Trump will punch. Democrats can counterpunch.

Trump has his strategy:

"Blame Biden!"

"Blame Hillary!"

"Blame Obama!"

Will voters whose Medicaid is cut blame Trump? There are concentrations of those voters in bright red areas. 

Maybe they will wise up, some readers suggested in the comment section of a recent post.

Comment by John C:
    People will notice when they cannot get basic healthcare in their communities.

Comment by Michael T: 

     Trump is a skilled politician. Let’s say he cuts Medicaid, and many of his voters lose their medical coverage. Which makes me wonder, is he somehow going to manage to turn this around on the Democrats? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Both John C. and Michael T. are correct. Yes, voters will notice when services they rely on are cut, and they will be unhappy about it. And, yes, Trump will surely blame it on someone else.

I predict this future with confidence because we have seen it already. As yesterday's post noted, Trump grabs attention and stays in the spotlight saying hyperbolic things. They may be wholly untrue, or mostly untrue, but they are interesting and dominate every news cycle. He deflects. He accuses. He brands other people with the unpopular things he does. 

We are seeing an uptick in prices and inflation expectations. We saw this in Trump's Truth Social last week:

That is trademark Trump. Simple. Clear. Deflecting blame. He calls it "Biden inflation." Trump understands branding.

After the jetliner/helicopter collision at Reagan National Airport, immediately, with no information on the crash other than that two aircraft collided, Trump blamed Obama, Biden, and Buttigieg along with DEI hiring of unqualified air traffic controllers. Subsequent information points to error by the military helicopter pilot doing a routine training flight. But never mind the truth. Blame unqualified people (wink, wink, you know, Blacks) hired to meet diversity goals. Not true? Well, it could have been true. It fits the Whites-under-attack idea that Trump feeds MAGA voters.

Democrats are not sitting ducks here -- not if they are careful and smart. Democrats should avoid a reflexive response of "if Trump said it we must say the opposite." Trump/Musk/DOGE will get praised for saving money. They have a tailwind of presumption that government is overstaffed and unproductive. There is no need for Democrats to defend waste. DOGE found waste? Great! Democrats should be against waste.

Nor should Democrats criticize decisive action. People want a government that can get things done. Remember FDR's reputation: active, energetic government. The Biden administration got a reputation for being well-intentioned, but slow and ineffective. Infrastructure projects weren't shovel-ready. Green infrastructure projects were held up by environmental lawsuits and bureaucracy. Biden tarried at fixing the southern border problem. Again, Democrats need to exercise care. Criticize cutting the wrong things, not DOGE's willingness to act. Voters want action. Good. Democrats want action, too.

Trump/Musk/DOGE are cutting things they will call waste but that are, in fact, necessary. Those departments are there because people wanted them. Trump is cutting air traffic controllers even as this week's news is about another airplane crash. People with tax questions for the IRS wait on hold for hours -- I know from experience -- and that will get worse when more cuts are implemented. But the big one will be Medicaid. Medical bills destroy household budgets. Inability to access and pay for health care is a motivator.

Democrats know Trump will blame Democrats for everything bad. Democrats can respond with a strong message that will resonate with voters: DOGE is Trump's doing. DOGE is sloppy. DOGE is a billionaire's idea of priorities. Some of the cuts won't make sense. They will backfire. They will hurt the wrong people. 

There is clear contrast. DOGE screwups position Democrats on the side of the abused and forgotten American. "Trump did this" is a simple message. It will conform with voters' experience. It will "make sense."

Incumbents pay a price for sloppy, ineffective government if the opposition is ready with a counterpunch.

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Wow! Did you see that?!

In the "attention economy," you don't need to be right. Or honest. Or wise. 

You need to grab attention. 

Today's guest post author Gerald Murphy takes on a tough task. He says the backward leap by the Philadelphia Eagles' running back Saquon Barkley was a bad idea. A bad idea? But it was great TV, a spectacular moment of athleticism. Murphy grants that, but the point is to win games over a long season and win a championship. Murphy analogizes Barkley's play to the current state of politics. Barkley's spectacular moment draws attention, but it wasn't smart football.

