The upside of Devos and Sessions confirmation

[grantcart]

It appears that DeVos will be confirmed because if one more Senator was going to vote against her they would have folded by now. Moreover one Republican won't be enough because none of them could stand to be labelled as "the one" that stuck it to DeVos but there may be a couple that would move against her if there was a group of 5-6 so they could say "she wasn't going to make it anyway, my vote wouldn't have made a difference".

Sessions is going to be confirmed.

These are two of the worst cabinet appointments made in the history of the country but there is an upside.

For DeVos she will operate with the clear understanding by everybody in DC that she only got the position because of the huge amounts of money that her family contributes to Senators. Every move she makes is going to be watched and every miscue is going to be documented and the calls are going to keep coming in. She doesn't understand subtlety and she is completely unaware of how far outside of a) normal American values and b) how painfully unintelligent she is. She is going to keep stepping into it over and over again.

There is an even bigger upside to Sessions. Unlike other positions like Perry in treasury where you can get the top lobbyists in the energy industry to give you a list of things to do the Attorney General needs to have a deep and sophisticated understanding of constitutional principles, precedents and complex legal strategy. He will get lots of competing advice but he will have to do the work personally to boil it down and guide the President. People will have to dumb it down for Sessions who will have to dumb it down again to explain it to Trump. Every time he loses in court Trump will let it be known that he should have gotten a real lawyer, that he could have come up with better arguments.

Sessions will very quickly be over his head and will cripple the Trump administration when it tries to compete in court. There will be plenty of smart lawyers giving him competing strategies but he won't have the sophistication or the time to make the right decisions that will be coming at him at the speed of light.

Other nominees like Mnuchin have no upside. He is an evil genius and he will know how to fly under the radar and rape the system while reformers are chasing more high profile crimes.

(By the way has anybody else noticed how infantile Trump looks after he signs and EO. He holds it up letting people see that he got his signature right like a 7 year old showing his mommy how well he did by staying within the lines on coloring page. Its very creepy).

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. It is as if they want to

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