Americans don't want $5 gasoline.

The U.S. has a glass jaw.

Voters are impatient and unhappy with the price of gasoline.

Trump wants out of Iran. He wants to declare victory now.

Trump to Fox's Maria Bartiromo:

"I think its close to over. I view it as very close to over."

Democrats are giddy with the prospect that the Trump era is ending. Democrats are counting the blue-wave midterm election chickens before they hatch, but it is too much fun to resist. 

The war with Iran is unpopular, and Trump knows it. He is on deadline. He needs us to be out of Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz open and oil shipping back to pre-war status, and gasoline prices back to where they were two months ago -- $3 and $3.50 in most of the country.

A Republican senator has taken on a hard task, telling Americans to be happy with higher prices, that it is worth it.

Trump takes a smarter approach, telling voters it will be over soon.

Iran can take a punch and keep hitting. What is left of Iran’s government took the world’s economy hostage. They shut down the Strait of Hormuz, letting only their friends pass through and demanded a toll.

Trump is forced to play bad cards. Trump could not open the Hormuz toll road, so he needed to close it completely, making worse the oil disruption. Petroleum is a notoriously inelastic commodity. Prices must move up a lot to suppress demand enough to bring it back in balance with supply.

High oil prices mean high prices at the pump. Pew Research Center polling showed that gasoline prices were more important to Americans than the prospect of sending ground troops to Iran or the prospect of large numbers of American casualties. That is the American glass jaw.

Trump understands his political peril. Whatever incomplete shambles he leaves in Iran will not stop him from claiming the war is over and was a HUGE success. But that is possible only if gasoline and diesel prices are down. Trump has six months to abandon Iran and let Iran have the strait, so long as shipping is restored. Israel cares about the Iran project. Trump doesn’t.

The real question is whether Democrats will understand their peril. Democrats prioritize climate as an issue. Democrats consider abundant oil at low cost to be a problem. Democrats are conflicted. They understand that talk of “affordability” is good politics, and that gasoline prices at the retail pump should be low. But Democratic messaging is that petroleum is drilled, fracked, pumped, and transported in ways that they oppose. The companies that do that work are scorned. “Divest from oil companies” and “Windfall taxes on oil companies “ are applause lines at Democratic events. Somehow, the oil companies that supply filling stations with an essential product are very bad, but the consumers who buy that product and who want it available and cheap are good. Yes, Democrats are conflicted.

U.S. Senator Sen. Ruben Gallego (D- AZ), who is sometimes named as a potential Democratic nominee for president since he is popular, not too old, and was elected in a swing state, described the conundrum for Democrats who talk about climate instead of energy abundance. He said that working men, the voters Democrats need to win back, want to be able to drive a “big ass truck.” The blue state Democratic climate message -- ban drilling, ban pipelines, ban fracking, divest from oil companies -- what Democrats say to win a primary election, is what will allow Trump regain support. Democratic primary-voting activists are out of touch with voters they want back. No more blue wave without those voters.

By November, Trump can be the cheap-gasoline candidate again if he manages to get himself out of Iran and the strait reopened. GOP ads will be showing images of gasoline station prices again.

What can Democrats do? Must they cave on the climate issue? Can Democrats convince Americans that reduced petroleum production and refinement is a worthwhile cost to pay to protect the climate?

No they cannot and neither can that Republican senator. Americans want what they can afford. Americans are who we are. Less is not more. More is more. It is an aspirational message and Democrats should not be afraid of it.

Democrats need to make a choice. The U.S. is in a two-decade period of rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewables. It is happening because of price, not moral suasion. Technology is the Democrats’ friend. Renewable wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels, especially if Democrats will allow them to be sited. Natural gas -- a compromise fuel -- is far cheaper and cleaner than coal. A Democrat can make a virtue of the transition underway and lean into it. Praise it. If Democrats try to make a virtue of “less” they elect Trump and people like him.

Americans want cheap abundant energy. The Democratic challenge is to give it to them.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Pandering to a narcissist in decline

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant! . . .
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
     Traditional song, "O come all ye faithful"

By now most readers of this blog will have seen this:

The image is AI, but what was human-generated was the Truth Social post by President Trump. He saw the image and posted it himself on purpose. He did not claim that his account was hacked or that some intern posted it on his behalf. 

