BIDEN'S BETRAYAL  (Note: This post originally went out as an email because I wasn't able to access the website service. I apologize for using the word “betray” that was the centerpiece of an earlier post – but no other word fits.- Brian Jones)
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, by pardoning his son, Hunter, has disgraced the presidency, destroyed his legacy and betrayed all who trust in justice. Biden has cleared the way for Donald Trump to continue his abuse of the presidential pardon powers, which began in Trump’s first term and is sure to accelerate in his second. If Trump, for example, carries through with his threat to pardon the outlaws who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the excuse should be written large on Washington’s memorial’s and buildings: “Joe Biden did it, too.” I’LL NOT GET BOGGED DOWN in Hunter’s crimes and travails. What counts is that he was convicted by a jury of federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges. Beyond those crimes, he traded on his father’s name for years in his business deals. That the Biden family has been beset by tragedy, a terrible car accident, his Hunter's brother’s death from brain cancer, Hunter’s drug addiction, is truly sad. It's no excuse for the misuse of the Constitution’s unique pardon authority to keep a family member out of the slammer. COMPOUNDING THE PARDON DISGRACE is Biden’s version of the Big Lie. He and his spokespersons repeatedly said that he would never use those powers to protect his son his son. For example, after Hunter’s gun conviction last June, Biden said: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.” The pardon means that we cannot believe a word he says. About anything. I BELIEVED IN JOE BIDEN. And maybe you did, too. I thought he had rescued the United States from the depravity and disgrace of Donald Trump’s first term; I respected the way he returned the country to its normal, if imperfect, function. And all of that eloquent "soul of America" stuff. Which is now meaningless. One of the few defenses that the forces of good have had following the Nov. 5 election has been the moral authority against which to measure Trump’s corruption. Now Biden -- selfishly, hypocritically, faithlessly -- has stripped the country of even that standard. We are betrayed.
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THE SEASON OF STUPID THIS IS THE TIME IN AN ELECTION YEAR when people, myself included, say stupid things. Summer is history, and if Donald Trump has his way, it won't be back. This is a time of skeletal tree branches, rotting leafs and four-o’clock sundowns, hinting at what's to come on Jan. 20, when Trump takes over. There are about two months of official democracy remaining before the avalanche of Trump’s authoritarian winter sweeps across the continent, suffocating whatever is good about the United States. One of the agonies of this waiting period is listening to lectures about what went wrong – not from the winners, who are still planning their MAGA re-education centers – but from the losers, our own comrades. How could we have been so witless, the Democratic ask. How could we have been so deaf, so arrogant, so elitist that we lost our connection to the hard-working working-families, the economic innocents cheated out of a carton of inflated eggs, while their small towns were overrun by pet-devouring immigrants? Why have we Democrats become so alienated from those authentic Americans, leaving them little choice but to seek guidance from the king of common sense, Donald John Trump?
Captain Moulton had scouted out the enemy and reported the chilling results to the American people: Oversized transgender freaks have been roaming America’s athletic fields alongside authentically gendered daughters, whom we’ve left undefended and endangered, because adult enablers from the Democratic left have censored sensible, kitchen-table conversations on this and other hot-potatoes. If only the Democrats hadn’t been burdened by those gender changelings, to say nothing weighted down by those other pesky issues, like police brutality and climate change, that have absolutely nothing to do with what authentic Americans really care about, like the price of eggs. In the days following his Times statement, Moulton had a chance to acknowledge the absurdity of laying the blame for Trump’s victory at the feet of transgender children, a fragile fraction of the U.S. population that Trump’s goons traumatized in millions-of-dollars worth of campaign ads. Instead, Moulton positioned himself as a champion of intraparty free-speech and as a savant-emissary to practical, hard-working-America. In a clarifying statement the next day, he said:
Notice that Moulton dropped in that line repudiating the thrust his Times' statement: “We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue.” But that was overshadowed by his overall charge that lefty purists had squashed honest discussion and therefore distanced the party from mainstream America. What should he have said? First, he owed transgender individuals – especially youngsters – an apology. 'My stupid. I fell into the Republican trap of picking on a vulnerable group of children, whose desperate search for gender identity can literally cost their lives.' Secondly, he should have followed that by saying the only thing we all know for certain about why Trump won is that none of us actually knows the answer. EVIL FORCES WERE AFOOT on Nov. 5, and my best guess now is that nothing could have stopped them. Like Seth Moulton and everyone else distraught by the election results, I have no proof as to why that happened, just sorrow. Personally, I don’t buy the economic excuse – that, battered by inflation, voters turned on the incumbent party. Nearly as many voters supported Kamala Harris, but I guess they were immune from inflation – maybe coastal elites know where to shop for cheap eggs. What I don’t understand is why Democrats seem angrier at each other than at the people who voted Donald Trump into the White House and who handed Republicans control of the Senate and House. The result will be a storm of terror and hate unlike the worst fire and brimstone descriptions in the Bible, and it’s entirely the fault of the Trump voters.
