Gail Collins: Nicely, Bret, right here we’re. Neither of us is loopy about staggering into one other four-year Trump time period, however I’ll wager you’ll be able to give you a extra optimistic spin than I can. Go to it.
Bret Stephens: Nicely, right here’s one hope: Donald Trump’s return to energy will function a wake-up name for lots of liberals, together with liberal journalists, who misplaced contact with the considerations and values of standard People — individuals who didn’t get pleasure from having their frequent sense insulted by being advised that there wasn’t a disaster on the border, or that their inflation considerations had been overblown, or that President Biden’s reminiscence was effective, or that racial id needs to be the dominant consideration in selecting a Supreme Court docket justice or a vp. Possibly it should encourage Democrats to do higher as an opposition occasion.
Any likelihood?
Gail: Hey, I see some glorious topics for debate there. Nevertheless, there’s little question that the Democrats will attempt to develop youthful choices with regards to presidential candidates. Notably when the nation’s caught with a chief govt who will quickly be in his 80s and who has already misplaced a step or two or 10.
Bret: You’re referring to Trump, proper? I feel you’re mistaking purported senility for confirmed scurrility.
Gail: Good level. And as to the insurance policies — I’ll wager you that any critical try to expel all of the immigrants who’re right here illegally will result in a scarcity of employees that may make meals costs increased, not decrease. Main tax cuts for the wealthy will result in increased deficits and worse inflation.
Bret: It’s not a political winner if Democrats inform working-class People, together with Latino and Black People, that they need to flood the labor drive with determined migrants who’re prepared to work in development or meatpacking or service jobs for longer hours and fewer cash.
My recommendation to Democrats — not that they essentially need to take it from me — is to race towards the political heart. Get powerful on border enforcement. Be a part of fingers with Trump in constructing a wall. Mount Democratic main challenges in opposition to progressive D.A.’s like New York’s Alvin Bragg or Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, each of whom have allowed petty crime to flourish. Repudiate the Woke lefties who need to destroy Israel or permit trans girls to play in girls’s sports activities. Present some independence from the academics’ unions who’re placing the pursuits of their members forward of these of their college students. Keep in mind that the rationale Trump was re-elected wasn’t that standard People favored him; it’s that they favored Kamala Harris even much less.
In different phrases, who’s the following Invoice Clinton?
Gail: Ah, I bear in mind way back when the reply to that query was: Hillary Clinton. Simply goes to indicate that older knowledge isn’t all the time wiser knowledge.
The Democrats have loads of expertise on the second stage — governors and members of Congress who can attain most people. The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, will get talked about lots, and I do yearn to see a feminine presidential nominee win the presidency.
Bret: Seth Moulton. Andy Beshear. Elissa Slotkin. Wes Moore. John Fetterman. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Ritchie Torres. Dems, that’s your sanity caucus. Take heed to them.
Gail: However it’s — oh gosh — 4 years to go. Within the meantime, my recommendation to Republicans is to attempt to keep away from the deep Trump craziness. Don’t see how the sane senators can embrace his tariff plans.
However on the immigration entrance, many Democrats really feel there’s actually no function in preventing the Mexican wall. It’s primarily symbolic. And occasion leaders have already thrown within the towel on a invoice that encourages deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with crimes like housebreaking and shoplifting.
Bret: You’re elevating a fantastic level. The political problem for Republicans is to steer a course between the conventional loyalty owed to their occasion chief and the self-beclowning that Trump so typically calls for of his minions. Most Republicans will discover a option to make peace with Trump’s love of tariffs, despite the fact that they know they’re economically harmful. However they’ll have a more durable time with different stuff. I don’t envy Marco Rubio making an attempt to steer a course between his hawkish instincts on Russia and Trump’s lovey-dovey emotions for Vladimir Putin.
Switching topics, Gail, we promised final week we wouldn’t argue the politics of the Los Angeles fires whereas they had been nonetheless raging. Now that it appears they’re largely over — fingers crossed — what do you suppose the fallout will likely be?
Gail: There’ll be no finish of political cross-blaming, with a number of the eye now going to the choice by the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, to attend the inauguration of the brand new president in Ghana at a time when the potential of some sort of critical hearth was clear.