Trump claims he thought it was simply a depiction of a compassionate president doing Red Cross rescue. Possibly a Dr. Trump, improbably wearing a robe, and for some reason holding fire in the palm of his left hand, while doing a hand-on-forehead test to check for a fever.

It was a laughable story. No one can look at this image and fail to see that it is an image of Trump acting as Jesus in a modern war setting. Trump must have. The important thing to consider is that Trump failed to recognize the peril, failed to see it was dangerously inappropriate. 

This is another incremental step in Trump's decline, another instance of the disinhibition that sometimes accompanies age-related decline. 

This is part of a pattern that is crossing over from mere peccadillo-quirk into pathology. This isn't Trump being unpresidential. It is Trump failing to comprehend his circumstances, particularly as it relates to his narcissism. Anyone can see that the over-the-top flattery that Trump has his cabinet officers offer at meetings looks silly; Trump is so needy. Trump likes watching the competitive flattery game, grading cabinet members on who does it most fulsomely. The White House lets it be displayed to the public. Trump's pleasure in getting the symbols for other people's awards looks childish, but the White House gatekeepers allow the public to see it. Businesses bring him tribute gifts of gold (but not yet frankincense and myrrh) from which he takes obvious pleasure. We see that, too.

Trump is losing it. I saw it from time to time in brokerage clients and family members as I watched them age. At some point, I needed to suggest -- gently -- that a brokerage client bring on a trusted adult to be a "co-pilot," as I put it, on their accounts. My father has good judgement his entire 92-plus years, except when it came to when to when to stop driving. But Dad was a superb cribbage player and story-teller; he was fully competent for the life he lived. He did not have the nuclear launch codes.

Readers will get a better sense of Trump's cocoon of fawning and pandering if they watch as much as they can of this three-minute video. Trump's spiritual advisor, without irony, treats Trump as God's own anointed savior, an object of adoration here on Earth. The video had been posted on the official White House website, but, like the image of Trump-Jesus, it has been taken down. The White House staff is doing what it can to protect Trump from revealing his condition. Too late, but they see what Trump no longer can.

Click here.

A last comment: Who am I to opine on Donald Trump's mental health and competence? I am an American citizen, living in the country where he is my president. He is spending my tax money, issuing presidential orders that affect me, and making me a passenger in the metaphorical airliner where he is the lead pilot. I have every right to an opinion. He could get me killed. He should not be piloting the plane.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Viktor Orban conceded defeat. Trump did not.

 It was headline news: 

Hungary's Prime Minister and autocratic model for Trump and MAGA promptly conceded defeat in the election yesterday.

Orban controls the military and the courts and the media. Why not do what Trump does and refuse to accept the vote?

The simple answer is that Orban lost in a landslide. Everyone could see what was happening. You can't steal a landslide loss.

There is also a structural reason. Orban is a prime minister, not a president. Orban was the undisputed strong-man autocrat in Hungary, but held that power as the leader of a party of members who won election in districts, and then they made Orban their party leader. Orban would have needed corrupt voting or vote counting at the level of district votes and then for those members to participate alongside Orban in the overthrow. 

Trump calculated that he needed only Vice President Pence and a compliant GOP Congress to refuse to acknowledge electoral votes in a few states with GOP majority legislatures. It nearly worked. It failed because the mental groundwork had not been done. Not counting certified votes in the states struck too many Americans as "cheating." One hundred forty-seven GOP congressmen (my own congressman, Cliff Bentz, among them) refused to accept electoral votes in only a single state, Pennsylvania. But in our federal system, some states, including Georgia and Arizona with GOP election officials, certified Biden's victory. The notion of a nationwide Democratic conspiracy to rig the election run under the nose of a Republican Attorney General who said that Biden won seemed too preposterous -- and too new a strategy -- for a Republican Congress to justify overturning the election for Trump.

Trump has since changed the moral framework on election reversal. He has insisted that elections are all crooked and rigged. Therefore it is fair -- necessary even -- for his team to use any pretext available to bring a favorable outcome. To disagree is to be a Republican In Name Only RINO turncoat. 

