Think (1)-(3) are all important & the fact that these continue to be administered is interesting. But, I think (4) is a leap too far - considering that in his mind, he‘s been President since 2017. (Even getting three in eight years is a lot IMO.)

Well, one assumes that they will insist on wet signatures, right? But this does cast some pardons he's already issued into doubt...

Continue to think people are looking at this wrongly with these crackpot theories for more reasons than you rightly point out. Today was also about insulating POTUS and SecDef from scrutiny. General officers & subordinates will be pardoned preemptively.

What’s the alternative? Remember, the President has already pardoned military members who were court martialed. Laws of combat aren’t well understood and the base doesn’t much care. Sees this as coddling enemies. We will be back to talking about tariffs in a couple of weeks.

transparency? I’m not sure the Senate will protect against subpoenas if there is stonewalling by DOJ. All of it keeps the issue alive. And that may be the logic that the political operation in the WH is deploying. Look, if you help keep this alive, it drives down enthusiasm for the whole party

At bottom, if the two people at the heart of this strategy are the President and the Attorney General, I’m not terribly impressed that this has been thought through. It seems desperate. And Congress has a say. If there is truly a narrow majority in the House who is willing to continue to push

Like THAT much obvious hypocrisy on the same issue might (I emphasize might) be too much for the public & media to take.

I think it's a mistake to assume that weaponizing/pushing this narrative will necessarily inure to Democrats' benefit because of recent trends. "My holiday flight got cancelled because of health care premium subsidies?" This is uncharted territory -when we got close to this in 18, GOP folded.

That the Ag Sec'y is saying we need to find buyers "aligned with our values" - wow. We sold grain to the USSR through the 70s until they invaded Afghanistan. The embargo was not politically popular. Reagan rescinded it when he took office.

On this, we agree. I don’t think they will pay a price for the shutdown as a shutdown. I think they will pay the price for the eventual cave. The fear that led you to (reasonably) predict a cave will manifest. My argument is that a cave for nothing a week or 2 from now will be worse politically.

I agree but Dems are dealing themselves this weak ACA hand for reasons I don’t get. If Dems said - we won’t go along w/ Congress voting for CR which White House ignores - I’d be OK with that. Instead we have Dems arguing policy, GOP arguing process (media loves it), the WH just seizing more power.

Sorry - we are talking about different things. I’m talking about the (relatively minor) policy goal of getting some subsidies back. Saying this CR (which only covers a brief period) is a proxy for midterms - yes - I would look at that differently except we will have 2-4 more of these before 11/26

If Dems cannot make a case for ACA subsidies which is a political winner without a shutdown threat to aid them, I don't know what to say. I think it's a good issue which media would actually focus upon in Oct/Nov. Instead, we're going to get shots of airport and Soc.Sec. office lines.

That's what one usually does when holding a weak hand.