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT TRANSGENDER MATTERS. I don’t know a lot about the subject. What I’ve read is that a slice of the population is betrayed by a confounding quirk of nature. At some point in their lives, some girls realize their bodies have lied to them, and that they are boys; the same with some males, who identify as females. The journey to balance the scales is fraught and perilous, but can be successful and life-affirming. Do female athletes face unfair competition from some transitioned males? Maybe, but hormone treatments that they may take, and which some sports associations require, can narrow the differences. Because the numbers of transgender persons are relatively small, and their athletic cohort is even smaller, the chances that Seth Moulton’s daughters will be run down by such a contestant are small. But transgender players do show up on female teams – and there is hell to pay when the culture warriors sink their teeth into the actual human beings involved.  THE SAN JOSE SPARTANS volleyball team, including the transgender player, whom the Washington Post isn't naming. CREDIT: San Jose State University website The Washington Post has a distressing and complicated story this week about the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State University, where one player has been identified as transgender, and the resulting controversy has seen five other teams refuse to play against the squad. The issue turned so ugly that a San Jose co-captain is part of a lawsuit seeking to have her transgender teammate banned, the filings saying the player had unfairly displaced other players; the captain even claimed the teammate conspired unsuccessfully to injure her. There are differing views as to the potential danger and competitive disadvantage posed by that player, whom the Post didn't identified because the player hasn’t talked about her background. An official of one volleyball team wrote this about competing against San Jose:
 SARAH MC BRIDE The San Jose website lists the player as 6-feet, 1-inches tall, which at first seems male-advantaged; but of the 19 players, seven women are 6-feet or more, including one who is 6-feet, 3-inches.
THE MISCHIEF THAT COMES from exploiting transgender issues has sprung up in the Capitol, where the country’s first elected transgender Congresswoman, Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat, has been cornered in one of the GOP’s favorite battlespaces, the bathroom. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has demanded McBride be barred from women’s bathrooms; Speaker Mike Johnson is delighted by the idea of restricting bathrooms, a move that will affect trans Capitol staffers and visitors. McBride says she’ll follow the House rules. But that’s made her a target of transgender advocates, who say that she has let down the cause, betraying less powerful and more vulnerable people whom McBride should be championing. ADMITTING THAT I’M AT A LOSS as to why Trump won and what to do about it, here is what I hope, at a minimum, will happen: I want Democrats to defend vulnerable groups, always, and to reject scapegoating or abandoning individuals as tactic to win the hearts and minds of voters. Lots of people, like Congressman Moulton, have taken to blaming Democrats for losing the election because they’ve lost touch with voters’ prejudices, which I find to be both unkind and unlikely. I wish the critics would save a little of their fury for the real villains, the Trump voters. It’s the Trump voters who have condemned themselves and the rest of us to years of treachery and cruelty that represent America at her very worst. The Season of Stupid can’t end soon enough. CATASTROPHE! |
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But I take no comfort in the famine of Trump and Harris signs. My guess is that residents simply don’t want their fellow citizens to know their thinking when it comes Harris vs. Trump, and a lack of lawn decorations avoids conflicts, arguments and grudges erupting before and after the election.
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I have been amazed at the dynamics of the election.
Who could have predicted that two disasters, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and Joe Biden’s debate debacle, have given Democrats a fighting chance, with abortion becoming a defining issue and Kamala Harris emerging as an instant maestro of the political orchestra.
