Resistance Hits the Ballot Box

 

Tuesday, election day, was an important day.  How important will be determined in the future, but for the moment it has created a political crisis for the Republican party.

Tuesday followed a weekend of polls released.  They weren't different from previous polls except that for the MAGA regime they were worse.  They showed mass disapproval of every policy and major action of the Chaos government, and mass approval of what Republicans were against, like continuing Obamacare credits.  

So were they surprised?  It's possible that in the beginning they bet on the public cheering on any actions against immigrants, including ambushing anybody who looked brown in the Home Depot parking lot, or treating Chicago like Afghanistan, or shooting clergymen in the face, or kidnapping toddlers.  Apparently even Latinos were supposed to be pleased.

They bet on their public cheering the dismantling of the federal workforce, even apparently in Virginia where many of them lived.  They bet on their people cheering Chaos showing the world who's boss with his tariffs, even when it raised their prices, hit farmers hard, threatened small businesses and even their hallowed tech sector.  

They even bet on reviving the old hatred of Obamacare, throwing in Medicaid and other programs because they helped only welfare queens, even when it hit family budgets hard (and the times they were a changing: Obamacare is popular) and took medical care and other services away from especially their small town and rural supporters, directly and by de-funding small rural hospitals and other medical facilities.

Was that the political calculus?  People may believe many digital lies, and whoppers out of the White House, but they have to pay their grocery bills, their medical bills, energy and housing.  When they know that the Chaos regime lies about that, it might make you wonder what else...

The election results showed not only Democrats winning the vast majority of races across the country from governorships and mayors (in Pittsburgh the Democrat won by 87.5%) to state legislators, judges and school boards.  Moreover, the margins of victory, especially in Virginia and New Jersey, were very large, especially when compared with predictions and polling.

Democrats won the first two statewide offices in Georgia since forever.  They strengthened the courts in Pennsylvania, took 13 GOP seats from the Virginia legislature, beat back a voter suppression ballot question in Maine and approved redistricting in California to counter the Texas gerrymanders. 

The analysts were quick to note that Democrats won back Latino voters, and even took a slice of Chaos voters--perhaps 7%, perhaps more.  There may be more demographic surprises in the mix.

As if Wednesday morning wasn't already bad, the Chaos tariffs got eviscerated at the Supreme Court hearing.  Some giddy observers suggested a 9-0 vote making them illegal was not out of the question.  

Together with the gathering consequences of the longest federal shutdown in history, all of this adds up to the Republican political crisis.  All King Chaos could suggest to the Senate was to get rid of the filibuster so they could open up the government, then pass voter suppression laws so Democrats could never win again (the King's actual words.)  Republican Senators had their own reasons for keeping the filibuster, but they were still playing the Chaos game by reflexively rejecting Senate Democrats' offer to reopen the government in exchange for a one year extension of the Obamacare credits.  

The Senate meets Saturday so by the time you read this something else may have happened, and maybe we'll see which way the pieces are going to fall.  Right now GOPers are in crisis, as is the country.  King Chaos is getting weirder in more obvious ways, and maybe nobody knows how to deal with that either. 

Meanwhile the election results have changed the public mood dramatically.  Months of peaceful protests culminating in 7 million participating in No Kings events in or near just about every community in America may well have emboldened people to continue their protests by marking a ballot.  I'm surprised that Republicans weren't prepared for something like this.

On the other hand, maybe there was no political calculus.  This is only ideological ( Psycho Steven Miller and his white supremacists, Russ Vought and his death-dealers by budget) and elaborate distraction as the Chaos cabinet steals the Treasury blind, and King Chaos extorts millions.  Maybe the voters don't matter, just the plutocrats, the tech bros, the billionaires behind the curtain.  In that case, the military options are even more on the table than they were. 

 But time may be running out.  Is this an inflection point?  Time will tell.

Moving Chaos

 

White House East Wing, Before and Obliterated

Chaos the Destroyer: Nothing illustrates the hubris and direction of the Chaos administration  like the sudden obliteration of a deeply historic East Wing of the White House, the demolition not coincidentally beginning 48 hours after seven million people registered their protests against its actions, all across America.  

There is no comparison in American history to what Chaos did--not even the British torching the White House in the early 19th century.  Even when Harry Truman was forced to essentially scoop out the innards of the White House to build a steel foundation under the badly wobbling structure, the outer walls were carefully preserved, so as not to alarm the public or threaten the historical integrity of "the people's house."

This destruction may have been essentially capricious, but its boldness more than symbolizes both tyrannical intent and confidence in wreaking more havoc with totalitarian aims.  The nature of those aims were reinforced in other ways, like the end of all refugees except white South Africans--nothing screams racism and white supremacy better than privileging the architects of apartheid.  

