Well, Trump did what he needed to do last night.
I wasn't as overwhelmed as Van Jones, but his take on it is very valuable. Trump needed to satisfy the Republicans that his poll numbers wouldn't sink any lower. If they kept falling, then Ryan and McConnell would have had to allow the Russian espionage investigations to proceed. Now, I think they're dead. Maybe -- and this just occurred to me -- they told him to go out and put on a good show or they were going to allow the investigations to proceed, so they have, in effect, something to hold over his head (as the Intelligence Committee and FBI continue to investigate in secret). But the larger problem is that pie piece of the electorate that he cannot seem to lose.
And something has changed. The racism, Anti-Semitism and hate countenanced (if not implicitly) supported by Trump would have done him in. The new chapter in America he talked about last night is this: for a large swath, it is okay for the President of the U.S. to get supportive tweets from David Duke after the State of the Union speech. And there are also the millions who have been swindled by Trump into thinking that he was going to make their wages rise, despite the inevitable calculus of globalization. Alas, they slumber on. Because some must sleep.
And some must watch. In 1984, it wasn't Big Brother that was Winston Smith and the intelligentsia's greatest enemy. It was the proles. He even talks about this. Nothing he could do would persuade them to get away from believing what was on the telescreens. And how you get through to our modern day proles is something that everyone on the Left is struggling with.
The real time polling shows that the divide is still there. And Trump still scored very low with independents. I think that the main problem will be with attrition and fatigue. But if the media and others continue to campaign for truth against Trump, hopefully, the support he receives will begin to erode again. But make no mistake about it, last night he had at least a temporary victory, especially with the Republicans in showing that he still has the proles supporting him.
Right now, the House is so hopelessly gerrymandered, that the Republicans will have a permanent majority. The districting is done at the State level, and the Republicans and Rove have spent a decade and a half rigging it. I think Obama, of all people, and others with his team are working on how to reverse that. But it is a decades-long process.
The most important issue right now is the Constitutional challenge to gerrymandering. (As an aside, notice that Sessions withdrew the DoJ's opposition to Texas' racist voter suppresion law now being litigated). There is a case soon to be before the Supreme Court that would make it unconstitutional to hopelessly gerrymander districts so that the votes are distorted and no longer representative. But as a matter of jursprudence, some say the case is a long shot. With a 5-4 Republican majority and Goresuch installed, it is a hopeless long shot.
