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GELFAND’S WORLD - Ten Democrats in the United States Senate voted in favor of Donald Trump's funding bill. The one time that Democrats could have signaled resistance to the Musk-Trump-Johnson regime, they caved.
As of that vote, the Democrats are dead to me. I no longer have any interest in what they have to say. Their actions belie any sense of resistance against an evil and tyrannical presidency.
What would get me back? Replace Schumer with somebody like Adam Schiff and elevate AOC to be the ranking member in her committee of choice in the House. Show that there is the determination to lead.
Obviously there are 10 Democratic senators who disagree with me. You can read what Schumer told reporters here.
My take on Schumer's remarks: He and his colleagues are hoping that something, however small, can be salvaged from the wreckage of the House funding bill. They speak of the damage that Musk and Trump could do in the event of a government shutdown, implying that Musk could run roughshod as he dismantles whole sectors of our federal government.
Many of us, including civilians but also including thousands of federal employees, feel that the No vote was a risk that had to be taken. In the absence of a little effort by the people who were supposed to be our leaders, what resistance is possible?
What would the Republicans in the congress have done had the Democrats said No? Perhaps they would have abolished the filibuster (or reduced the override requirement to 53 votes). Perhaps they would have gone along with the government shutdown while trying (ineffectually) to blame the Democrats.
The most likely scenario would be that the shutdown would go on for a few days or a couple of weeks, but Republicans in the senate would quietly talk with their Democratic colleagues and then with their Republican colleagues in the House.
Here are a couple of things the Democrats could have asked for as part of the bargaining: And end to the trade war. Support for Ukraine. No tax cuts on the wealthy. And most importantly that the Trump administration stops breaking the law and violating the Constitution. (Credit this last ask to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo.)
Would the Republicans have agreed? No. But it would define a winning Democratic line, and the Democrats might have extracted at least some little thing out of the bargaining.
Mostly, resistance on the part of the Democrats in the senate would communicate that two can play this game, as we all look back on the days when Mitch McConnell refused to pass anything proposed by President Obama.
But the Democratic 10 couldn't even work up that level of resolve. So instead, we have a Speaker of the House who is the winner and half the American people as the most direct losers.
Besides Schumer himself, there are others who support the Democratic action. One acquaintance quotes an old adage (attributed to Napoleon) that you don't interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. In this case, the mistake (I'm assuming) is that Trump's economic policies are inflationary and damaging to employment numbers and are rapidly losing him support. James Carville said something similar a while back: Democrats should sit by quietly and watch the Republicans self destruct.
I question whether an affirmative vote by Democrats for a Trump budget is the same as sitting back and watching Trump self destruct.
Addendum: A realization about Trump and at least a few Republicans
When Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, it was a blast from the past, in the sense that the old Soviet Union engaged in armed invasions and military control of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the modern era as well as much of eastern Europe right at the end of WWII. But the invasion of Ukraine came in the post-Soviet era, an era in which armed invasions of European countries by large standing armies had gone out of style.
So what is Trump doing by threatening to take over Canada, Greenland, and Panama? I think it is obvious that he is doing an imitation of Putin in terms of imperialist threats. He has not gone so far as to actually order an invasion, but that is not the object.
The object is to provide a smokescreen for Russian aggression by pretending that the U.S. engages (or might engage) in something similar. By pretending to act the imperialist jerk, Trump is shielding Putin by allowing the "what about you?" defense for Russia.
The comparison of the Canada threat with the Ukrainian invasion is pretty simple. In each case, there is a world power (the USA) or one-time-world-power (Russia) and a large, productive country on its border. In neither case would an invasion or annexation be defensible, yet Russia is engaged in exactly that attempt. The United States has no reason (much less justification) for meddling with Canada, but Trump has a reason for his behavior: It is that he is still acting as someone who is wholly owned by Putin. Trump's threats of imperialist wars are supposed to make Putin's imperialist war look a little less bad.
I suppose that if you try hard enough, you can chalk Trump's weird behavior up to some kind of personal eccentricity. It would be a rare sort of eccentricity to be sure, roughly equivalent to Trump being a member of the Communist Party, but it is at least conceivable. But the likely explanation, the Occam’s razor deduction, is that the Russians still have Kompromat (compromising information) on Trump.
What is interesting is that members of Trump's own Republican Party are split in terms of Ukraine War policy. You would expect that a party that used to revel in its anticommunism and opposed all things Russian would still maintain a distrust of the heirs of the Soviet empire. And it's true that some congressional Republicans join with Democrats in calling for continuation of American support for Ukrainian resistance.
What's curious is how some congressional Republicans have gone over to the dark side in that they support Trump's efforts to sabotage the Ukrainian war effort. It's becoming increasingly suspicious. Are there other Republicans in the congress (and in big business) who are chained down with the existence of Kompromat that the Russians have on them? Considering how some Republican politicians have been behaving, it wouldn't be a surprise.
The View from the Balcony: Cosi Fan Tutte
The L.A. Opera has been doing Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. I attended the midweek (Wednesday) performance. It's three hours of lush Mozart with all that this means. It included an orchestra that was just right, conducted by James Conlon and a cast who were universally good in their roles. What's been an interesting transition since the pandemic is the increasing use of American born singers and a substantial decrease in the use of European voices. If you count a pair of singers from Montreal and Puerto Rico as (North) American born, then there was only the one singer playing Guglielmo who was originally from Europe. Of note, Erica Petrocelli as Fiordiligi (from Rhode Island) and Anthony Leon (from Riverside) had the kinds of voices that strongly appeal to opera audiences. Ana Maria Martinez was wonderfully comedic as Despina. The show ended to rapturous applause from the crowd.
If you want to be critical about anything, the plot is overly simple while being a bit forced. Two young men (Ferrando and Guglielmo) are in love with the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi (pronounced with an accent on the next to last syllable) and are bragging about how perfect and faithful the girls are. A more elderly fellow (Don Alfonso) who affects a worldly charm, overhears their chatter and offers a wager that he can disprove their belief. This is where the plot gets a little strained, because the young gents not only accept the wager, they carry out the Don's plan of having the guys attempt (in disguise, of course) to seduce each others' lady.
Got it? Nearly three hours of wonderful harmonies and choral pieces and individual arias too numerous to count, and all hung on this plot. Sometimes genius leaves us ordinary folks to wonder but also to marvel.
One note on the setting. The location has been moved to an American country club (Don Alfonso is the Manager) sometime in what looks to be the Roaring 20s. At the same time, the set sometimes looks like it could be a French Impressionist painting off the walls of the Art Institute of Chicago.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