Hungary's democracy is stronger than is ours. A U.S. president with a well-disciplined party need only to claim election irregularities in a handful of heavily Democratic cities. Eliminate the votes in Fulton County, Georgia -- home of Atlanta -- and the state tips decidedly red. So, too with Detroit, Michigan's Wayne County; with Pennsylvania's Philadelphia County; Wisconsin's Milwaukee County; Chicago's Cook County; and Houston's Harris County. Even blue Oregon would be majority Republican if the votes of Portland's Multnomah County were excluded. Those cities have substantial Black and Hispanic populations, an easy target for Trump's accusations. 

The mechanism for refusing to count or certify votes is pretext. One need only accuse fraud and then at the critical time refuse to do what Orban did. Never concede, which means any result is by definition "disputed." Disputed results need not be certified by partisans. Republican voters are well prepared to believe, possibly even insist, that of course counties filled with Black and Hispanic voters are corrupt. 

February, 2016

Trump has been disputing vote counts going back 11 years to when he insisted fraud caused his loss to Ted Cruz.

To send ICE or other armed federal agents to close down election sites, Trump need only claim there is domestic or civil disturbance; it is his purview to make such a determination, even if it openly dishonest, like his claim that the U.S. was under armed invasion by an immigrant army. Trump need only claim he has evidence of secret foreign interference; that decision is his to make. GOP poll watchers need only claim that they saw suspicious activity -- maybe a suitcase sitting under a table -- and polls might be closed or voting made inaccessible or so slow that voters turn away discouraged by endless lines. 

Partisan election officials may refuse to carry out ministerial acts of accepting votes, throwing certification of elections into chaos. Republican officials who accepted the vote in 2020 have been excoriated by Trump and the local party, and have been removed and replaced by people who will do as instructed.

The U.S. is closely divided. I don't expect overwhelming landslides. In 2020, a Biden margin of seven million votes was not enough. Trump claims he won in a landslide. Fox News is backsliding on election denial; yesterday I saw Fox News' Jesse Watters laughingly say that he, too, thinks that Trump probably won in 2020. Republican voters are well-prepared to insist that the midterm elections cannot possibly be won by Democrats. The mechanism to achieve this result is readily at hand: don't let voters in Democratic strongholds vote, and if they vote, claim fraud and don't count the votes.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Easy Sunday: backfire.

Backfire.

What a politician thinks is his message is not necessarily the audience's takeaway from that message.

I return to that theme repeatedly in my posts here. There are so many examples of it. 

Yesterday's post looked at the long rant by Trump where he complained about MAGA media turncoats. Trump's denoted message was that he is a victim of their stupidity. For most people, the real message is that Trump has become a cranky, whining, semi-demented old guy.

The classic instance of message-backfire was the comment by former Attorney General Pam Bondi amid pressure to explain why she was protecting Trump by withholding the Epstein files. She tried to change the subject to "the Dow is 50,000!" Those words are a punchline now. The received message is that the administration is desperately bringing up distractions to hide something dangerously embarrassing. 

Yesterday presented another instance. Amid all the serious problems in the world, Trump's Truth Social feed led off with this.

It denoted triumphant America. Look at this arch! Bigger than the one in France. America is great and I am the president!! 

Trump is making himself another trophy celebrating premature glory. The real takeaway is "Nero fiddles while Rome burns."  

Paul Krugman's Substack article this morning gave another iteration. Viktor Orban's Hungary is having its election today. Trump openly supports Orban, a strange intervention into the politics of another country. Trump dangled money support from the U.S. to Hungary, if only the voters chose Orban, a blatant example of public money being exchanged for political support. 

Krugman said Trump's support backfires on Orban. Of course it does. Trump is widely reviled in Europe. Trump is known for crony corruption and personal wealth-seeking, using the influence of his office. The big issue for Orban's opponent, Peter Magyar, is Orban's corrupt cronyism. Trump's endorsement doesn't help Orban. It proves Magyar's point.

I am alert to the problem of campaigns backfiring because, 46 years ago I was a primary beneficiary of the self-destruction of the campaign by my Republican opponent. I won as a Democrat amid the 1980 Reagan landslide. How was that possible? My opponent's own campaign sabotaged itself, thank goodness. I will tell the story in a future blog post.

