The strategic error of pursuing Steve Bannon, amid bigger stakes

 We are just about a year away from the 2022 midterm elections, putting us three years from something that scares the absolute shit out of me.  Donald Trump failed in his attempt to steal the 2020 election.  I thought he would succeed.  Go back, and read what I was writing in the lead-up.  I am far less sanguine about democracy's prospects in 2024, and as we watch democracy crumble, what is the January 6 Committee doing?  They issued a subpoena to Steve Bannon.  Predictably, Bannon told them to suck it, so Congress will refer contempt charges to the DoJ, where Supreme Court Justice Attorney General Merrick Garland is legally obligated to file criminal charges against Bannon.  Garland is not exactly Elliot Ness, but dollars-to-donuts, Bannon has donuts ready when the cops show up to arrest his ass.

What then?  Bannon will claim executive privilege, we get a drawn-out court battle, and by the time the whole thing plays out, Trump steals back the White House and pardons him again.  Kiddingnotkidding.

Anywho, here's my question:  why bother?

There are two (or three) paths, so let's game this out, shall we?

Path The First.  Garland grows a spine, pulls out his service revolver, and shows up at Bannon's next klan rally with the Untouchables.  They beat the fuck out of the rednecks, shoot a few for shits and giggles, and haul Bannon bodily right into the House chamber for a January 6 hearing, still wearing his hood(ie).  Garland rips off that hood as Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney swear him in, and the hearings begin.  Bannon tries to make a run for it, but Cheney pulls out the smallest gun they sell in Wyoming, which is the biggest gun in DC, and her's is bigger than every Democratic man's (!), and she blows off both Bannon's fucking legs as he falls to the ground bawling like Trump the night he lost the 2020 election like a two year old girl!  Awesome episode of C-SPAN!

(Dick would have hit him in the face, but only with some pea-shooter, so Bannon would have laughed it off.)

Anyway, embellishments aside (although how can you put the embellishments aside?), what would you really expect to happen if Bannon showed up?  Is this the asshole you want at your cocktail party?  OK, I hate cocktail parties, and really, all parties, but that's because I hate people, and I'd rather have a quiet night with a book, but seriously, what would happen?  Do you think he'd flip on Fat Donny?  "Oh, yeah, me and Fat Donny, we had the whole thing planned out.  We wanted to rile up a bunch of angry, violent thugs with some lies, so that they'd storm the Capitol and kill Pelosi and Pence.  It was the whole plan, and the Proud Boys were the lynchpin!  Get it?  'Lynch?'  Ha!  Why ain't you laughin', Bennie?  I thought that one would be right up your alley!  Me and Donny wrote that one special for you!" ... [scuffle as Bannon gets re-arrested for threatening the life of a Congressman mid-hearing...]

Is... that what you had in mind?  Have you ever listened to this motherfucker?  Go watch a few moments of him at a rally, or something, if you can stomach it.  Here's what would happen:  blah, blah, stolen election, blah blah, witch hunt, blah blah, Trump is the rightful president, blah, blah, people rise up...

Do you seriously think he would answer any questions, or just demagog on camera?  This is Steve Fucking Bannon.

And that's if you got him into the hearing room.

Then there's Path The Second.  Let's be more realistic here.  Garland has him arrested and charged.  Legal fight.  Drawn out.  Bannon makes bail, because honestly, is he a flight risk?  Dude can't make a flight of fucking stairs.  Beer flight, maybe, but he ain't goin' nowhere.  He wants this.  This is his favorite path.  A drawn-out legal fight while he waits for Trump to return to power, pardon him again, raise fuckloads of money off of the arrest... 

What's the gain here?

OK, now let's add Path The Third.  Arrested, charged, tried, convicted.  Let's say this happens on a short enough time frame that our Wannabe Dictator can't seize power and spring him before it all plays out.  Bannon may do some time.  You may get a bit of pleasure from that, and yeah, sure, LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!, I'm with you, but from a social perspective, and political perspective, what's the gain?

Does this advance the cause of shutting down the movement towards Trumpian autocracy?  No.  It just riles them up while doing nothing institutionally to stop the real danger.

So let's ask two questions.  First, what is the purpose of the January 6 Committee?  Second, what, if anything, can be done to reduce the likelihood that Trump succeeds in 2024 where he failed in 2020?

Let's take the first question first.  It's easier, and I suck at hard questions.  The only realistic goal for the Committee is the historical record.  Much of the historical record exists in a public form, be it video, audio, on-line text or other public records.  Yet part of the difficult work is to compile it.  However, that work can be done by journalists, historians and political scientists.  Where Congress has additional authority is to subpoena documents and testimony, but that does not gain us anything in the face of intransigence, because as we have learned, Congress will fail.  We do not have "three co-equal branches."  That's just not a thing.  I hate to recommend James Sundquist, because I think his work left a lot to be desired, but he did kick off some good political science research with The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, about how the power of Congress will wax and wane over time with respect to the executive given political circumstances.  And in fact, if you read the Federalist Papers and other primary source materials, you can make a strong case that the framers wanted Congress to be more powerful than the president.  It just hasn't worked out that way.  So this "three co-equal branches" thing?  That's just a bullshit phrase that you got from your high school civics class, repeated by talking heads who don't know enough to speak, and you should expunge it from your lexicon.

