Congress is back in Washington this week, and they'll soon be starting to put some actual numbers in their aspirational budget. This is going to involve a whole lot of intraparty struggles for Republicans, as different factions draw red lines on different issues. They've set an optimistic timeline for finishing, but it remains to be seen whether Republicans will be able to agree on all of the details in time to meet that schedule.

Read Complete Article »

Let's start with some good news today, shall we?

Donald Trump's second-term honeymoon phase now seems to officially be over. As new polling continues to roll in (in advance of his 100-day mark next week), it seems to all be telling pretty much the same story. Trump is now in a neck-and-neck race for "fastest slide into disapproval ever" -- with himself. Only one other president in modern times has seen his job approval numbers with the public go underwater this fast, and his name was also Donald Trump (in his first term). It depends on the poll, but in some he's already worse than he was at this point in 2017. No other president was even in negative territory at this point, it bears mentioning.

Read Complete Article »

As Donald Trump's second presidency approaches the 100-day mark, we should be seeing a flood of new polling on his performance so far. Today, Fox News released its own new poll, and the news is decidedly not good for Trump. And this is coming from Fox News -- which is (obviously) tough for Trump supporters to spin as some sort of liberal news outlet.

Read Complete Article »

We now live in the world of Trumponomics, which might be defined as: "It's like Groundhog Day, except every day." I should specify that this is decidedly not in the sense of the movie of the same name -- where exactly the same things happen every day -- but rather in the sense that each and every day the entire world waits to see which side of the bed Donald Trump got up on: whether he's going to say something so threatening to the economy's future that the stock markets panic, or whether he's going to walk back some previous stupid comment and the stock market will recover a little bit.

Read Complete Article »

There's a new poll out from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which has some interesting data -- interesting both for what the data says about American public opinion as well as interesting because of the specific questions that were asked. Most public opinion surveys limit themselves to a few key indicators (presidential job approval being the biggest one), but this poll seemed designed to address some pertinent current issues in much more depth.

Read Complete Article »

This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!

Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.

Read Complete Article »

American politics, for better or worse, is built on a two-party system that is occasionally challenged by independent third parties, who never have much in the way of notable successes. How many members of Congress are there from the Green Party? How many did H. Ross Perot get elected when he launched the most successful third-party bid for the White House in a generation? The answer to both is, of course, "zero." Third parties can change the political conversation in major ways (and occasionally even move the "Overton Window" in a big way), but so far none of them has built up enough success to truly challenge the dominance of the Republican/Democratic dichotomy. Instead, what is much more common is one (or both) of the two major parties being dramatically changed from within.

Read Complete Article »

As the Trump Trade War lurches onward, with another heaping amount of uncertainty added over the weekend, China just made a move that could have drastic worldwide consequences. They haven't fully committed to playing hardball, but they are certainly signalling that it might be their next step. And (to mix game-playing metaphors), in this particular game, China holds all the cards. They've got a royal flush, and we don't even have a pair of twos to work with.

Read Complete Article »

James Carville's famous political maxim ("It's the economy, stupid") needs updating. As we all ride out the Trump Slump in various ways, what we've got now is: "It's the stupid economy." The people running things are stupid. They are making stupid decisions. They have no clue whatsoever what they are doing, and it shows. Stupid is as stupid does. Welcome to The Stupid Economy, folks.

Read Complete Article »

I've always thought that Donald Trump picked the wrong 1970s gay anthem as his favorite tune for his rallies. Instead of the Village People's "YMCA," he really should have gone with "Macho Man." Because that's his secret dream -- to be seen as a real tough guy. But more on that in a moment....

Today, as the markets continued their confusion, Trump finally blinked -- on all countries except China, it appears. I say "it appears" since nobody's entirely sure of the details, since there was no formal announcement or well-thought-out policy revealed, instead it was just another knee-jerk social media post with few actual details about how things are going to work now.

Read Complete Article »