25 February 2025

Plan I

Plan A and Plan B and a lot of other plans for dealing with the horror of a Trump administration have crashed and burned. So, we're onto Plan I. This stands for Plan Implosion. 

What is it?

1. Trump's management of the federal government and the actions taken by Elon Musk as shadow President are so bad, that his administration is on a path to implode in public opinion and political support, now that his honeymoon period is coming to an end.

The New York Times has listed 22 major illegal actions his administration has taken so far, of which courts have already halted seven of them. He may win some of those battles, but he won't win all of them. 

His nominees are consistently mendacious, incompetent, and have profoundly flawed character.

And, as his actions are starting to be implemented, a lot of his supporters, who didn't read Project 2025, or didn't take his rhetoric seriously, are starting to realize how bad his policies are for them, and had bad both his policies and the chaos and uncertainty that his approach to implementing them has created are for the economy. Pretty much every major economic indicator has gone south since he has taken office, and sometimes in a seriously concerning way. Polls show that both most of his policies and many of his approaches to implementing them are seriously unpopular. And, his initial favorability rating is lower than any other President in the history of modern polling.

2. If Trump's administration implodes badly enough, he may see major defections in his own caucus in Congress, which is just a three representative majority in the House and a three Senator majority in the Senate, and we may see long shot Democrats win races for Congress in 2026 as the nation decides that maybe putting the Republicans in charge was a bad idea. The current Republican caucus in Congress is not known for its unity and cohesiveness, even though some of these internal conflicts are just simmering beneath the surface.

3. The U.S. Supreme Court has carried a lot of water for Trump so far, and has an uber-conservative agenda that it would like to advance. But Trump's complete disregard for the rule of law, and the mess of constitutional crises he is creating, can't sit well with all of them. I'm sure that even many of the conservative justices are shocked at how far Trump has gone to ignore the law. And, ultimately, their power derives from government officials obeying the law including their dictates.

This court's rulings have shown a marked tendency to ignore legal analysis in favor of what they see as practical and expedient. And, if the chaos reaches the point that it is approaching, where the whole Congressionally and constitutionally established framework of the federal government and legislative process starts to fall apart, the economy is crashing, and popular support for his administration is crumbling, they may finally see the error of their ways in appearing to give Trump everything and put on the brakes.  

4. Trump's abandonment of all of the traditional enemies of the U.S. and embrace of our former enemies as friends, greatly weakens the U.S. internationally and weakens Trump's political support from even conservatives, at home. There aren't a lot of single issue foreign policy voters on the right or the left. But the people who do care deeply about foreign policy tend to be powerful.

We're going to have to hope that the rest of Western Europe steps up to support Ukraine, now that the U.S. has turned on all of its NATO allies and is trying to throw Ukraine under the bus.

We're going to have to hope that Israel with the U.K.'s help, and the involvement of the international community, can handle the Middle East's woes in the face of Trump's whacky destabilizing proposals.

Could this just be wishful thinking?

Sure it could be. But, right now, this seems to be the best trajectory to aim for at the moment until a better plan comes along. The opposition doesn't exactly have a lot of options right now.

2 comments:

Dave Barnes said...

"crises he is creating, can sit well with all of them"
CAN'T

andrew said...

Thanks. Fixed.