Constitution Conflict

Plus all the links

I don’t really know what a “Constitutional crisis” is, even after going back and reading my GP/BP colleague Julia along with Seth Masket, who have a very helpful old item on the topic. I do know an attack on the Constitutional system when I see one, however, and that’s what we’re living through now. I think Dan Drezner is quite realistic in his pessimism.

As Drezner says, “When it comes to Donald Trump, I have been waiting for an categorical public rebuke for ten years now.” The thing about Trump is he’s been unpopular throughout the decade, but never convincingly so. On the other hand? I’m not sure whether this is optimism or not, but I will note that for the first three years of his first term Trump was unpopular despite conditions that were pretty close to peace and prosperity. It’s true that botching the pandemic didn’t really hurt him much, but even then he did much better with the economic effects of the pandemic than he did with the medical side of it (mainly because he and Senate Republicans let then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi take the lead), and of course he did subsequently lose to Joe Biden.

Some have interpreted all of that as evidence that Trump’s floor is somewhere around 35% approval; in fact, some now believe that thanks to partisan polarization no president will ever experience a “categorical public rebuke” if what that means is approval ratings below, say, 30%. I remain skeptical of that; if George W. Bush could get to the mid-20s in approval, I expect Trump could as well if the economy sours. Or if he actually gets into a prolonged war with significant US casualties. Unfortunately, the only way to test this proposition is to experience hard times. Which…well, I’m no economists and don’t make economic predictions, but it sure seems to me that the Trump/Musk policies getting implemented now are, shall we say, awfully risky. But again, I am not an economist.

My only other comment about this is that even though the last five and ten of the last eleven recessions have started with a Republican in the White House, the last time that Republicans had to deal with a downturn while holding unified control of government was in 1953. That one went just fine, but the time before that was in 1929. And that didn’t go so well. I’ll leave it to readers to assess whether the current Republicans are more similar to Dwight Eisenhower or Herbert Hoover.

At any rate, Trump remains above water with a net +3.4% approval, but that’s down from +8.2% three weeks ago (as always, I use the 538 polling average estimates). Unless something changes, I more-or-less expect that to flip to negative before long, but real pressure won’t mount on office-holding Republicans unless it he returns to his first-term lows or worse. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Constitutional conflict alone will do that. So I guess what I’m saying is that we might have democratic resilience, but it might take a couple of years of economic devastation. Or worse.

With that cheerful assessment, how about some links:

1. Niambi M. Carter at Good Authority on Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester.

2. Kelebogile Zvobgo on US sanctions against the International Criminal Court.

3. Philip Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith on the attack on civil rights.

4. Jennifer Lind on Trump, US universities, and China.

5. Melvin L. Rogers appeals to Kamala Harris.

6. Matt Grossmann talks with Adam Bonica and Maya Sen about lawyers and politics in the US.

7. Casey Burgat on Musk’s legal status within the government.

8. And Aisha Ahmad on…a US invasion of Canada, which I suppose is something we actually have to think about now. Not included: Absorbing Canada isn’t even particularly popular in the US even if it was entirely voluntary; yes, presidents have managed to encourage war fever before, but it’s hard to see this one succeeding.