"When Donald Trump’s megabill passed the Senate, consummating nearly a half-year of aggressively reactionary policymaking by the 47th president, a colleague commented that 'it’s like the Biden presidency never happened.'"

"That’s true in the sense that between Trump’s executive orders and the megabill, it’s hard to find a single stone unmoved from where he found it when he took office in January. But on reflection, it might be quite literally true. The country, and even the Democratic Party, would very likely have been in better condition today had Trump been reelected in 2020 over Joe Biden...."

Writes Ed Kilgore, in "America Would Be Better Off If Trump Won in 2020" (Intelligencer).

How many of you are getting ready to comment: What do you mean if?!

Anyway... Kilgore plunges into his fantasy. Excerpt:

"Now and through November 2024, Republicans will be able to say that Biden has 'admitted' he allowed too much spending, which of course they blame for every conceivable economic ill."

"And if inflation subsides and a recession does not appear, Republicans will take credit for that via the debt-limit deal they 'forced' Biden and the shadowy Marxists who control him to accept. It’s fine red meat for the perpetually angry and conflict-savoring MAGA base."

 
Writes Ed Kilgore in "Kevin McCarthy May Have Already Won the Debt-Limit Fight" (NY Magazine).

"Could the governor who is battling to turn a progressive state college into a 'Hillsdale of the South' really be a tedious Establishment Republican who wants to cut the Social Security checks of righteous churchgoing Republican retirees?"

Asks Ed Kilgore in "Could Trump Run to DeSantis’s Left in 2024?" (New York Magazine).

He's reacting to the Rolling Stone article "Trump Is Plotting How to Kick DeSantis ‘In the Nuts.’ Here’s His Playbook, So Far/Team Trump is preparing to paint the Florida governor as an establishment hawk who'll put Social Security on the chopping block." Excerpt:

On a host of issues, Trump and his lieutenants are itching to portray DeSantis as the “establishment” figure — the one who is preferred by the supposedly squishy party bigwigs like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. One of Trump’s biggest impacts on the GOP was largely shelving the budget-slashing austerity economics of former Speaker Ryan and ushering in a free-spending, debt-ballooning era that combined tax cuts for the rich, with a rhetorical cease-fire on threats to the bennies of the masses — ranging from Social Security to Medicare.

I'm interested in that phrase "bennies of the masses." It's like "opium of the masses." That's got to be intentional — using "bennies" to mean benefits when "bennies" has been slang for benzedrine — i.e., amphetamine — since the 1950s.

From Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (1957): "There’s another photo of Joan simpering over a cookpot; her hair is long and unkempt; she’s high on benny and God knows what she’s saying as the camera is snapped…'Don’t point that nasty old thing at me.'"

"Opium of the people" — also translated as "opium of the masses" — has its own Wikipedia article:

The full sentence from Marx translates (including italics) as: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."... 

In [Marx's] view, religion... reduced people's immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions which gave them the strength to carry on.... [B]y focusing on the eternal rather than the temporal, religion turns the attention of the oppressed away from the exploitation and class structure that encompasses their everyday lives.... In Marx’s view, once workers finally overthrow capitalism, unequal social relations will no longer need legitimating and people’s alienation will dissolve, along with any need for religion. 

Assuming Rolling Stone intended to refer to Marx's analogy of religion to opium, we're prodded to think about whether government benefits are like amphetamine. Do things like Social Security and Medicare give us "euphoria, change in desire for sex, increased wakefulness, and improved cognitive control"? If we get too much, do we experience "psychosis (e.g., delusions and paranoia)"?

If they cut our "bennies," what do we do? Without "opium," in Marx's view, we'd have more clarity and energy, and maybe we'd revolt, but without "bennies," we have less energy and are less excited about crazy things.

In which case, what? What would we do in that newly dulled, enervated condition? Choose DeSantis over Trump? 

How will the Supreme Court nominees of Democratic Presidents answer the question "Will you vote to overrule Dobbs?

That's my question, jumping way ahead after reading the New York Magazine headline, "Could Dobbs Be Reversed Like Roe Was?" 

That's by Ed Kilgore. I'll have to publish this post and click on my "Ed Kilgore" tag to see what I've thought of his published musings over the years, but come on. Obviously, Dobbs can be overruled. We won't be able to stop talking about overruling Dobbs. Remember, we talked about overruling Roe for 50 years before it happened? Do the Dobbs haters have that kind of passion and stamina? 

At some point in the next 50 or 100 years, there will be a majority of Supreme Court Justices who want to overrule Dobbs and get back to Roe (or forward to a new, better Roe (Casey was already a new, better Roe, and Roe can be re-improved)).

Now, let's see what Kilgore says:

"Sarah shocked many when she endorsed me very early in 2016, and we won big. Now, it’s my turn!"

"Sarah has been a champion for Alaska values, Alaska energy, Alaska jobs, and the great people of Alaska. She was one of the most popular Governors because she stood up to corruption in both State Government and the Fake News Media. Sarah lifted the McCain presidential campaign out of the dumps despite the fact that she had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people within the campaign itself. They were out to destroy her, but she didn’t let that happen. Sarah Palin is tough and smart and will never back down, and I am proud to give her my Complete and Total Endorsement, and encourage all Republicans to unite behind this wonderful person and her campaign to put America First!"

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump Finally Remembered That He Owes Sarah Palin a Favor" by Ed Kilgore (NY Magazine).

"Finally Remembered"... he endorsed her 2 days after she declared.

