16 Serious Thoughts From The Satirist

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  • 1. Are federal judges all agreed that Donald Trump can’t pardon himself? And can’t issue blanket pardons for his entire administration and family members? It makes me irate to think that any judge would let Trump entertain the idea. It violates the spirit of our entire Constitution — as well as every ideal of publicly accountable self-government that the POTUS should have a loophole to be legally immune from literally any and every federal crime.
  • 2. What a slippery slope! Can the president bring a machine gun to the State of the Union address and gun down every member of Congress so no one is alive to impeach him, and then just sign a universal pardon with his or her name on it absolving him or her of every federal punishment and consequence?? No one in America is above the law. That has been the point of our Constitution since the Founders listed out 27 grievances and told King George to go fuck himself in a declaration signed big enough for him to read without his glasses.
  • 3. To that point of America’s historic legacy, I would like for liberals to chill out a little on the reflexive shit-talking of US history and the Founding Fathers. The Democratic Party can’t have a populist landslide presidential election in 2028 to curbstomp MAGA fascism once and for all if liberals are always shit-talk everything about America. We have to be a little — actually a lot more — patriotic. We are all personally responsible and liberally obligated to participate in making a more perfect union. So if we’re getting too nihilistic about our American citizenship, it means we have to roll up our sleeves even higher.
  • 4. The US is far from perfect, but we are the longest running modern democracy, and we have certainly been the best behaved super power in world history. We’ve fucked up a whole bunch, but we’ve been much more conscientious and willing to sacrifice ourselves for others’ freedom than the Soviets, the British, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Ottomans, the Byzantines, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, etc. who had wayyyy more slaves than us, and were constantly trying to invade as far as they could march to extract tribute from everyone else in the world.
  • 5. We didn’t do that, even when we alone had nukes! And since WWII Americans have created and defended globalized diplomacy for decades of relatively free trade that has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty and dramatically lowered the annual number of people who die in wars. That’s something to be proud of, right? Even if obviously the Founders were flawed and self-interested as any other group of humans, and the time period in which they lived was quite different morally than ours.
  • 6. Seriously, America needs all hands on deck for 2028. The best populism is fully national, and we need a lot of shamed Trump voters who are voting Democratic for the first time in decades or maybe ever, to keep voting Democratic in future elections. And we can’t do that by being annoying, negative, scolds all the time. Here’s a little thing to work on: lets stop impulsively trying to cancel everyone in our history who lived in the 18th and 19th Centuries because they weren’t as righteous as us in the 21st Century.
  • 7. My idea for Democrats’ priority #1: Democratic governors and legislatures in states not yet joined with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact make it happen. The Electoral College has lived long past its relevancy to democracy. It has few actual rules, and functions from meandered precedence in ways that can totally be ignored if one party decides to have their electors tell their voters to fuck off. Way too many presidents have gotten elected with minority votes, and it’s stupid that our elections swing on the dumbest, lowest attention paying undecided voters in 5–7 states who get shell shocked with hundreds of millions of dollars in TV attacks ads.
  • 8. If the popular vote determined the winner, the strategies and electoral incentives of campaigns would change entirely, and more of the country would get involved in direct political action for, against, and with the candidates who would be criss-crossing the entire country taking much less of the country for granted. Our current system makes it malpractice to do much campaigning in solid red or blue states like Hawaii, Idaho, Wyoming, and Vermont. So let’s make the compact happen! If Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada get even bluer, they should hit the ground running for this in January.
  • 9. If Democrats win the Senate, why not fast track Puerto Rico and D.C. as states?? Ehhhh? Lol what would Mitch McConnell do? McConnell would bring in Puerto Rico as two or three states. Why shouldn’t Democrats make an East and West Puerto Rico? They’d each be as big as North and South Dakota combined! If Democrats don’t want to be greedy, 4 new Democratic senators and 5–6 new Democratic representatives would be a good-faith compromise with Republicans 😛
  • 10. I’m getting pissed that so many right wing parties around the world are championing neo-monarchist nepo babies of crime families. Flávio Bolsonaro just lost in Brazil, he’s the son of the preceding former Brazilian president who’s currently in prison for trying a J6-style coup. Marine Le Pen in France is the daughter of the former leader of her National Front party. Don Jr. or Ivanka are probably gonna try to run someday in the US, or maybe even Eric if he gets that crayon out of his brain he stuck up his nose as a toddler. Rightwinger corporatists, mega wealthy, and fascists love the idea of hereditary succession because it’s easier to get yourself into an aristocracy if you only have to bribe and suck up to one family that never fucking gets off the national stage. Fuck these tryhard dynasties.
  • 11. I have written a lot before about what a legislative cuck Mike Johnson is, but I thought about it again today and, wow, it just never ceases to amaze me that Johnson has so much power and authority yet has used so little of it, and exerted so little gravity in our national politics. He is an empty suit. A useless little elf. And Jesus does he not seem like an active member in good standing of the GOP closetocracy?
  • 12. It has been a weird amount of time that the Trump Administration hasn’t had a press secretary. Isn’t it weird? He probably just won’t have one again. It’s kind of becoming impossible to defend this administration. The scandals are smoldering so hot, and as soon as Democrats take over they’re gonna blow wide open. Trump will sequester himself in the White House for the next two years, and probably barely be seen at all while his staff hides his dementia and frail health.
  • 13. What happened to Trump TV? For a week literally everyone in the Trump Administration was making such a big fuss about it. Now it’s been crickets for like a month? I’m guessing they probably ran into immediate obstacles of legality with violating equal time rules and the Hatch Act that no one had thought about ahead of time. Trump’s approval rating has sunk so far it’s not likely there’s even public interest anyway. Like everything with Donald Trump, he made a giant photo-op announcement aggrandizing himself prematurely, and then didn’t follow up or through because he’s a lazy, stupid bitch. Trump TV is just one more “in two weeks” promise that will never be kept.
  • 14. The coming Democrat House really needs to rein in Trump’s dumbfuck spending. Republicans never shut the fuck up about the debt, but once again have done nothing but run up massive deficits. And the waste of our military arsenal in Iran that now must be replaced is adding a spectacular number of red ledger additions. Once again, Republicans are running up the debt and forcing next year’s Democrats to make all the tough political decisions to get the budget back on any track because it certainly won’t be a fast track to fiscal sanity.
  • 15. I think these midterms will have surprising results among Democratic outcomes, and the 2028 primary will be very interesting. I don’t think political pundits appreciate enough that because the Democratic Party didn’t have a primary in 2024, there’s kind of a big gap in our conception of the liberal hopes and expectations of the Democratic electorate. Going eight years from 2020 to 2028 between massive intra-party primary debates is a long, long time in politics. Voters’ top issues and concerns have changed dramatically since 2020, and the electorate itself — after 8 years of Boomers dying, Millennials ascending, and Gen Z coming of voting age — will be entirely different.
  • 16. The Millennial era has begun with a very talented new generation of Democrats stepping up to take the reigns from the geriatric Democratic establishment. No shade on those Boomers — Nancy Pelosi was a certified badass Speaker of the House, Chuck Schumer has been undeniably good at recruiting good Congressional candidates, and we’ll be nostalgic for the Obama years they helped lead for the rest of our lives — except that they’ve held onto leadership positions too long. I am very enthusiastic for the new style of populist politics behind the surging stars of the Democratic Party, like Zohran Mamdani, Jon Ossoff, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, James Talarico, Abdul El-Sayed, and more Millennial leaders likely getting elected tomorrow.
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