Here it is on YouTube, replayed three times in 30 seconds: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRUg_012yE

Donald Trump -- amid all his manifest faults -- understands and takes advantage of the media environment of this era far better than anyone else in American politics. The winner is the person who dominates public attention. That person gets his message out. That person asserts his own facts and shapes the narrative.

This is the new media and information world. A Democrat does not need to be a narcissistic, corrupt authoritarian to compete with Trump. It need not be like-to-like competition. But a Democrat needs to be able to grab attention, ideally with ideas, policies, and a delivery that resonates with Americans. It isn't a "Meet the Press" world anymore.

Murphy is a retired high school English teacher and a playwright who has had dozens of short plays produced for school and church groups.

Gerald Murphy

Guest Post by Gerald Murphy                     

A great leap backward.

In case you missed all the hyperbolic coverage of running back Saquon Barkley before, during and after the Super Bowl, Saquon made a memorable play for the Philadelphia Eagles in a game earlier this season against the Jaguars. Here’s how one TV viewer reacted: “Been watching football since the late 60's. I have seen it all until today. A backward no-look jump over a defender!? Freakiest move I have ever seen."

 

The video of this play has gone viral. Pretty much anyone interested in sports, any sport, will have seen this play, probably numerous times.

 

My thoughts on this? Nice move, Barkley. However:

   1. It only gave you about one more yard of forward progress.
2. It left your body open to back-breaking tackles that could have ended your career and hurt the team.
3. It was the kind of stupid move that impressionable young players will attempt to duplicate at their peril.
4. It far overshadowed your truly impressive runs which led to huge gains and touchdowns.
5. Like slam-dunks in basketball and bicycle-kicks in soccer, this is a hotdog move that keeps young athletes from working on more practical skills.
6. I suspect Barkley himself would prefer people forget about the damn move.

 

Unfortunately, the flash-in-the-pan viral moment not only hogs all the attention in sports but is also currently dominating the political spectrum. It isn't enough to be an effective and reasonable politician. You need shock and awe to get noticed. You need to throw out a Nazi salute. Why not insult European leaders in Munich? Why not use dog whistles to advance racial slurs? And calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists makes for wonderful headlines. 

 

The goal is to do anything that gets your face and your right-wing message out to the public. You need to do a political version of Barkley’s double flip to amaze the body politic. Bring on the trapeze acts, the sword swallowers, the lion tamers. And it doesn’t matter if you get caught lying. All that matters is the glitz and the glam. Isn’t that why the Roman emperors decided to provide their citizens with circuses? 

 

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An extremely detailed map of the 2024 election

What happened?

What was the precinct-level vote in 2024?

Click here: Unlocked NYT article

The New York Times makes this report available.

My main purpose in today's post is to remind readers of an extraordinary internet tool, these precinct-level maps. The second is to praise/thank The New York Times.

The news business is in trouble. Ad revenue is way down, swallowed up by Meta, Google, and other aggregators who rework the content created by others and then micro-target it to customers, collecting the majority of the potential ad revenue. Newspapers will survive by persuading readers to buy subscriptions to pay the cost of reporters talking to news sources, writing it up, getting it edited and distributed. The New York Times has about 11.5 million subscribers, a majority of whom are digital-only. Real news is expensive. Donald Trump calls the newspaper "the failing New York Times." The U.S. is better off if its news institutions survive.  I subscribe, which is why I can share this article -- one of the benefits of being a subscriber.

Some states and counties are slow to upload data, but readers in my home country and in most battleground states can see what happened in 2024, and with a click compare it to the 2020 election. Jackson County, Oregon is one of the places with a full data upload.

2024 Results 

Shift from 2020 to 2024

Clicking on the map brings the detail into closer focus down to individual precincts, showing how powerful is the "neighborhood effect." Ashland, Oregon is a college town, but its politics and culture are better understood as a place of prosperous, well-educated people seeking a simpatico environment that emphasises livability. One sees pedestrian shoppers  and tourists here. Real estate prices are 30 percent higher than the county median. Here is a precinct on a hillside with views across the valley to the east. The other Ashland precincts have similar voting results.