Oh. One more thing:  The real message of Melania Trump's sudden, impromptu declaration that she is not a criminal is that she is in panic mode because some new hidden revelation is about to get exposed, perhaps by that angry former-model friend stuck in Brazil who knows too much and says she is going to tell all, and that Melania isn't waiting for her husband to protect himself or continue the coverup. He is on his own, and she isn't going down.

Total backfire

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Whack job.

Do Republican voters like what Trump is doing and saying?

They must be OK with it.

He has 81-percent approval from Republicans.

I am trying to understand why Republicans of good character tolerate Donald Trump. People who supported Reagan, Dole, two Bush presidents, McCain, and Romney now tolerate Trump who represents values and behavior opposite the people they voted for in the recent past. None of those Republican presidents and candidates would have engaged in the grift, the pardon transactions, the flouting of laws that Trump does openly and proudly. They would have understood it to be wrong, bad for the country and inconsistent with the dignity of the office. They had character. They had the internal controls one expects of people in positions of responsibility.

Trump's rants look strange and dangerous to me. It makes a mockery of his claim to be a "stable genius." Trump is acting like a whack job -- profoundly temperamentally unfit -- and it is getting worse.

The New York Times headline is only partially true. It says that Trump is responding to the criticism about the Iran war. His critics also publicly shared their worry about Trump's mental condition. They think that he has "lost it." 

I present this long Truth Social post to readers, and leave it for you to decide how you feel about the author. Do you trust his temperament and judgment? If he were your father, would you decide it is time to take his car keys away? Imagine you are a Republican congressman. You have the ability to meet with colleagues and arrange to replace the president. Remember, you have an option. JD Vance is in place to take over in the event of presidential incapacity. Does Trump sound like a reasonable man of sound judgment? Would you trust the author of this post to represent you in court? Would you hire this man to be CEO of a business you own? If you were on the board of a school district or public hospital or university, would you hire this man to be its leader and public face?

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

God's gift to America

Governments want the legitimacy offered by Heaven. Religions like the protection of government. One hand washes the other.

But there is no state religion in the USA. It was a practical necessity from the beginning. There were Quakers in Pennsylvania; Roman Catholics in Maryland; Anglicans in South Carolina; Dutch Reformed in New York City. Moreover, the Puritan Calvinists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all disagreed with each other.

Church attendance has been in decline in the USA. The Heritage Foundation reports a sharp increase in people who never attend church, and a decline down to 22 percent of people who attend weekly.

Trends sometimes create counter-trends. We are seeing one. Pew reports:

Christian Nationalism is a Trump/Fox associated phenomenon. Nonpartisan pollster PRRI reports that 56 percent of Republicans qualify as Christian Nationalists. Only 25 percent of political independents and 17 percent of Democrats identify as such. There is a close association with media choices. PRRI reports that two-thirds of Americans who trust far-right news qualify as Christian Nationalists. Fifty-five percent of those who most trust Fox News say they are Christian Nationalists.

President Trump is marking his territory as leader of this countertrend. He is voicing a muscular warrior ethic. He made an audacious Easter post:

Some commentary describes this as an incautious act of frustration. I see craftsmanship. He is expressing Christian triumph, and his supporters value that. Jesus' turn-the-other-cheek piety is for losers. Trump represents pre-Christian values. He represents the tribe under siege by secularism. 

In the Iliad, Achilles and Hector fought to win glory. Trump seeks glory. Trump ends his post with a taunt -- poor, helpless Allah. There is a warning in the Iliad, if Trump is open to learning from it. After killing Hector, Achilles dragged his body around behind a chariot in front of Greek and Trojan soldiers. The gods were disgusted with Achilles, even the ones who favored the Greeks. Misfortune followed. Best not anger the gods.

The Iran war is a solidifying event for Christian Nationalism. We are allied with Israel against a Muslim country. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is establishing that the old values are for losers.

Speech, March 9, 2026: 

America regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. . . . No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.

Public prayer, March 25, 2026:  

Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

Pope Leo offers a different version of Christianity. He said that God does not hear and answer prayers like this. 

Newsweek reported a meeting at the Pentagon between Trump officials and a papal envoy in January where the administration urged the Vatican to get on board Trump's foreign policy goals and methods. The meeting allegedly included a reference to the Avignon Papacy. Hey, Pope Leo, don't cross Trump. 

