Blue Unity!

By Rick Boettger

The New York Times report on Trump’s Ukraine war-ending initiative got 1703 online comments within six hours before they closed it to more.

Only three supported it in any way.  That is, a majority of 1700-3 were unified in seething outrage.  The Resistance is NOT waning.

I think the NYT comments section is real news displaying a critical part of the Democratic Party’s and thus the nation’s political soul.  NYT reports at least the most important Blue-enraging news, and has a token couple of non-Blue opinion writers, but is unabashedly partisan.  It is what they truly believe, and overwhelmingly what their readership demands.  A readership which is the intellectual elite of the Blue party.  It has 10 million subscribers of the 48 million registered Democrats, putting just the readers in the top 20%.  Of that, the 1703 commenters represent the top small fraction of 1%.  Ridiculously elite.  Not only best-informed, but dedicated and out there for their Party and its causes.

They have finally followed the plea from as far back as 2018 in the Financial Times that “Democrats Need Their Own Mitch McConnell,” to make their singular goal to oppose absolutely everything Republicans tried to do in Congress. Last week they updated it to a happy report that Dems are doing exactly that, in perfect House and Senate unanimity to every single Trump appointee.  This news was discussed enthusiastically on every MSNBC and CNN show the next day.  Unanimity is a very big thing in the Blues, and they are executing it flawlessly.

This strategy has two possible problems.  First is that it, along with the filibuster, has basically shut down Congress’ legislative power to do anything but pass funding, which bypasses the filibuster with the wacky “reconciliation” exception.  But since neither party wants to dump the filibuster, this may not be a bad thing, or at least not a new bad thing.

Second is that it had very mixed results last time.  For Mitch, his singular goal was to  “make Barack Obama a one-term President.”  Obviously, that  failed,  But they did get the biggest swing ever in new Red legislators replacing the Blues, limiting Obama to mere Presidential edicts which were easily dumped by Trump.

I don’t think the second four years of the McConnell Doctrine elected Trump.  As I have whined here at length in the past, Trump was an own-goal for the Dems.  They let notorious RBG dump the Supreme Court, chose the only candidate who could possibly lose to Trump, ran  a dreadful campaign, and finally suffered the infamous Comey revelations.  None of these had anything to do with the Reds’ strategy..

Right now, I am not clear what the Blues’ goal is, as Trump really is not going to get a third term, try hard as he can (Reds can’t wait to get Vance: a sane, much younger version of their hero).  No chance to turn the Senate in the midterms.  It may help win the House, but even this may backfire if they go too far and, say, oppose nixing the debt limit, thus closing the government.  The same goes for beating Vance.

While there was zero opposition on the Blue TV stations to the McConnell Doctrine, there is a friendly discussion of applying it, e.g., re; the debt limit.  But there’s little discussion I can find on what else they’re going to do, pro-Blue as opposed to anti-Trump.  They have clear goals, trying to get back the working class and minority voters they’ve shed–but how?  And what Blues are being groomed to beat the Vance-Haley ticket in 2028?  That’s what I look forward to watching develop.

The NYT censors my reporting of its commenter stats.  The only comments of mine it rejects are those that make any mention of them.  I have no idea why.  It prints my Green Party perspectives, which get about as many “Recommend”s, their version of Facebook “Like”s, as do the tiny number of Trump supporters.  And I also have as many vilifying “Reply”s as them, maybe harsher, as I am a heretical apostate as opposed to a mere idiot opponent.

Finally, the main Ukraine castigation was for Hegseth honestly spilling the beans on Ukraine getting neither its land back nor NATO membership.  He walked back the second, but only because so many Reds also complained about it as a negotiation blunder.  Second place was the main prediction of giving all of Europe to a Blitzkrieg update by the Devil Putin.

I stand by my two-year-old predictions that soon Ukraine will indeed lose its land and NATO membership, and in say five years everyone will recognize the Domino Theory was as wrong with Russia as it was after Vietnam.  Now, on to our real dangers: nuclear armed North Korea and Iran, and China against our truly valuable ally, Taiwan.  Wish any US leader luck on these three, even more important than the price of eggs.

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