But especially at this point it would be a mistake to think of Chaos as one man--as the face that appears daily on every screen and front page.  Other power centers are becoming clearer--notably Psycho Stephen Miller (and his war on "immigrants") in the White House, and budget-master Russell Vought, who has used the government shutdown to unilaterally make more cuts to federal departments and especially to any programs funded during the Biden administration, and most especially benefitting blue states.

Behind them is the less visible jockeying for power--VP Vance and Marco Rubio for example--as their official leader loses touch with reality to an ever-increasing extent.  So today the term Chaos represents more--more even that the White House and the cabinet.  It also includes the Supreme Court majority and Congressional Republicans, as well as those think tanks and supporting institutions that do their work in the shadows, if not the absolute darkness.  Increasingly it spreads to encompass huge chunks of corporate media.  Consider just the Washington Post editorial defending the obliteration of the East Wing and the promised building of a huge ballroom, allegedly financed by ultra-wealthy private contributors that includes the billionaire owner of the Washington Post.

Chaos on the Move: Slowed by court decisions and other resistance, Chaos is nevertheless making progress on nearly all fronts, with one big exception: public opinion.  The people seem to be self-selecting themselves as the enemy within.  But pieces are moving to at least be ready to apply military force to that little problem.

At the beginning of her twice-weekly politics chat last Thursday (Oct. 30), Heather Cox Richardson put together three separate news stories that indeed suggest an ominous pattern.

The biggest story has been very underreported in the US.  According to an internal Pentagon memo revealed by the UK's Guardian newspaper, Major General Ronald Burkett, appointed director of national guard operations in 2024, ordered most states to devote 500 National Guard troops each for training in quick response to quell "civil disturbances."  The total number of these troops is 23,500. They are to be ready for deployment in 2026.

How far are we from Chaos declaring No Kings protests as civil disturbances?  But there are other possible applications.  So Richardson's second story first appeared in the Washington Examiner:   The Chaos administration quietly removed top ICE leaders in five cities and replace them with Border Patrol officials.  The Border Patrol, Richardson notes, is the more aggressive agency with the broader mandate--applied to immigrants.  According to an anonymous official quoted in the story, this is just the beginning of this change, expected to spread to perhaps 24 cities in all.

It is the Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino that has become the face of the Chaos operations because of his aggressive style, according to the Examiner.  Notably in Chicago, where a judge admonished him for capricious use of tear gas against citizens and other acts that the judge had ordered to be ended.  (Not that ICE alone isn't bad enough.  Both have been shooting unarmed civilians and otherwise attacking people, then claiming they were attacked first.  Juries don't believe them because everyone knows they always lie, but they still capture people, typically in very tight handcuffs that itself leads to pain and lasting injury, and keep them in jail for awhile until judges and juries free them.  But they don't really care about convictions.  It's the terroristic bullying that's the point.)

Psycho Steve has been relentless in expanding the street war on immigrants, aiming to triple the current pace of arrests.  Richardson theorizes that such escalation could create greater resistance in communities, that could then be interpreted as social unrest.  This could push Chaos to its long threatened declaration under the Insurrection Act--and a cascade of consequences that could include cancelling the 2026 congressional elections, or at least surrounding polling places with armed stormtroopers.

The third story, appearing in the Atlantic, is about the trend among top Chaos officials to move their residence onto military bases, supplanting the actual military officers designated to live in those houses.  The latest is Psycho Steve.  But both State Dept.'s Rubio and Defense Dept. Hegseth will live on "Generals Row" at Fort McNair (at least after a $137,000 renovation to Hegseth's home), while Homeland's Kristi Gnome moved to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. 

The Atlantic story and others interpret these movies as cowardly responses to public indignation and opposition to their racism and cruelty.  But if civil unrest is expected or at least feared, and a military response in the works, they'd need to live behind the castle walls.

(There's also a certain niece of King Chaos who claims that her uncle's destruction of the East Wing is a cover for upgrading the bunker known to exist under it, because he was "rattled" by No Kings.)

And immigration is hardly the only sensitive area.  In other parts of the world, civil unrest seems to occur most often over the issue of food.  Scarcity, high prices and access to food taken away often lead to food riots.  Literally today, more than 40 million Americans who depend on federal food assistance are without it.  They are mostly children, women and seniors, and they are mostly white.  You wouldn't get that impression from the MAGA mouths, including congressional and state officials as well as social media ranters.  Entire communites will be affected, especially those that depend on small grocery stores that themselves depend on these funds for their narrow profit margin.

Already long lines are reported at food banks, and in Texas and California, stadium parking lots became mass food distribution sites.  Even if this particular cruel outrage doesn't continue long, how unrealistic is it to imagine that Chaos officials are watching those parking lots closely.  Even though nobody pays it any attention anymore, nevertheless millions of children and others elsewhere in the world are still starving and dying of preventable diseases and injuries because US aid was summarily ended.   Those millions are invisible to us (thanks in part to an increasingly hapless, compromised and poor news media).  But what happens if they are a lot closer?