Jacksonville is a small haven of people seeking a village atmosphere of history and culture. This is an old gold-rush village boom-town four miles west of Medford. One sees pedestrians here, too.

 

Jackson County as a whole voted for Trump. Precincts outside of city limits are overwhelmingly red. My farm is eight miles from Medford and five miles from Central Point. My general assumption is that every single male I see doing agricultural work, or in an agricultural context anywhere near my farm, is a Trump supporter. I won't be far wrong.

To the east of my farm, in a mixed exurban/industrial area, is the area that most benefits from the social programs supported by Democrats. It is among the reddest parts of the county. White City is an unincorporated but urbanized area. It has a concentration of poverty, disability, drug and alcohol services. The precincts surrounding it voted for Trump 77- 21 percent, 75-22 percent, and 76-21 percent. MAGA voters want something other than the social safety-net Ashland Democrats support. They use it. They don't value it.

The maps encourages exploration of border-town precincts, battleground state precincts, and old neighborhoods. The presumption many readers will have, that Cambridge, Massachusetts is bright blue, is correct. That is Harvard Yard in the center of the image:

Find your own neighborhood. Explore. It is made possible because great newspapers still exist, and they still exist because subscribers still exist.

Here are some additional links: 

2020 election map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html

2016 election map 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html

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Some Sundays aren't easy.

Bill Thorndike was public-spirited, community-minded, and generous.

Bill died Saturday of a heart attack.

I got calls and texts: "Did you hear the terrible news? Bill Thorndike died."  

The sad news brings us back to what is important. Character is important. The choices and priorities Bill had were important. Bill was a good guy who did good things, willingly and generously.  

Bill spent decades building social capital -- the glue and energy that make a place work better. He was on committees, and frequently led them. He was tireless. Hospital board. Education board. Government boards. Nonprofit boards. Social club boards. Business boards. Financial boards. He was a builder. He built community organizations. He was good at it.

People are shocked and rattled that Bill died. Too sudden. Too soon. We feel grief, but loss, too. We are all better off because of Bill and how he lived his life. 

The bell tolls for us. The community is poorer now. 

Bill, with wife Angela, at the University Club

Bill, with Tobias Read, Oregon's Secretary of State

Bill, signing his submission to the voters pamphlet urging county offices be non-partisan

Bill, preparing to make a public presentation with two former county commissioners, Sue Kupillas and David Gilmour




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FAFO: MAGA on Medicaid

     “A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid. If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. You just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”
            Steve Bannon, being interviewed on Fox

Bannon

MAGA voters will find out what they voted for.

A political irony of the past decade has been that the people most adamant about repealing the Affordable Care Act -- "Obamacare" -- are the people who most needed and used the program. The working-class exurban and rural poor, who live in bright red districts, which are the places where Medicaid expansion was most beneficial. Small rural hospitals in those areas avoided bankruptcy and closure because the ACA allowed partial reimbursement for services that would otherwise be uncollectible and unpaid. Americans avoided medical bankruptcy.

Oregon contained a particular irony. Rural eastern and southern Oregon was represented by a personable, well-spoken Republican, Greg Walden, who rose by seniority and fundraising prowess to be the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees health care legislation. His chairmanship made him part of GOP leadership. The GOP position was simple and clear: Obamacare is bad. The problem for Walden was that his district (which includes my home and farm) had more Medicaid recipients under the ACA than any other congressional district in the country represented by a Republican, and more than all but three congressional districts in the country. 

There is a pattern here in Oregon and nationwide. The reddest areas are the ones with the highest Medicaid enrollment:

Willamette Week

Looking ahead to Medicaid cuts, the most Republican districts are where the highest premium increases will occur:

KFF.org

Everyone wants to cut "waste, fraud, and abuse." There is casual, sloppy talk that works in campaign rallies and press conferences. It claims that surely we can get more work done with far fewer people if we just crack the whip and cut the waste. Let Musk/DOGE go in with a chainsaw. 

