More on “What is to be Done?”

I am, at least one in one respect, more optimistic than Paul. I suspect that — should we manage to make it through the gauntlet of voter suppression, administration electoral interdiction, and thumb-on-the-scales Supreme Court decisions — the new Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate will investigate the living daylights out of Trump corruption. I would go so far as to say that I have relatively high confidence in this prediction.

My reasoning straightforward:

• The administration’s overt corruption is absolutely staggering;
• Democratic majorities will likely drive Trump to engage in even more flagrant abuses of power;
• Investigative hearings provide the Democrats with an opportunity to repeatedly embarrass the administration, which is home to all of the major contenders for the 2028 Republican nomination;
• Democrats are already gearing up to do this;
• Everyone thinks that Magyar won in Hungary by, in no small measure, drawing a link between Orbán’s corruption and widespread economic grievances;
• John Ossoff is currently running away with the election in Georgia by doing the same, and lots of other candidates are already imitating him;
• Democrats cannot accomplish very much legislatively, so investigating Trump is the obvious way for them to wield power; and
• Corruption is one of the few issues that unites every wing of the Democratic Party.

That being said, I agree with Paul about the intractability of the right-wing media problem.

If the Democrats achieve a trifecta, they can weaken right-wing media through antitrust enforcement and aggressive anticorruption measures that target the techbros. But building a left-wing or center-left alternative is going to take years, a lot of cash, and still may not work. The “cash” thing is a real challenge. My understanding is that most Democratic-leaning donors are unwilling to make major, long-term investments in efforts to build ideological or media capacity.

This gets at another that reason I think we’ll see a lot of investigations in the next Democratic congress. The majority of the party is already in the “Reformist” coalition, but the size of the “Second Reconstruction” coalition is smaller. I am not confident that even the “Reformist Camp” commands enough power to overcome institutionalist opposition to “what needs to be done” — that is, eliminate the filibuster, unpack the Court, and so on. But I’m pretty sure that both the Reformists and Reconstructionists see investigations as a crucial instrument for swaying opinion in their favor — both within the party and the broader electorate. 

So yes, expect invitations. Expect a lot of investigations.