The 118th Congress Ends the Way it Began; As a Circus

Trump's Not Even in Office and F**king Things Up

Ah, the 118th Congress. One that will go down as the do-nothingest of do-nothing Congresses. One that began, if you remember, with the repeated attempts to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House. How did that go? Well, they voted on it enough times that on his first year as MINORITY Leader Hakeem Jeffries had attained more votes for Speaker than any person in American history. ¹ All of this was because of a renegade group of clowns led by Matt Gaetz had withheld their support of McCarthy, and were going to give the whole circus away. It was such a big deal, it prompted me to actually start writing PurpleAmerica two years ago with a number of articles about the debacle (our first one can be found here). Two years and 295 posts later, still going strong.

And how has it gone? Well, this Congress switched Speakers about half way through after a vote of no confidence in McCarthy, something that had never occurred in the nearly 250 years of the country. We encountered numerous shutdowns and debt ceiling problems. Had an immigration deal that gave Republicans everything they wanted, only for Trump to tell the House to kill it so he could run on the issue. Matt Gaetz teased dumping new Speaker Mike Johnson several times, right up until he left to become Trump’s Attorney General Nominee, only to withdraw his nomination and have an ethics committee report about his sexual and drug problems be released. And here we are again, at the end of the Congress, with Mike Johnson ready to raise the debt ceiling TO HELP the new President, and instead, Trump and Elon Musk tell him not to raise it, have a potential shutdown, and throw the Congress into another unforced disaster. Mind you, this debt ceiling raise was a REPUBLICAN proposal that Mike Johnson promoted when it was passed, when he first became Speaker. Apparently, Trump thinks he can pass a better debt ceiling bill next Congress, WHEN HIS MAJORITY IS EVEN SMALLER.

The title of that first post two years ago was “When Your Enemy Is In a Hole, Hand Him a Shovel.” The phrase is attributed to Napoleon but others have said it throughout history and there have been dozens of variations (“When your opponent is making mistakes, don’t interrupt him.”). If you remove Democrats from the whole equation (and since they won’t have majorities in the House, the Senate, won’t control the White House and are nowhere near a majority on the Supreme Court, they practically are) Republicans are a masterclass demonstration of how NOT to govern effectively. Americans hate government, it’s inaction, it’s malaise, it’s obtuseness and obfuscations. But in a completely paradoxical way, they just elected a bunch of side shows and freaks who will only INCREASE everything they hate about it.

I said it before, I’ll say it again. Democrats don’t have to do anything. Just sit back and say “I told you so.”

I mean, this is what happens when you elect people who don’t know what they are actually doing. You may not like Mike Johnson, but he’s a smart, savvy politician, been in the House a few years, and understands what needs to get done and how to do it. This should be a layup for him. Instead, Trump has him on the highwire without a net because the ringmaster simply could and f**ked up everything (as per normal). It’s really simple to understand why; because Trump doesn’t know how to govern. He thinks it’s just giving orders regardless of rationale like a carnival barker. Sure, you can govern that way I suppose, but it’s going to end in disaster, particularly if the people around you don’t know what they’re doing. And he just nominated a slew of incompetent nincompoops who really, genuinely have no sense to the size and scale and scope of how to govern their new fiefdoms. It’s like watching a house burning down and the fire brigade are the Marx Brothers. God help us if anything serious happens the next four years.

Deep down inside you have to wonder what Kevin McCarthy thinks of this calamity.

Oh, and that debt ceiling issue, trying to get more cuts to the budget? It’s not going to happen. The amount of discretionary spending is already bone thin and if they go after non-discretionary spending like social security, medicare, veterans benefits or the defense department, they’re going to have a real problem on your hands. Not even the elephants would like that. Musk and Ramaswamy may talk a good game, but they aren’t doing anything about that.

Trump’s already threatening those that defy him with primaries. If I were a Republican, I’d take him up on the offer. You’re going to want to distance yourself from the toxicity of this shitstorm once it sets in. His first term seemed novel. His second has catastrophe written all over it. Don’t believe me? This has the feel of George W. Bush circa December 2004 all over it. Watch the dominoes fall left and right and everything crumble as Trump whines and blames everyone else. Eventually, it will sink in to even his supporters that he is an ineffectual buffoon. He got elected because of economic circumstances outside of Biden’s/Harris’s control, not because people actually liked him.

The more the WTF moments pile up, the worse it will get. Mike Johnson probably won’t make it through another term as Speaker, not with the thin majority he’ll command. There only needs to be TWO renegade votes to axe him, and there’s a cadre of maladjusted malcontents just itching to do so. So what happens? Well, the 119th Congress in that case goes along about the same way the 118th did.

Democrats, you can sit back if you like, but you might want to hand a Republican a shovel or two. I’d say enjoy it, but it’s the hole we’ll have to dig out of sooner or later.

If the 118th Congress was the Circus, the 119th is going to be Freak Show; you can’t help but watch the wreckage pile up as disaster after disaster occurs.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

The deepest hole ever dug is the “Kola Superdeep Borehole” in the Kola Penninsula near the Norwegian border in Russia. It is 40,230 ft (12,262 m) deep, which is deeper than the Mariana Trench and Mount Everest. The Russians stopped in 1989 when the drill got stuck in rock.

It’s now sealed with a rusty cap and abandoned.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

This is how I ended that original post two years ago:

And Hakeem Jeffries and the Dems? The smug schadenfraude could be felt all across the country. If you were a Democrat, how could you not enjoy this? It was like running up the score in a sport where the hometown team was playing its most hated rival and scoring at will. “What, you want to lose ANOTHER vote? Sure!” Jeffries, 212. McCarthy 201. Some mix of afterthought candidates making up about 20.

“Do you want another vote? Here’s the shovel to help you keep digging that hole.”

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Hakeem Jeffries was not the “Minority Leader” until an outright majority was attained. During the repeated votes he was often the highest votegetter, obtaining pluralities multiple times, but never a majority of Congress.