System Failure
Here’s what I’ve recently found interesting:
- As much as some may want to identify a scapegoat, a total system failure created the present Constitutional crisis;
- No matter what happens, we won’t return to the previous Constitutional understandings;
- Senate Democrats have been handed a tool they better use to tie up the Senate floor;
- Clearing my tabs; and
- What’s giving me hope!
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.” “The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.
#1
- Joe Biden Isn’t Your Scapegoat (Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark, Link to Article)
Since the first excerpts of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, Original Sin, were released, far too many Democrats have engaged in a circular finger-pointing exercise to determine who to blame for the 2024 election failure.
Finding a scapegoat is one of America’s favorite pastimes. Democrats are particularly adept at spending time on such exercises.
Making sure the blame falls on someone else is a skill. As the many books written by Bob Woodward have demonstrated, the best way to make sure you are treated favorably by the author is to be one of his featured anonymous sources.
Tapper and Thompson say they conducted more than 200 interviews as sourcing for their book about former President Biden’s decision to seek another term. Cowards, the lot of them.
If what they told Tapper and Thompson is true—and it may be—these staffers and advisors had an obligation to the Republic to resign in protest and warn us at the time. Waiting until after the election is quite a cowardly move—one that should disqualify every one of Tapper and Thompson’s sources from serving in a future Administration.
But, as Jonathan V. Last makes clear, Donald Trump’s re-election is not just the fault of the former president, his closest advisors, or even those who put their careers ahead of the nation. As he writes:
The reason we—and by “we” I mean everyone who is not part of the MAGA ummah—have made Biden the scapegoat is because the reality is too dark.
It wasn’t just Joe Biden who failed. It was America. All of it.
Last explains how Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Republican voters, the media, the elites, the judicial system, the Supreme Court, Biden’s inner circle, Democratic voters, Independent voters, and the writer all failed. I failed.
But these failures are not just the ones that Last describes. I would go back further to President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon. We didn’t hold Nixon accountable. We didn’t hold Ford’s key advisors (who included his three Chiefs of Staff, Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney—all names that would come back in future scandals) accountable. That pardon decision started a series of events where high-level wrongdoing resulted in no real penalties, sending a message that breaking the law was possible if the president asked for it.
We didn’t hold the people responsible for the Iran-Contra affair accountable. President Reagan was not impeached. Vice President Bush was able to win his election and became President Bush 41. At the end of his term, Bush 41 pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others involved with Iran-Contra, ensuring that there would be no trial. William Barr was the mastermind of those pardons. He wasn’t shunned for that work, allowing him to return under President Trump 45 where he could misrepresent special counsel Robert Mueller’s work on the Trump-Russia investigation.
President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld lied our nation into the war in Iraq. They oversaw a torture regime based on the legal memos written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. Yoo also provided the legal opinion to justify the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
Cheney and Rumsfeld shouldn’t have been able to get such high-level positions after their involvement with the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Rather than facing war crime prosecutions, Yoo has a named professorship at the University of California, Berkeley.
Of course, there are more people who can fit into this narrative (like Roger Stone, whose dirty tricks date back to the Nixon 1972 presidential campaign).
Democratic elected officials hold a bunch of responsibility for the lack of accountability. President Clinton didn’t push for an investigation of the Bush 42 pardons, and had his own scandals. President Obama wanted to look forward, not backward, and so he did not prosecute anyone involved with the 2008 financial crisis or the Bush torture regime. Congressional Democrats largely went along, even with their colleagues who supported an insurrection in 2021 that could have led to their deaths.
President Biden did not aggressively seek to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6, 2021, insurrection attack on the United States Capitol. He appointed Merrick Garland as the Attorney General, and there was clearly no motivation to quickly seek charges against Trump and the leading insurrectionists aggressively. Political norms, you know.
Our political leaders have also failed to fix the problems with our electoral system exposed by the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections. Fixing gerrymandering, voting rights, Citizens United, and corruption—like Congressional stock trading—were not priorities when Democrats had majorities.
Congressional Republicans have failed to meet their Constitutional obligations to serve as a check and balance on the executive branch. The tariff madness could end today if two-thirds of the House and Senate were willing to cast the votes required to override Trump’s likely veto of legislation stripping him of the tariff powers he is abusing.
