impelled by conspiratorial theories: birtherism in those days, elaborate fantasies about Ukraine and the president’s scapegrace son today. Speaker John Boehner barely held on to his job— at the price of a battle over the debt ceiling in May 2011 that pushed the United States to the edge of default. Then, as now, the chaos in Washington was blamed on the president.”

Maybe the problem inheres not in the president but in the nature of the coalition a Democratic president heads.

The Republicans represent a smaller but more cohesive alliance in American politics. You may scoff at my describing the Republicans as “cohesive” in the week after their fight over the speakership, but that fight actually proves the point. Republicans in the House were divided over one big issue: Was it time to move on from Trump or time to rally to him? Speaker Kevin McCarthy tried to blur the difference. The pro-Trumpers rebelled, defeated him, and then rejected any speaker not 100 percent aligned with Trump.

The caucus seesawed between less-Trumpy options (Scalise, Emmer) and more-Trumpy ones (Jordan, Johnson). The more-Trumpy faction finally won when its opponents submitted. The battle led to a decision— a bad one for democracy and responsible government, but a decision all the same: total triumph for the pro-Trump cause, abject surrender by the less-Trumpy holdouts.

Republicans disagree on many issues, notably aid to Ukraine. But they occupy a much narrower demographic and cultural range than Democrats do. That’s one reason the Republican Party can generate an audience for Fox News and the Democrats have no equivalent: Republicans can converge on a more or less united story about who they are.

Democrats span a much greater breadth of racial, regional, cultural, and ideological identities. They are the big-tent party compared with the Republicans’ little tent. Just consider this question: Who is the Democratic base? Jim Clyburn’s voters or Elizabeth Warren’s? The people who follow “dirtbag left” podcasts or those who listen and donate to National Public Radio? The members of the Sierra Club or the members of the United Auto Workers? Do you find them on a Sunday morning at a church of praise, a farmers’ market, or working an overtime shift?

Among the consequences for the Democrats of this multiplicity of identities is a special vulnerability to partisan attack. Both parties are home to people who espouse unpopular ideas. But the most unpopular ideas associated with the Republican Party— banning abortion nationwide, cutting Social Security and Medicare— actually are official policy. The most unpopular ideas associated with the Democratic Party— defunding the police, opening the border— are not its policies.

In a president’s third-year slump, those not-party unpopular ideas can weigh heavily on Democratic fortunes. The party leader takes a lot of blame for things his party does not intend to do.

But this vulnerability also creates an opportunity. A Republican candidate cannot easily escape his party’s unpopular stances. A Democratic nominee can. Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis cannot fight their party’s demons, because their party’s demons are genuinely powerful and scary. But Joe Biden can fight his party’s, because those demons are weak and marginal within the Democratic coalition, to the extent that they even exist.

…How, for example, do voters know which candidate is “tougher on crime”? Probably not one American in 50 is aware that Biden’s budgets proposed funding the hiring of more local police officers, whereas Trump’s budgets proposed cutting their number. Voters know that Trump huffs and puffs about stopping crime (at least crimes committed by other people), but they do not hear Biden on the issue as much. So they credit the candidate with no actual anti-crime policy and penalize the incumbent president who really does have one. Immigration presents a similar challenge for Democrats. In May, Biden allowed the expiration of a Trump-era policy that used the COVID-19 emergency as a justification for barring asylum seekers from the country. If you watch Fox News, you probably know about that. What you probably don’t know is that Biden promptly replaced Trump’s temporary restrictions with a new permanent system. Those who crossed another safe country on their way to the United States will be refused an asylum hearing here. Biden is now negotiating a tougher border package with Senate Republicans that might end altogether the practice of releasing those detained while crossing the border into the United States.

…[D]id you know that the Biden administration has indicted more than 3,000 people for defrauding COVID programs? Did you know that under Biden, U.S. production of artillery shells will more than quadruple? Were you aware that the U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of oil, producing almost twice as much as runner-up Saudi Arabia, and that U.S. oil exports hit an all-time high in 2022? Did you know that the U.S. has become by far the planet’s largest producer of natural gas, and also the largest exporter of gas in its shipborne liquid form?

Every day, the president’s partisan opponents do big self-condemning things that are certain to alienate large numbers of voters. These go beyond the familiar litany of bans on abortion, government shutdowns, and bigotries of various kinds. Those political issues are familiar territory; they tend not to change minds. What does change minds are acts that challenge images and stereotypes.

The Trump of 2016 did a little of this: After years of Paul Ryan trying to take people’s health coverage away, Trump vowed to deliver better health care at lower prices. He was lying, obviously, but voters did not yet know that for certain. Now they do.

The Trump of 2024 and his party have lost the opportunistic novelty of their 2016 promises. Instead, they have cast themselves as cartoon villains: a House speaker who opens his tenure by defunding the tax cops who catch tax cheats. Republican governors who pass laws to allow child labor by undocumented immigrants. Republican senators whose idea of “America First” is to sell out America’s friends fighting for their lives. A likely Republican presidential nominee who endlessly talks of strength but who couldn’t open a jar of pickles unaided.

Biden is subject to all kinds of unfair and seemingly unconvincing criticisms. This old-fashioned Humphrey-Muskie Democrat is depicted as a socialist, a secret ally of black-masked anarchists, a patsy for extremism of all kinds. Some Biden supporters think responding to such hallucinatory accusations is beneath their dignity. But precisely because the real record is so very different, these bubbles can readily be burst with a satisfying pop.