I’m disappointed that some of the country’s most challenging issues – climate change, economic inequality, racism and the conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East – have not been central to the campaign.
Still, I think the voters need all they need to know: Trump will ruin America; Harris will advance it.
My expectation is a definitive Harris win.
But that’s just me. I have no insight, special antennae or any way of measuring the pulse of America, scientifically or otherwise.
Like many, I have daily panic attacks about the human catastrophe that would follow a Trump victory.
I am not a brave man. I don’t know what kind of a resistance fighter I would be if Trump wins. Not as fierce and relentless as I would wish. Especially knowing that however awful his regime can be imagined now, the reality will be far worse.
Every day, I allow myself to imagine the relief, joy and celebration of a New America that a Harris victory will unleash.
Especially today, I’m filled with hope.
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I have been amazed at the dynamics of the election.
Who could have predicted that two disasters, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and Joe Biden’s debate debacle, have given Democrats a fighting chance, with abortion becoming a defining issue and Kamala Harris emerging as an instant maestro of the political orchestra.
I’m disappointed that some of the country’s most challenging issues – climate change, economic inequality, racism and the conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East – have not been central to the campaign.
Still, I think the voters need all they need to know: Trump will ruin America; Harris will advance it.
My expectation is a definitive Harris win.
But that’s just me. I have no insight, special antennae or any way of measuring the pulse of America, scientifically or otherwise.
Like many, I have daily panic attacks about the human catastrophe that would follow a Trump victory.
I am not a brave man. I don’t know what kind of a resistance fighter I would be if Trump wins. Not as fierce and relentless as I would wish. Especially knowing that however awful his regime can be imagined now, the reality will be far worse.
Every day, I allow myself to imagine the relief, joy and celebration of a New America that a Harris victory will unleash.
Especially today, I’m filled with hope.
An American Dream
HARRIS WINS!
United States elects its first woman president;
Voters reject Trump’s dark vision of the county.
WE’RE ONE WEEK AWAY from Election Day.
I’ve been thinking about what will happen. Here’s my vision:
Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College count – both by decisive margins.
The headlines and stories reflect astonishment.
The polls, once again, got it wrong.
As did the political soothsayers, who usually opt for pessimism, cynicism, and skepticism - not without reason, since the world is savage place - and because they're scared silly of being wrong.
And surely, the pollsters and experts never want to be accused of the ultimate sin of being soft-headed, sentimental and impractical.
Both the commentariat and the polls had indicated a discouraging outcome, in which the momentum in the final days belonged to Donald Trump.
Even Harris’s supporters, when asked how they were feeling about the election, gave a candid one-word answer: “nervous.”
Many of The Nervous remembered but never recovered from the shock of 2016, in which Trump illogically, and against the best polls and the wisest punditry, gathered enough Electoral votes to become president.
Trump’s presidency had been a disaster, even worse than imagined. Yet, here he was again, with a resume that had more in common with a criminal’s rap sheet than a list of presidential qualifications; more popular than ever; a survivor of twin impeachments and two attempted assassinations; filling auditoriums and stadiums; spewing racism, lies, vulgar jokes and promising a brutal, cruel authoritarianism.
How could so many millions of Americans be enthralled and devoted to such a repulsive figure, who promoted so many un-American beliefs?
THE ANSWER, ON ELECTION NIGHT, was that Harris had upended all of that.
How?
Once again, Americans proved that they believed in the American dream.
It’s a dream often defined by material prosperity – the house with the picket fence, the car(s) and affordable eggs.
But the important part of the dream has always been about more. The American dream, from the beginning, is about hope. Hope that in one country, ideas and ideals count. Hope that things could, would and will get better.
America’s sins are real and lasting. Slavery powered the country's original economy, and its “manifest destiny” was realized by slaughtering and betraying Indians.
But generation after generation, the country sought to better live up to its founding language.
Now, in the election of 2024, all “men” really meant that everyone really was equal; a woman was elected president; finally, the country had doubled its chances of electing a capable leader.
With a mixed background, Harris was more representative of the country America was becoming: mixed-race, mixed faith, mixed origins, all in service of the American dream.
I’ve been thinking about what will happen. Here’s my vision:
Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College count – both by decisive margins.
The headlines and stories reflect astonishment.