Yes, Joe Biden should not have run again. It was also a mistake not to let Vice President Harris separate herself from him during a change election. And Biden really needs to stop going on television and implicitly blaming Harris for the 2024 election loss by claiming he still could have won.
But scapegoating him won’t solve our nation’s descent into authoritarianism. As Last noted in his article, Biden did more than most to try to avoid it. These conversations also distract us from discussing everything the Trump Regime is doing to create a competitive authoritarian nation.
Our system failed. A new Constitutional system will arise. Will it be competitive authoritarianism or a rebirth of our democracy?
That’s the battle we need to fight.
#2
- There Is No Piecing Back Our Badly Shattered Constitutional Order (Andy Craig, The UnPopulist, Link to Article)
Andy Craig does an outstanding job of placing into context the current Constitutional crisis created by President Trump and Elon Musk before their public falling out. As he writes:
America has been flung into a constitutional crisis in the most massive and fundamental way imaginable, ruled by a regime which is not merely doing unconstitutional things but is anti-constitutional at its very core.
“Crisis” is precisely the right word. This is not mere political disruption—it is a full-blown constitutional crisis in the proper, technical sense of the term. The normal rules of the system have been thrown into untenable contradictions where something has to break. The whole mechanism is disintegrating before our eyes. We stuck a wrench into its core by putting an anti-constitutionalist into its highest office, and now the broken gears are spewing left and right. What we will be left with is a government only superficially resembling the one codified in the Constitution.
The reality we face is grim, but not hopeless—yet. It will, however, be a political environment unlike any we have previously known. It will operate by different principles and mechanisms than the familiar model of a coherent system under the rule of law. The weeks, months, and years ahead will not just bring turmoil—they will challenge the basic premises holding America’s governing institutions together. Still, it will remain up to we, the people, to decide what comes next. At the end of the day, reasserting our constitutional foundations, and eventually reconstructing a stable system of law atop them, will depend on our ability to secure the imprimatur of raw popular sovereignty. America will have its say on the matter of its own undoing—though what should deeply worry us is that it is far from a given that it will choose to recover its constitutional legacy.
Craig explains how returning to the Constitutional understandings we had on January 19, 2025, is impossible. As has happened a few times before in our country’s history, a new Constitutional settlement will come from this crisis.
Will we have a stronger executive—as Trump and the unitary executive advocates demand—or will Congress reassert its prerogatives as the Article I branch the Constitutional framers envisioned? How will Trump’s attacks on the courts and legal system change how the third branch operates? How will the relationship between the federal and state governments change?
Thankfully, popular opinion still matters to these questions. As Craig explains,
“The future is not guaranteed; there is no iron law of progress, no arc of justice determined by anything outside of our own human actions.
<snip>
There will be no day when a switch is flipped and the pieces all fit back together as they used to. The future of our system of government is what we make of it.”
We still have that power. May we, the people, put it to the best use possible.
#3
- Senate Democrats Have Been Handed a Tool to Stop the Big Beautiful Bill (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
Apparently, asking our Democratic United States Senators to use their powers to slow down their chamber’s work was too much to ask—despite the fundraising emails and texts they send that rightly claim that we are in the middle of a Constitutional crisis.
I guess saying “I object” to unanimous consent requests to force Republican Senators to agree to do something about an out-of-control president falls too far outside the political norms. I am not sure why some still defend those norms despite the breakdown of our Constitutional system, but that’s where we are.
But David Dayen explains how the Senate Republicans’ recent decision to ignore the previously all-powerful Senate parliamentarian gives Democrats another opportunity to eat up valuable Senate floor time.
Senate Republicans recently used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to nullify several waivers California had received to set higher emission standards than national rules. Court rulings and the Senate parliamentarian said these Environmental Protection Agency waivers were not eligible for CRA review.
But Senate Republicans did it anyway. Dayen explains what it could mean if Democrats embrace the new precedent:
California has already announced that it will sue to maintain its waiver, charging that the Senate had no authority to overturn it. But the Senate operates largely on precedent, and now that the parliamentarian has been disregarded on this point, virtually any action the executive branch takes could be construed as a rule, and therefore subject to fast-track congressional review.
