What is to be done?

Josh Marshall has a post up at TPM about the current assault on the federal government by unelected Elon Musk and his unelected and unappointed minions. While the Trump cult GOP currently holds the executive branch and slim majorities in Congress for the next two years, there are still things their opponents can do to impeded their goals: dismantling the US state, weaponization of the legal system and  destruction of the US economy.

“Fundamentally this is a battle over public opinion. And there are three areas of action to engage that battle.

 

“First, Democrats’ job is to make the case every day what a disaster Trump governance is and ask voters whether they’ve decided yet that they’d like to make a change. In a way any opposition must almost exalt its powerlessness. We’d love to stop these horrible things for you, voters. But you have to put us in power to do it. Second, there is the critical but highly compromised avenue of court action. It was blue states that brought the lawsuit which just put the budget freeze under a restraining order. Third, there’s the very limited but crucial moments when Democrats, even in the minority, can force the majority to come to them or simply delay or even stymie action. The debt ceiling, as I’ve been saying, is a key one of those moments.”

This won’t be easy and it won’t be fast, but inertia can be a counterforce:

“Getting into court — getting into court on a lot of fronts — is one of the ways you do that. Public opinion only comes into play in a hard fashion at the next election. But as public opinion shifts, if it does, it starts impacting anyone planning on facing voters in the next election. The courts are fundamentally unfriendly to democracy today because they all report up to the Supreme Court. But the point isn’t “courts will save us” malarkey. (In any case, that’s now mainly the mocking phrase of wreckers and sad sacks.) It’s putting sand in the gears, slowing things down as one front in the battle for public opinion.

“The legal status of what news orgs are now consistently calling “Musk’s team” is high on the list as one way to do this.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-can-stop-elons-team-wilding-its-way-throuhg-the-federal-government

 

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