Others of you, along with national conservative commentariat, both Trumper and non-Trumper wings, knows it, accepts it consciously and to some degree, discusses it — or spins it a little more suavely than the deranged.
As the shutdown continued, he started losing "at the edges" supporters. Mainstream media had plenty of stories — and polls to back that up. Whether cognitive dissonance will return for some or not remains to be seen.
But, as I see it, and others whose insights on Twitter I value, what caused the cave was neither decaying Trump support nor Nancy Pelosi's political genius.
Rather, it was the rise of blue flu among airport workers. Interestingly, whether deliberate targeting or not, airports heavy in business travel, like Atlanta and eventually LaGuardia, seemed to have the biggest sickness problems. I can't help but think that some mix of big biz folks and a few Senators leaned on Trump hard enough.
And, somewhere, if only subconsciously at this time, Donald Trump knows he lost, too. How the president will react in the next three weeks will tell us if the American public won or lost.
Senate Republicans also lost, even if any of them were pushing Trump at the end.. Per the Nixon-era term, they committed suicide at Credibility Gap. How much they lost remains to be seen, but I pummeled Cornyn and Cruz on Twitter. They need to be. Cruz has of course always been this way.
Cornyn, when paired with Kay Bailey Cheerleader in the Senate, of course looked more conservative than her, but at least gave the impression of not being a kneejerk type.
Now, it has to be said bluntly, some of that should be re-examined as to how much it is actually impression rather than reality.
Reduplicated as losers? Per the Bezos Post, the credibility of Coryn, which I also fed to him on Twitter. Even Mitch the Turtle was more honest in that piece. And that's hard to do.
Also a loser, in a way? Ted Rall, for seeing the MAGA heads as enlightened Zen masters. First, they worry themselves. Occasionally, halfway, occasionally, more, about the right things, while continuing to blame the wrong people, and still delusionally believing that a trust fund tax-chiseler is someone to follow rather than someone to blame.
The general public of anything more enlightened than the entrenched MAGA-heads may also be a loser. Many of them will surely try to whistle in the dark enough to try to whistle away their cognitive dissonance, even as, per the second paragraph, people like Rod Dreher have said not only that Trump lost, but his cheap cave-in shows that he never cared that much about the reality of the wall in the first place. Dreher, referencing Ann (Whore To) Coulter (think Dorothy Parker and bad puns, folks) said that if Trump HAD cared, he would have gotten the money before the November election.
No, what he cared about was trying to push around Congress. The Art of the Deal.
And, because the MAGA-heads will double down on their cognitive and emotional dissonance, the rest of America loses.
Other losers? The Beltway stenos, neolib Dem pundit version. Ezra Klein, Washington Monthly, et al anointed Miss Nancy, Nancy Pelosi, for her alleged genyus in ending the shutdown. While denying Trump the Capitol as a State of the Union platform might have had a small effect, it was clearly the airport flu that was the tipping point. GFY on this one, folks.
The rest of America, as per the previous section, is also a bit of a loser on this, too. The spinning by the Ezras of the world enthroning centrist Dem Pelosi, even as many of Ezra's fellow stenos just got shit-canned by Puff Hoes or ButtFeet, could boost the image of Beltway steno as Beltway sage. To the degree that happens and people bite on it, we all lose.
The Wicked Witch of the West, Coulter, is a win/lose. Calling Trump the biggest wimp since Poppy Bush will help with the more rabid, but not with others. Ditto on the grasping-for-relevance Rush Limbaugh, who took a "wait and see" stance after the Trump Cave. Rusty knows that Trump caved, and his listeners do, too. I predict a drop in listeners.
==
The "what next"?
I am not a Beltway steno or Beltway stage.
But, given that Trump will feel less guilty, if he did, about unpaid federal employees, and his staff may have brainstormed new workarounds, I offer a 50-50 odds we're back at this point in three weeks, or else Trump tries to go the national emergency route, which I still see as less likely.
As of Feb. 3, per comments by Sen. John Hoeven, I stand by that prediction. Trump is circling back to the national emergency, egged on by Hannity et al, but Mitch the Turtle has warned that the Senate, as well as the House, could produce an official resolution of disapproval. After that? Theoretically, we're in court to test the power of that resolution.
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