The news is starting to drift out that mass cuts in federal budgets and personnel mean elimination of programs that people in red districts and states consider essential. Conservative Republicans complain that the Forest Service is not processing timber sales quickly enough -- but DOGE required mass layoffs of the people who do that work. Oops. The IRS is a favorite villain, but cutting IRS employees mean that wealthy tax cheats have an easier time cheating, putting more burden on the easy-to-collect W-2 income from working-class taxpayers. Republican senators from Louisiana and Alabama are complaining that medical research funding at their flagship universities is frozen. 

But the real crunch will come in health care. The policy choices will be clear. Trump and Musk must cut Medicaid spending substantially to retain the tax cuts in Trump's 2017 tax law, the law that reduced marginal rates on the wealthiest taxpayers. Trump-supporting working people in red America will lose their Medicaid or pay more for it so that Trump's billionaire allies and friends keep more of their income. It is a bad look.

Trump is a gifted salesman, but that is going to be a tough sale. 

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Waiting for Godot

"It's the economy, stupid."
          Sign on wall at Bill Clinton campaign, 1992.

The sign is wrong. It isn't the economy.

What matters is what people think about the economy. 

The Wall Street Journal editorialized this week about Trump's tariffs and his pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates. The editors think it will cause inflation. The Fed would need to respond by raising interest rates, which will tank the stock market and maybe the economy. They wrote:

“The layers of intellectual confusion here are hard to parse, especially since higher tariffs will mean higher prices on the affected goods. But perhaps the president wants the public to look elsewhere when assigning blame for rising prices.”

Of course Trump will want the public to look elsewhere when assigning blame for rising prices. That is what Trump does. He will blame Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, the fake media, China, Mexico, Canada, Ukraine, an uncooperative Fed, woke elites in universities, immigrants, drug cartels, environmental regulations, federal bureaucrats, foreign aid, and every potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.

We have seen how he operates. When an airliner crashes into an out-of-place military helicopter, Trump blamed Obama, Biden, Buttigieg, and DEI hiring at the FAA. 

Democrats need to pull themselves out of their hole. The Democratic brand is a net-negative in enough states that Democrats lost the House, Senate, and White House. It sunk strong candidates like Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and Jon Tester in Montana. 

Party identification switched in 2024

I see glimmers of optimism in Democratic commentary. It presumes that Trump will damage the economy. And per the formula that it was inflation that sabotaged Biden and Harris -- not Democratic policies on cultural issues or immigration -- then there is nothing to "fix" in the Democratic suite of policies. They can let a bad economy under Trump put Democrats back into offices.

Not necessarily.

Democrats face an energetic master salesperson who feels no need whatever to be factual. Trump will tell the story about the economy that he wants America to believe. Trump will be the hero. Democrats will be the villain. This will happen. The only question is whether Democrats tell their story with the same clarity and energy as does Trump.

Economies are complicated. Nobel-prize-winning economists disagree. Voters will agree with the clearest narrative that best fits their worldview. Nearly half of Americans will agree with Trump because they are Republicans. He will be loud, clear, confident, and omnipresent. If there isn't a clear alternative perspective, then more than half of Americans will believe him.

Foreknowledge is forearmed. An economy doesn't explain itself. Democrats have been in a narrative blackout for four years. College classmate Chuck Schumer is the Democratic Party's senior elected official, but he isn't good at this. Biden wasn't good at it, either.

Democrats have some talent. AOC is good at it. But she represents a bright blue district and chooses to speak for the tip-of-the-spear left, not for the nation's median voter. Gavin Newsom is good at it, but I worry that he is too thoroughly branded by California. Pete Buttigieg is good at it, but I worry that his homosexuality will hurt him. Billionaire NBA team owner Mark Cuban is good at it, but I worry that he prefers to be an outside voice, not a leader of a political party. I worry that current Democratic U.S. senators are too "inside," and too much a part of the status quo to press the "reset" necessary to make the Democratic brand popular again.

