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Trump is remarkably unpopular for a president-elect, and unless he can turn that around hes in danger of being a one-and-done president.

Is Trump a disjunctive president? The comparison with Carter is a powerful one. Carter was able to eke out a victory in 1976 in the aftermath of Nixons resignation and Fords decision to pardon him, but he couldnt survive the decline of the Great Society coalition and was beaten easily by Reagan. Trumps win was an even bigger fluke. Going up against another candidate with negative approval ratings, he was beaten decisively in the popular vote but had a run of luck in three marginal states that allowed him to be selected by an undemocratic electoral system. And even the Electoral College wouldnt have helped him had the director of the FBI not decided to baselessly imply that Hillary Clinton was a crook less than two weeks before the election, generating a wave of anti-Clinton coverage that almost certainly changed its outcome. This isnt exactly a robust formula going forward.

Trump is remarkably unpopular for a president-elect, and unless he can turn that around hes in danger of being a one-and-done president. And with an unpopular president and an unpopular Republican Congress in power, Democrats are very likely to start winning back some of the ground theyve lost at the federal, state, and local levels. Trump could certainly be a Carter-like figure in this respect.

But there are two major limitations to the analogy. First, the Republican Congress is likely to accomplish a lot more under Trump than the Democrats did under Carter. Second, it obscures the fact that the Democratic Party emerged from Reagans shadow long ago.

The relationship between Carter and Congress was famously dysfunctional. Four years of unified Democratic control of the federal government yielded very little legislative accomplishment, certainly nothing comparable to the pillars of the Obama administration. Showing that presidents make politics but that politics also make presidents, arguably the most notable domestic legacy of the Carter administration was the beginning of the deregulation and defense build-up that would fully bloom under Reagan.

Unfortunately, the current Republican Congress is far more cohesive than the Democratic caucus of the late 1970s. Far from checking the corrupt president-elect, the Republican Congress has signaled that it will be happy to let Trump and his family loot the Treasury and staff the executive branch with almost comically unqualified plutocrats. The reason for this is simple: House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell see the opportunity to enact a radical policy agenda. There will definitely be huge upper-class tax cuts, fire sales of federal land, draconian cuts to discretionary spending, and other upward distributions of wealth.

This is not to say that it will be all smooth sailing. Having a buffoon in the Oval Office without any expertise or long-standing policy commitments will make it harder to prevail in the most important battle of the next year, over the future of the Affordable Care Act. There will be times when Republicans overreach and fail. But unlike the Democratic Congress under Carter, they know what they want to do and will do a lot of it. A lot more of an ideological agenda will be accomplished by this Congress than under a typical disjunctive presidency, which tends to entail broadly popular compromises or stasis.

Another flaw in slotting Trump as a disjunctive president is that it implies that were still in the Reagan regime and that Barack Obama was a preemptive president. Azari doesnt directly address the issue at much length. But the political scientist Corey Robin, in his intriguing piece in n+1 making the Carter-Trump connection, argues that we are now reaching the end of the fourth decade of the Reagan regime, asserting that Obama is a preemptive president, like Bill Clinton.

The problem here is that the preemptive label just doesnt fit the facts. Obamas signature domestic achievementsincreasing taxes on the wealthy to pay for benefits for the poor and middle class, substantially expanding both regulation and public expenditure through the Affordable Care Act, enacting wide-ranging stimulus through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and tightening regulation of the financial industry through the Dodd-Frank Actare all ambitious statutes, squarely within the New Deal/Great Society tradition.

There are strong arguments that all of these laws were compromised by the need to win support of unsavory vested interests and/or Republican senators, and didnt go far enough. But, of course, the same was true of the New Deal. Particularly when you also consider Obamas aggressive use of the regulatory state on issues such as the environment, labor rights, and immigration, his governing posture was very different from Clintons embrace of the dictum that the era of big government is over.

Typically, the minority party facing a dominant regime moves towards this regime. But if this is still Reagans regime, the opposite has been happening with the Democratic Party. Obama campaigned to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2008. Clinton campaigned to the left of Obama in 2016 (and far to the left of her husbands actually preemptive 1992 and 1996 campaigns). While 20 years ago Democrats would have reacted to electoral defeat by moving to the right, most signs indicate that the party will continue to move left.

Obama was neither a preemptive president nor a reconstructive one. Instead, we are in a political space in which there is no dominant regime. Two ideologically coherent partiesone increasingly committed to expanding the New Deal and the Great Society, one to inflict the crushing blows to it Reagan and Bush couldntare becoming increasingly polarized. The same factors that are almost certain to cause the Supreme Court to lurch dramatically to the left or right when the median vote changes hands will also mean that narrowly decided elections will carry increasingly large consequences if there is unified government and hopeless gridlock when there isnt.