Kilgore ends with: "But Trump’s support gives her a chance to join the MAGA caucus in the House, in which she would barely stand out at all." A chance? Just a chance? Barely stand out? People like Kilgore make it too much fun to see the reemergence of Sarah Palin.

"Yes, a book claiming objectivity on abortion (if that is indeed what Barrett produces) would just be a continuation of the dishonesty of Supreme Court nominees..."

"... acting as though they haven’t really thought much about the most heavily discussed and controversial cases in the history of constitutional law. Once confirmed, most of them fall silent until they actually rule on the relevant cases. Maybe Barrett’s book deal is in fact a big advance on a tome she will write after she has helped overturn Roe — in which case, she could publish a book of recipes or something about her stamp collection and grateful anti-abortion activists would snap it up. And at that point no one would much care whether her 'personal feelings' had anything to do with the chore Trump placed her on the Court to perform as part of his transactional relationship with the Christian Right."

Writes Ed Kilgore — with over-the-top hostility — in the "Justice Barrett Gets $2 Million Deal to Tell Readers What They Don’t Want to Hear" (NY Magazine). 

"What They Don't Want to Hear" is the discussion of the role of a judge in following the law without interposing personal feelings. Kilgore assumes the people who would buy a book written by Amy Coney Barrett are simply those who believe abortion is murder and want it stopped, however it can be stopped. 

Kilgore's basis for accusation is thin. He speaks of "the chore Trump placed her on the Court to perform," but Barrett has life tenure and free of any "chores" that must be performed. And I don't think Trump is much of an abortion opponent. He many have won the votes of the "Christian Right," but now that the elections are over, he's not in a "transactional relationship" with these people. Trump had the power to appoint when he had it, and he used it to make an appointment of a person that he knew would be on her own once sworn in. Kilgore scribbles about a deal was made and remains alive, and I guess that's what he gets paid for. And isn't that's what New York Magazine subscribers pay to hear?

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"Why Is the Supreme Court Hesitating on Abortion?"

Asks Ed Kilgre at Intelligencer. 

Mississippi petitioned for SCOTUS review [in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] last June, of course; the whole point of the state’s provocative law [banning abortion after 15 weeks] was to invite the Court to [overrule] or significantly modify Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the landmark decisions establishing and affirming a constitutional right to abortion.

"I’d say that publicly asking Breyer to retire would be an easy way for any Democratic pol thought to be vulnerable to a progressive primary challenge — or who wanted to run for president — to stand out."

"Your basic White House-mad senator isn’t going to lose much sleep over Breyer’s sensitivities or the arcane etiquette of the legal profession...."

Said Ed Kilgore, quoted in "Will Stephen Breyer Take One for the Team?" (NY Magazine).

"The Scary Proposition That Trump Is Gradually Becoming More Popular."

Headline at NY Magazine.

From the article by Ed Kilgore:

[F]ormidable number cruncher Nate Cohn... calls attention to something most of us have ignored since Trump took office: the president’s personal favorability ratings.... "Millions of Americans who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do. Over all, his personal favorability rating has increased by about 10 percentage points among registered voters since Election Day 2016, to 44 percent from 34 percent...."...

Cohn acknowledges that the odds are pretty good Democrats will nominate a more popular opponent for Trump than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, though nobody knows how she or he will compare to the president in personal favorability. I think it’s pretty important to remember that Trump won among the 18 percent of the electorate who disliked both candidates by a robust 47/30 margin....

From a longer perspective, my guess is that the narrow band of favorability and job approval numbers for Trump is just another testament to the partisan polarization that made it possible for him to win in 2016, despite his unpopularity.... 

ADDED: Another scary thing about Trump in NY Magazine: "The Owner of SoulCycle and Equinox Is Throwing a Fancy Trump Fundraiser." I find that especially funny. If you were relying on riding a stationary bike to meet the needs of something you like to think of as a soul, you deserve disillusionment.



I thought that picture would help understand the problem under discussion here. I clicked to that from "The Owner of SoulCycle and Equinox Is Throwing a Fancy Trump Fundraiser." It's an ad for Equinox that predates Trump's election, an ad discussed at "See Steven Klein’s Muscly, Freaky Fitness Ads," a New York Magazine article from January 2016. Doesn't it eerily presage the nation's "white supremacy" fetish?

"[Kamala] Harris is not, of course, alone in possessing 'baggage' that will attract criticism from within her own party and intense media scrutiny."

"Joe Biden famously has enough baggage to derail a train’s luggage car. Critics of Bernie Sanders always suspected that conservatives built a massive oppo research file on the Vermont socialist that they would have pushed with hundreds of millions of dollars of negative 'stories' and ads had he won the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, matching or exceeding the damage they did to Hillary Clinton. Elizabeth Warren has struggled to overcome the stupid but pervasive 'Pocohontas' taunt, along with persistent (if probably sexist) doubts about her 'likability.' Cory Booker’s past links with Wall Street and support for private school vouchers will be a problem for him. Both Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten Gillibrand are vulnerable to the kind of 'flip-flopper' charges that tend to undermine voter trust. And Amy Klobuchar’s history of high staff turnover has spurred rumors about her personality and temperament.... [I]t’s best for Democrats to deal with the baggage now rather than later...."

Writes Ed Kilgore in "2020 Candidates Carry Heavy Baggage, and Trump Will Everything He Can to Exploit That" (which begins with the NYT op-ed about Kamala Harris that we talked about here 2 days ago).