Bret: Particularly after you promised voters you’d cease taking these kinds of junkets if elected mayor.
Gail: However you already know, Bret, my large goal is world warming. People ought to embrace the Los Angeles catastrophe as a symptom of what’s already taking place — and will wreck the longer term for coming generations.
Bret: Certain. However regardless of the all-encompassing grand answer is, what firefighters want in an emergency is a working hearth hydrant, not an electric-vehicle mandate.
California has grow to be a political metaphor for a sure sort of harebrained progressivism that’s harming liberalism’s good title. California’s Democratic leaders need to be compassionate to the homeless, to the purpose of calling them “folks experiencing homelessness.” OK. However it’s not OK when homeless encampments maintain catching hearth and probably beginning fires. They need to honor the constitutional rights of drug addicts residing on sidewalks and be delicate to their plight. However then they let addicts flip total cities into cesspools. They need to be delicate to the atmosphere. However then they slow-walk important water initiatives out of concern for small fish. They need to keep the feel and appear of historic neighborhoods. However then they marvel why there’s a housing scarcity, and why folks maintain leaving the state in droves.
If I had been Trump, I’d be in California by Wednesday, making all these factors and extra. Watch California flip to a pink state someday within the subsequent 10 years.
Gail: Don’t suppose California will flip pink. However I’m sorry to say this catastrophe has in all probability extinguished Gov. Gavin Newsom’s likelihood for a presidential nomination.
Bret: Hallelujah.
Gail: Again to Trump, Bret. Right here we’re at Inauguration Day — inform me your impressions of the brand new cupboard nominees, now that the rubber is definitely hitting the street. I’m kinda pondering that there’s a minimum of an opportunity some Republican senators will be happy to vote in opposition to one in all them, and in that case the loser will likely be R.F.Ok. Jr. Am I improper?
Bret: Laborious to say. It’ll be very, very tough for any G.O.P. senator to be the deciding vote who brings down a Trump nominee. A couple of Republicans, like Louisiana’s Invoice Cassidy, who’s a physician, simply would possibly vote their conscience and produce down R.F.Ok. Jr., and perhaps Mitch McConnell will do the identical to Tulsi Gabbard. We’ll see: Political braveness today is a quick observe to early retirement.
One other large topic. Gail, is TikTok, the social media app most well-liked by teenage youngsters and Chinese language spies. The Supreme Court docket voted unanimously final week that the federal government had a proper to ban it as a national-security danger, however Trump appears to have given the corporate a reprieve. Any ideas on this?
Gail: Hate censorship however I’ve been cowed by the potential of China utilizing TikTok to worm its method into the personal lives of hundreds of thousands of People. Trump ought to stress the Chinese language to promote it. Might be a great compromise, relying on who the customer seems to be.
However I’m no tech wizard — what do you suppose?
Bret: I want we may ban TikTok completely, not simply to maintain the Chinese language from vacuuming up our private knowledge, but in addition to maintain cat movies from vacuuming up no matter is left of our collective I.Q. However Trump’s proposal of an extension makes a certain quantity of sense, particularly for small firms that do a number of reliable enterprise through the app.
Gail: That’s the highest reward of the Donald I’m ready to tolerate.
Bret: The bigger query here’s what the following 4 years brings when it comes to our relationship with China. This is likely one of the areas the place I’m comparatively happier with Trump within the White Home than I’d have been with Harris. He conveys a mixture of toughness and unpredictability which may do greater than the Biden workforce did to actually deter a strongman like Xi Jinping. Both that — or it’s World Battle III.
Gail: Not thrilled with ushering in 4 extra years with a man who would possibly blow up the planet. Good Lord, 4 years. My thoughts retains coming again to that. I assume that’s a check of my aspect of the political world — can we march alongside for 48 months, standing up for sanity and never going insane ourselves?
Can’t say I’m precisely wanting ahead to arguing all of it out each week, but when I’ve to stagger by way of it, glad to know I’ll be doing it with you.
Bret: Feeling is mutual. It’s gonna be a helluva journey.
