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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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12 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
1. This accurately describes the tight-rope walk the GOP senators are doing. They know Trump is guilty as hell but they're trying to avoid convicting. Worth asking why.
2. Obviously there is an element of fear here. At a basic level a fear of the mob (i.e. death threats faced by Georgia Republicans when they upheld election results), more broadly political fear (Republicans who turn against Trump face primaries)
3. Like so much else in the Trump era, the impeachment is going to lead to muddled and mixed results. It'll solidify anti-Trump feelings among Democratic majority (the evidence is damning) but also Trump's hold on GOP minority (they can't quit him).
4. More thoughts on why the upshot of all this is a Republican party that will continue to cower under Trump. thenation.com/article/politi…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
8 Feb
1. If you are looking or signs of progress, then one heartening fact is that for the first time in 4 decades there is a Democratic administration that is willing to ignore Larry Summers.
2. It's hard to think of a figure comparable to Summers, someone who keeps fucking up but keeps getting promoted to bigger and bigger jobs. Maybe Robert McNamara? Started off in Reagan administration but got really elevated by Clinton and brought back in by Obama.
3. @NaomiAKlein 2009: "Summers has been spectacularly wrong again & again. He was wrong about not regulating derivatives. Wrong when he helped kill Depression-era banking laws, turning banks into too-big-to-fail welfare monsters. & as he helps devise ever more complex tricks..."
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
27 Jan
1. In retrospect the failed putsch of Jan. 6 was likely the last chance the GOP party elite had of severing ties with Trump. They could have coalesced around a quick removal (either through 25 Amendment or impeachment). Instead the party is becoming more Trumpified than ever.
2. Only 10 Republicans in House voted to impeach. Only 5 GOP Senators voted to move impeachment to a trial. It's extremely unlikely that there are many more than 5 votes to convict. Instead of dislodging Trump, current battle has shown how hard it for GOP to quit Trump.
3. Worth looking at the state Republican parties, which show the pattern of Trumpification (and indeed in some cases QAnonification). Oregon GOP says Jan. 6 was false flag operation & condemned anti-Trump congresspeople.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
25 Jan
1. We talk a lot about how the GOP has been cowed by the Trumpists. But an almost equally important dynamic is that many centrist and right-wing institutions have also been cowed by the Trumpists.
2. The lazy term "cancel culture" doesn't quite get at the dynamic. This isn't a case of large mobs getting people erased but rather a longstanding pattern where in the name of a notional balance, centrist institutions appease the far right. Goes back to at least McCarthyism.
3. The partial silencing of Trump and QAnon is making this dynamic worse. To prove "balance," social media & centrist institutions are now silencing left and liberal speech, including stuff that is completely innocuous.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
20 Jan
1. So, I think reasonable people can agree that Trump was one of the worst presidents in American history, totally unfit for any position of authority and he presided over a disaster covid response. That leaves the interesting question of how he came so close to re-election.
2. I mean Trump came within 44,000 votes in 3 states (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) of winning the electoral college even with a 7 million popular vote loss. Far too close for comfort. A reflection of the badness of the electoral college, yes, but something more.
3. Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016. Fortunately, Biden got 15 million more votes than Hillary Clinton. Still: it's hard to deny that Trump mobilized a lot more people over time even as he presided over disaster. It's worth asking why.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
18 Jan
1. Two presidential inaugurations have had planned train trips significantly altered because of threats of violence: Lincoln in 1861 and Biden in 2021.
2. To be clear: a reprise of the American Civil War is impossible. Geographical distribution of polarization is different, there is no overriding issue comparable to slavery cutting to heart of real power, and (as Louisiana governor Earl Long used to say) the Feds have the bomb.
2. Still, political violence far short of a Civil War could easily become the norm: an intermittent cycle of white nationalist violence and law enforcement crackdowns, combined with a tightening internal security state.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
15 Jan
1. Trump has apparently ordered staffers not to mention Nixon's name, which is of course hilarious but also telling. Trump is Nixon's heir and, one hopes, the twilight of Nixonism.
2. Nixon was the president that broke the New Deal coalition and initiated the modern lurch to the right but he was transitional figure & still kept some of the older big government programs. Subsequent GOP (and some Dems) have kept to the Nixon formula.
3. The linkages between Trump and Nixon are many. Trump's mentor Roy Cohn was an old Nixon ally in McCarthy era. Roger Stone -- of Nixon tattoo fame -- is Trump's oldest political crony.
Read 4 tweets

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