Worry and doubts don't discourage me. The widespread discouragement among Democrats means that the next generation of leaders can start with a cleaner slate. They can advocate change. The right Democrat will extinguish doubts and worries by the power of his or her confidence, clarity, and positions. That is how we know we have the right person.

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Soft-hearted peacenik losers.

Donald Trump is corrupt and self-serving, but he's not stupid and he understands political messaging

He knows how to pick a target.

Republican voters don't like foreign aid. They don't like the U.S. Agency for International Development that distributes it. They think we should direct grants, if any at all, in order to make friends, not to serve the neediest. YouGov

USAID signage removed immediately

Trump has a consistent world-view: It is a dog-eat-dog world. Every person looks out for himself. Every country looks out for itself. Trump added an outlaw quality to this orientation by incorporating that winners make their own rules. Trump tells the story at rallies of the tender-hearted woman who saves a freezing snake by feeding and warming it. When healthy, the snake gives the woman a fatal bite. The woman is surprised at the ingratitude. Trump quotes the snake saying, "But you knew I was a snake when you took me in." The snake coldly looked out for number one. This is the way of the world, Trump says.

When Trump sent in people to do wholesale agency-wide cuts, he started with USAID, the least popular federal program with Republicans. It is unsentimental realpolitik. His MAGA base doesn't like foreign aid. Trump is riding a wave of backlash against the policy and message of Democrats on immigrants, on policing, on accommodating personal choices on gender. Voters overwhelmingly considered Democrats too indulgent and accommodating, at a cost to people like themselves. Trump and DOGE are in charge, so it is okay to be tough-minded and cruel. MAGA-supporting farmers in the wheat belt are unhappy that USAID isn't buying last year's crop. Their voices are heard. The people who might have gotten wheat, but currently are not, have no voice that matters.

Jack Mullen thinned pears alongside me in the summers of the mid-1960s. After college, he entered the Peace Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

I prefer Presidents Day and Martin Luther King Day, holidays that allow us a chance to read and reflect about ourselves as a nation.

Although a century apart, two books, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Ugly American, provided a moral impetus for two Presidents to challenge our country to be better than we were.

Following only the Bible, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second largest selling book in 19th century America. Harriet Beecher Stowe brought the abolitionist cause to the forefront of American political discussion. Her writing led to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ultimate destruction of slavery in our country. Lincoln honored Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1862 visit to the White House. He told her she changed the arc of America.

A hundred years later, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer wrote The Ugly American at a time when an American arrogance overshadowed our feel-good World War wins. The book became the genesis for President Kennedy to establish the Peace Corps and its offshoot, the United States Agency for International Development -- USAID.

The Peace Corps resonated in many ways. Americans, mostly young, lived in rural communities, enjoyed the local customs, ate the local food, and spoke the local language. The scope of Peace Corps programs ranged from agriculture and health programs to education and small business development, and many more.

When Kennedy started Peace Corps in 1961, he also started the Agency for International Development. New attention came to AID this month when the current Administration’s DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, claimed on social media that AID is a “criminal organization." Automated responses -- bots -- from Russia, China and Iran agree is the case.

AID is the combination of Herbert Hoover’s post-World War I American Relief Administration, which administered food distribution to a war-battered Europe, our post-World War II Marshall Plan that rebuilt war torn Europe, and all the aspects of the Peace Corps programs.

AID, much like the EPA, is dotted with former Peace Corps volunteers who found cause to continue work they loved while in Peace Corps. That is a problem for those agencies now and it makes them a special target. The wrong sorts of persons are filling those jobs.

Is AID too bureaucratic? Without a doubt. 

Do those who work for AID become rich doing that work? Hardly. 

Is our aid too generous and foreign policy overkill? No. Our AID workers aren’t even managing to counterbalance Chinese or Russian assistance taking place in those countries. Aid work improves relations with the recipient countries, which is why it has traditionally had bipartisan support in Congress, and why Russian, Chinese, and Iranian bots jumped on the bandwagon of cheering the idea we end our assistance. Workers at AID are mission-driven. They work to provide American foreign aid because it is the right thing for the richest country in the world to do.

 

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