And its likely that this post-regime politics will persist for a while. The Democrats, having won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, have a viable electoral coalition. Despite nominating an unpopular candidate facing unique headwinds, the party won three million more votes for its most progressive program in decades. Meanwhile, while its a minority coalition nationally, Republicans will remain competitive because of the federal system and skewed apportionment in both houses of Congress. The Democratic Party may well be able to defeat Trump after one term and even stop important parts of the Ryan-McConnell agendabut even if they do, their opponents arent going anywhere. The 21st century figures to be characterized by intense polarization, not by the rise and fall of dominant regimes.

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Is Donald Trump the Next Jimmy Carter? - New Republic

Huffington Post

Donald Trump's team in fresh war of words with US media BBC News Key figures in Donald Trump's administration have become embroiled in a fresh war of words with the media. On Saturday the president had condemned media reporting of the number of people attending his inauguration. White House Chief of Staff Reince ... Reince Priebus Complains About The Press Trying To Delegitimize Donald TrumpHuffington Post all 109 news articles »

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Donald Trump's team in fresh war of words with US media - BBC News

New York Times

Donald Trump, Yahya Jammeh, Astana: Your Morning Briefing New York Times Liberal groups in the United States are hitting the Trump administration with a barrage of legal actions, including a suit to be filed today alleging that the president is violating the Constitution by allowing his businesses to accept payments from ...

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Donald Trump, Yahya Jammeh, Astana: Your Morning Briefing - New York Times

Inaugurations are Americas modern equivalents of Roman triumphs. Flanked by military and police vehicles, clad in the pomp of tradition, presidents of the United States take their solemn oaths and parade between the classical facades and colonnades lining Pennsylvania Avenue. Crowds of thousandssometimes millionsof citizens look on. It is meant to be a celebration of the nation in all her stately, martial honor, and of the vir triumphalis who has claimed the status of its moral leader and commander-in-chief. But inauguration is also a transition, not only between presidents, but from the combat of the campaign to the peacetime of governance.

For President Donald Trump, however, that transition has not yet taken place. On Inauguration Day, Trump did not take off the laurel wreath and transform into a governor, but rather extended his fiery campaign. The earliest hours of his presidency suggest that, dogged by unprecedented public disapproval, confronting questions of legitimacy, relying on a base fueled by partisan conflict, and facing extensive grassroots opposition, Trumps campaign will be indefinite.

The essential instability of Trumps transition to the presidency was evident on the ground on Friday. Although the red Make America Great Again caps and shirts were ubiquitous among supporters and official souvenir vendors, Trumps main campaign foil was still a presence among the less-official street memorabilia vendors. The Lock Her Up and Hillary for Prison buttons that became common in summer of last year were still hot-ticket items among attendees, and Clintons own visage still graced shirts and sweaters. Deplorable Lives Matter shirtsreferencing the controversial remarks made by Clinton on the trailshowed up to the party as well.

'Alternative Facts': The Needless Lies of the Trump Administration

The contentiousness of Trumps campaign rallies rubbed off on the character of some of the days celebration. As my colleague Nora Kelly observed, many inauguration attendees were simply there to join in celebration or participate in an important civic ceremony, and many Trump supporters among that crowd merely shrugged at the presence of protesters who mixed in with the crowds and often obstructed movement. But there was an edge to the zeal, and the few minor disturbances I saw that morning came when Trump supporters were determined to break through protester lines. Before the inauguration activities on Friday, at the Judiciary Square checkpoint, I witnessed a group of Trump supporters face off against protesters whod linked arms to prevent them from entering. Groups like Bikers for Trump made a show of their readiness to defend Trump supporters from violence by protesters, which in my 12 hours of reporting across the city never came. Refrains of We won! rang out in the mixed crowd watching the swearing-in outside of the Gordon Biersch restaurant in Gallery Place, but those refrains carried as much defensiveness as they did jubilation.

Trumps own inaugural address echoed that defensiveness, and was the clearest sign that his famed rally-centered style would not dissipate simply because he had now actually attained the office. He continued his campaign staple of painting a picture of a dystopia of American carnage in inner cities, only this time with the brush of authority wielded by the office. He continued to harness resentment. He continued his attacks against the inner-circle of D.C. politics, even as its members sat directly behind him. For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost, Trump told the crowd, without a hint of irony.