For this reason, Democrats could subject the Senate to time-consuming resolution votes repeatedly, to such a degree that the Senate would not have time to do anything else for the rest of this session of Congress. In other words, Democrats could respond to the waiver vote by paralyzing the Senate, and stopping the giant Trump tax bill from ever reaching the floor.
Georgia State University assistant professor and former House Oversight Committee staffer Todd Phillips laid this out in a Prospect piece earlier this month. Any 30 senators can force a CRA resolution onto the floor, with a required ten hours of debate time. These resolutions would need the president’s signature, and nearly all of them wouldn’t even get the Republican votes necessary to pass the Senate. But according to Senate procedure, they have to be dealt with if enough senators force them onto the floor. They must be debated and voted upon ahead of other Senate business if brought up for consideration. This means that Democrats can tie up the Senate floor for upwards of ten hours with any single CRA resolution.
Oh, there are so many CRA resolutions Democrats could craft to force these 10-hour debates. These debates could force Republican Senators to go on the record about the Trump regime’s atrocities. They also would burn the most valuable resource the Senate Republicans have: floor time.
Debating CRA resolutions means Republicans can’t confirm judges and nominees. It means they can’t pass a Big Beautiful Budget bill.
This precedent gives Democrats another tool they can use to impact policy despite being in the minority. The Republicans did it first. It’s time for Senate Democrats to force Republicans to pay the price for changing the rules and supporting unpopular policies. There is no excuse not to use it.
Clearing My Tabs
- RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory (Beth Mole, ars technica, Link to Article)
In a 2021 book attacking Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. promotes miasma theory instead—while misstating what that theory means. But it helps one to understand why RFK Jr. is harming the public health with his decisions as Health and Human Services Secretary. - Right-wing media and anti-abortion groups are using a “seriously flawed” study on medication abortion to claim it’s not safe (Chloe Simon, Media Matters, Link to Article)
A conservative think tank released a flawed study just in time for Congressional Republicans to coordinate their attacks against the abortion medication mifepristone. No, one in ten women do not experience a serious adverse event from using mifepristone. But I suspect you’ve been hearing that statistic a bunch—and we will continue to do so. - The Study Republicans Demanded About Trans Kids Just Backfired. Guess What the Media Isn't Covering? (Parker Malloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)
Utah Republicans banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth in 2023, saying that they needed time for better evidence to come in. That evidence has arrived: the Utah Department of Health and Human Services released a 1,000-page report that concludes that “youth who received care before age 18 had better outcomes, especially around depression, anxiety, and suicidality.” Readers of this newsletter will probably not be surprised to learn that Utah Republicans are ignoring these findings. But Malloy rightly wants to know why media outlets that find time to cover stories that express skepticism or opposition to transgender care are also ignoring it? - What to do if you’re targeted by the White House (Ellinor Heywood, If You Can Keep It, Link to Article)
Here are 22 things a non-profit organization can do to defend itself from Trump Regime politicized executive actions. - Prepare for America’s Summer of Pain (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
Safe summers in the United States have relied upon the expertise of federal government entities like the National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration, FEMA, the National Park Service, and others. Unfortunately, as Graff explains, these are some of the agencies that have been harmed the most by Musk’s DOGE teams.
The Possibility of Hope
- I have appreciated seeing so many people protest the actions of ICE around the country. There is no need for this level of force against people who have committed no violent offenses. Standing up against Stephen Miller’s immigration lies is always worthwhile.
- Maine Governor Janet Mills told President Trump that she would see him in court, and then she won. That’s how you handle a bully.
- If you have TikTok or Instagram Reels, I encourage you to do a search for #MascotReveal. You will then have the opportunity to watch college mascots reveal their identities as they prepare to graduate. Up to that point, even roommates are often unaware who is underneath that mascot outfit. I love this tradition, and the University of South Carolina may have the best one of all.
What’s giving you hope? Please e-mail me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“It’s kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more *racist* it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like “race realism” and “human diversity”?
I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith’s observation that “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” (Cory Doctorow, [Plura-List] the Meritocracy to Eugenics Pipeline)”
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On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.
People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.
It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.
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