Congress only gets what they are given.  By willing witnesses, and a willing executive branch.  Right now, there is a willing President, so Biden can direct the executive agencies to hand over any documents Thompson and Cheney want.  Any witnesses who are willing can provide further information.  Beyond that, I'm skeptical that Dan Scavino or Kash Patel will really give up the goods.

Documents matter, though, and Biden can hand over anything he wants.  That way, there will be a record for the rest of the world for exactly how America turned into a Trumpian autocracy.

Which leads me to Question 2.  What, if anything, can be done about 2024?

And now I must repeat myself.  I do not give a rat's ratfucking ass about drop-boxes, extended voting hours, or anything like that.  Democrats freaked the fuck out about voter ID laws, and you know what consequences they had?  Two.  Jack, and shit, and jack left town.  (OK, I stole that line from Army of Darkness, but what're you gonna do about it?)  Move and countermove.  All of politics are about move and countermove.  If there is a countermove, I officially don't care.  There is a countermove to all of the stupid shit about drop-boxes, extended voting hours, and everything else about which Democrats are pissing themselves.  Four letters:  GOTV.  Do it or lose, motherfuckers.  And by, "lose," I mean everyone loses, because even the rubes getting conned by that fake businessman who pretends to understand real-estate are gonna get fucked without dinner first.  At least I'll get a tax cut!  (Until they haul me off to a re-education camp.)  Those dumbasses?  Nope.  They're fucked.

There are two real concerns.  First, a bunch of those bills at the state level have provisions that are serious.  Those are the provisions that allow partisan officials to overturn election results.  No countermove there!  That's setting up exactly what Trump demanded, and couldn't get in 2020.

The other... more violence.  January 6, 2021 may simply have been a dress rehearsal, complete with some particularly stupid dress.

And here's the question I asked afterwards.  What if Trump had succeeded in stealing the election?  I asked you lefties, would you have been peaceful?  Because this is a real question.

Look, Bayesian priors are as follows.  Incumbent presidents are reelection around 2/3 of the time.  Yeah, Biden is old, but the odds favor Biden/Harris.  But a) shit happens, and b) shit fucking happens.  Allow me to elaborate.

When I say that shit happens, I mean shit like COVID.  Trump would have won, had it not been for COVID.  COVID hit, the economy tanked, and he lost.  Had that not happened, he'd still be in office.  Period.  Some other disaster could happen, and those are the things that put presidents out of office.  Shit happens.  When shit doesn't happen, though, incumbent presidents win.  That's the general pattern that emerges from predictive models, so our prior is that Biden/Harris win with probability .66 or so.  Unless shit happens, in the normal sense of shit happening.

But... shit fucking happens.  Rarely, shit goes very wrong.  Shit almost went very wrong in 2020.  Trump came very close to stealing the election.  As we learn, for example, that Pence needed Dan Fucking Quayle to talk sense to him, we learn just how close to the edge this country was.  All of Trump's claims about 2020 were lies, of course, because every word Trump has ever spoken in his life has been a lie.  He is... say it with me, the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie.  But the Republican Party is nothing but a personality cult built around the most despicable sociopath in American history.  And they came very close to burning down democracy for him.

But there were no institutional rules to permit it.  So they're writing those rules now.

Which means, next time, they'll do it.

So what're you gonna do?

Let me be clear about what is going to happen.  In 2022, the Democrats will lose both the House and the Senate.  This is a mathematical inevitability.  In 2024, Trump may win outright, depending on the winds of fortune, because the American people are fucking stupid.  And if he loses?  Are you watching?

If the January 6 Committee pursues Bannon, their best (least bad) case scenario is that they increase Republican turnout in 2024 as the image of an imprisoned or persecuted/prosecuted Bannon serves their rallying cry.  The only thing that matters is 2024, which is very nearly a lost cause anyway.  This country is very close to done.  I'm not sure there is a chance.  The Republican Party is too far gone to be saved.  Ever.  It needs to go.  It needs to fall, and there needs to be a new conservative party.  I ain't no fucking liberal, and I can't stand the Democrats anymore as they keep looking for new ways to out-crazy themselves in their leftward march.  But the GOP?  An autocratic personality cult is as dangerous to democracy as any party can ever be, and right now, it exists for one purpose, and one purpose only.  To help Donald Trump steal the 2024 election.  That is its sole reason for being.

So what're you gonna do?  Going after Bannon helps Trump.  It does nothing to build the historical record, and it helps Trump.

Task 1:  GOTfuckingV.  Stop whining about a bill that won't pass, and GOTfuckingV.  Voter ID didn't matter, and neither will drop boxes.

Task 2:  Prepare to camp out at every state legislature when the votes are certified.  Get fucking ready now.  Stop whining about the petty shit about which you whine.  Stop protesting some stupid, little fucking thing on social media, or some little perceived slight, or whatever gives you your SJW cred...  Fuck that.  This is gonna be it.  Last fucking chance for democracy.  Make it count.

And oops.  I missed yesterday's jazz, so here's some jazz.  -ish stuff.  Steve Tibbetts is often classified as jazz, for lack of a better classification, but whatever.  He is a genius.  "My Last Chance."  Here's a live performance of the track from Safe Journey.  This man is just amazing.