Still, given their importance in welding together a coherent coalition and in binding a working-class to a candidate who is fundamentally unlike them, its no surprise that the more boisterous elements of Trump rallies remained in full effect throughout inauguration. Trump needs a foil, and the major success of his campaign derived from its ability to divert attention away from a thin policy platform and towards a parade of caricatured images of threats and rivals, with Clinton chief among them. His promises to never ignore the elements of his base that feel left behind in a globalizingand diversifyinglandscape always land. People voted for Trump the pugilist, and his image has never deviateddespite the pivots journalists kept expecting him to eventually make.

But in his appeals to the American security apparatus, his America First prescription of patriotism as panacea, and his insistence that the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, the clearest view of the next few years emerged. In the purest sense of the word, Trump has always presented an authoritarian message, and has always campaigned as a person who would restore domestic and global submission to American authority. In order to do so while in office, he has to be a perpetual convener of rallies and must always minimize even the appearance of opposition. His interest in military parades fits the bill, and provides a roadmap. For his promises to work, the legitimacy of consensus is paramount.

And so it was on the very first full day of his presidency. Millions of protesters took to the streets across the country on Saturday for dozens of Womens Marches, and in Washington, D.C. their crowds likely dwarfed the official crowds of Inauguration Day. Trump took a clear exception to this appearance of opposition.

The Trump administration dedicated not one but two official sets of remarks to chastising reporting on the crowds. In the afternoon, while addressing the CIA, Trump bashed the press for misrepresenting the size of his crowds, claiming that by the judgment of his own eyes alone they approached 1.5 million people. Later that day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer attacked journalists for showing side-by-side photos of Trumps crowds with Obamas, claiming that photos were intentionally framed to make Trumps look smaller. He also claimed that Trumps inauguration was the first to use floor coverings that altered the appearance of the crowds in overhead shots, and also that Inauguration Day D.C. transit ridership numbers surpassed President Obamas 2009 numbers. Both claims were false.

To be sure, there are many more important things for journalists to cover than false claims about the size of crowds on a weekend in D.C. Right now, a slate of cabinet nominees faces serious questions about ethics, and Trump has already used executive power to begin the dismantlement of Obamacare. But the venom from the White House underscores one thing: that the appearance of enthusiastic consensus and the minimization of opposition are critical components to a Trump presidency. Crowd size matters deeply to a campaigner who has explicitly billed himself as a restorer of total allegiance, perhaps more so than nascent policy victories. And the appearance of vocal opposition intimates the one thing that such a campaigner cannot abide: the whisper of illegitimacy.

Any presidential agenda could be derailed by even a hint of illegitimacy. This is a fact that Trump exploited in both his dabbling in birtherism and in threats to jail Clinton. But Trumps appeal as a one-man fixer of Americanness requires enhanced legitimacy even above and beyond that of traditional holders of the office. He has to be more American to more Americans, and maintain a credibility above reproach. In the wake of a popular-vote loss to Clinton, a crescendo of claims of Russian interference and collusion with his campaign, plummeting approval ratings, and a faction of government officials increasingly comfortable with questioning his scruples, the maintenance of even the appearance of that enhanced credibility will take monumental effort, one that could subsume the official duties of the office.

The one thing that Trump learned well on the trail is that constant fire-and-brimstone rally-based campaigninglow on facts and policy but high on pyrotechnics and vilificationis a pretty good way to maintain that credibility, even in the face of facts. Not consensus, but the appearance of consensus is the foundation of the legitimacy he needs to maintain power. And that means four years of campaigning, and probably fuzzing a few more numbers along the way. The circus will continue.

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Donald Trump's Eternal Campaign - The Atlantic - The Atlantic

On Friday, Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, an occasion that most people would celebrate as one of the greatest moments in their lives. Donald Trump, however, reportedly spent the day getting increasingly angryall because of some not-so-nice messages on Twitter.

According to The New York Times, a series of tweets pointing out that Trumps inauguration was not as well attended as Obamas in 2009 caused the President to become increasingly upset, a mood that only lifted with Friday nights festivities. But the pain, it seems, was back Saturday morning, and Trump was filled anew with a sense of injury, according to several Times sources close the President.

Even outside of Trumps inner circle, some of that anger was visible this weekend. On Sunday, for instance, the President used Twitter to complain about demonstrations against him (instead of celebrating his new job), writing, Why didnt these people vote?

Its unclear what tweets, specifically, made Trump mad, but Times correspondent Binyamin Appelbaums thread about inauguration day crowds seems like a likely candidate. By Sunday night, the initial message had been retweeted over 50,000 times, even getting shared by the National Park Services official account.

In the end, that retweet seems to have gotten the NPS banned from Twitter, but if the intent was to make the new President mad, it sure seems like it worked.

[NYT]

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Report: Your Mean Tweets Upset Donald Trump on His Special Day - Gizmodo