JD Vance is in Hungary to support Viktor Orban, an advocate of Christian Nationalism ideology and "democratic illiberalism," where Christianity is the cornerstone of national identity. Trump posted his unequivocal support for Orban.

Trump gets the majority vote of people who identify as Christian. Trump represents a borderland between rendering unto God and unto Caesar. It is common to see religious symbols on the iconography associated with Trump. He represents something that a significant number of American Christians seem to want: a fighting spokesperson for the faith, even if not of the faith. 

The long-term trend is toward cosmopolitan secularism. Christian Nationalism is backlash to that trend. Democrats are associated with the trend. Trump is riding and amplifying backlash to it.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

We have already lost the war with Iran.

Win the battle, lose the war.

Iran is better off than before.

The USA is worse off than before.

Trump's political situation deteriorated.

The purported goal of this war was to eliminate Iran's ability to threaten Israel and the world. Trump is under political pressure from Bibi Netanyahu and foreign policy hawks within the U.S. who assert that nothing but the elimination of Iran is sufficient. Iran could not be treated like North Korea, Russia, or China as rivals-with-militaries. Trump's orientation and brand identity is to oppose anything with the stamp of Barack Obama, including his Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Netanyahu's anti-Iran animus fit Trump's needs perfectly. The GOP became the yes-whatever-Israel-wants party. Democrats became the somewhat-Israel party. The battle lines were drawn. Against advice of caution within his administration, Trump followed Israel into this war.

Iran is stronger because of it.

--  Prior to the war, the U.S. had enforceable sanctions on Iran. As a result of the war, we have lifted the sanctions.

--  Prior to the war, Iran sold oil to the world at a price in the $60s per barrel. Now they sell oil at a far higher price -- and so does Russia.

--  Prior to the war, the world consensus position was that Iran must not get nuclear weapons. The ceasefire agreement gives Iran permission to enrich uranium.

--  Prior to the war, the Strait of Hormuz, in both law and practice, was an international waterway. It was uncertain whether Iran could block it. Now Iran has enforceable control of the strait, with the ability to block passage by disfavored countries and to charge a toll to ships that pass. Iran acquired a powerful weapon. 

--  Prior to the war, Iran was a very minor power. Now it shows its military is capable of defending Iran's ruling regime and can impose its will on faraway countries by shutting down the world's oil supply.

 --  Prior to the war, the U.S. was thought to be able to withstand an enemy's counterpunch. Now it is understood that the U.S. is so fragile that even a 25 percent rise in gasoline prices creates an untenable situation for its leader. America has a glass jaw.

--  Prior to the war, the U.S. was understood to have alliances and support from NATO countries. Now the world understands that the U.S. squandered that support.

--  Prior to the war Trump's led a nearly-unanimous GOP/MAGA coalition.  Now Trump is experiencing public opposition from some in that coalitipion. Usually reliable senators like Ron Johnson (R-WI) are speaking out. 

-- Prior to the war, the there was a lingering notion in the political zeitgeist that Israel's interests and U.S. interests were parallel. It was voiced aggressively by the GOP. It was done with reservations by President Joe Biden, for which he got a mixture of support and opposition. That notion has deteriorated in both parties. The antisemitic/anti-Israel undercurrent within the GOP is getting traction among mainstream voices.

Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted and heckled Senator Ron Wyden's (D-OR) town hall in Medford last week. Wyden criticized Netanyahu and assured the audience that he had just introduced legislation that was strongly opposed by AIPAC, the pro-Israel advocacy organization. 

--  Prior to the war the United States was strengthening its relationships with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil states, which created a potential basis for a balance-of-power Muslim coalition to contain Iran. The relationship was premised on the U.S.'s ability to provide security to those countries. Now we see that Iran can and will bomb Gulf states' oil infrastructure, residential buildings, tourist hotels, and airlines, and the U.S. cannot protect them. Having a U.S. military base does not mean safety; it means added peril.

Democrats should not presume that Trump's GOP political base understands the war to have been lost. Trump has visuals of explosions, and Fox News is relentless in presenting this as a military success. It is indeed a military success. 

But military success is not victory. It may take a while for the country to realize this, but this reality will emerge. In the meantime, this is a political loser for Trump. Americans don't like long, expensive, losing wars.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]