The polls, once again, got it wrong.
As did the political soothsayers, who usually opt for pessimism, cynicism, and skepticism - not without reason, since the world is savage place - and because they're scared silly of being wrong.
And surely, the pollsters and experts never want to be accused of the ultimate sin of being soft-headed, sentimental and impractical.
Both the commentariat and the polls had indicated a discouraging outcome, in which the momentum in the final days belonged to Donald Trump.
Even Harris’s supporters, when asked how they were feeling about the election, gave a candid one-word answer: “nervous.”
Many of The Nervous remembered but never recovered from the shock of 2016, in which Trump illogically, and against the best polls and the wisest punditry, gathered enough Electoral votes to become president.
Trump’s presidency had been a disaster, even worse than imagined. Yet, here he was again, with a resume that had more in common with a criminal’s rap sheet than a list of presidential qualifications; more popular than ever; a survivor of twin impeachments and two attempted assassinations; filling auditoriums and stadiums; spewing racism, lies, vulgar jokes and promising a brutal, cruel authoritarianism.
How could so many millions of Americans be enthralled and devoted to such a repulsive figure, who promoted so many un-American beliefs?
THE ANSWER, ON ELECTION NIGHT, was that Harris had upended all of that.
How?
Once again, Americans proved that they believed in the American dream.
It’s a dream often defined by material prosperity – the house with the picket fence, the car(s) and affordable eggs.
But the important part of the dream has always been about more. The American dream, from the beginning, is about hope. Hope that in one country, ideas and ideals count. Hope that things could, would and will get better.
America’s sins are real and lasting. Slavery powered the country's original economy, and its “manifest destiny” was realized by slaughtering and betraying Indians.
But generation after generation, the country sought to better live up to its founding language.
Now, in the election of 2024, all “men” really meant that everyone really was equal; a woman was elected president; finally, the country had doubled its chances of electing a capable leader.
With a mixed background, Harris was more representative of the country America was becoming: mixed-race, mixed faith, mixed origins, all in service of the American dream.
LOOKING BACK ON IT ALL, Harris’s win was all the more inspired and astonishing because it was born out of an unprecedented political crisis.
Joe Biden, an accomplished, and wildly underappreciated president, had been showing his age and/or health as he sought a second term, and when he confronted Trump in a TV debate, Biden disintegrated.
Under immense pressure from fellow Democrats, Biden on July 21 withdrew from the race, leaving his largely unloved vice president – Kamala Harris – as the only viable replacement as the Democratic nominee.
From that moment on, Harris emerged as a confident, competent and capable leader, instantly eloquent and in control, never making a strategic stumble or verbal misstep.
At the Democratic convention a month later, on Aug. 23, Harris succinctly summarized both Trump’s weakness and threat:
Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.
More than any policy position or stirring speech, Harris demonstrated that she had what it takes to be a president, and in their single TV debate, she demolished Trump.
But Harris’s personal qualities were not the only factor in her win.
During the three-month, exuberant and desperate campaign, millions of American rose to the challenge. Progressives mostly held their tongues as Harris reached out to conservatives. Conservative icons, like the Cheney family, set aside their ideology for core democratic principles. People from solidly blue states traveled to the seven battleground states to knock on doors. Volunteers made phone calls, wrote postcards and prayed.
On election night, it was too early to tell whether Harris would be among the good presidents; or whether she would be admitted to that rare group, the Washingtons, the Lincolns, and, with my bias is showing here, the Bidens.
But what we did know is that Harris’s election opened a new, promising chapter in the American story.
Now we would be able to confront a brutal economy, which leaves many American impoverished, homeless and hungry. Now we would be able to confront climate change, Russian aggression, deadly conflict in the Middle East and all the surprises and challenges that are the ordinary, everyday elements of American life.
* * *
IF YOU HAVE READ THIS FAR, you may say that my vision of what we’ll be experiencing next Tuesday is a fantasy, born of wishful thinking and spacey sentiment.
Maybe.
But my American dream is based in our country’s difficult, aspirational and inspired history.
And without this dream, we will never have the country that we want for ourselves and that our children deserve.
Joe Biden, an accomplished, and wildly underappreciated president, had been showing his age and/or health as he sought a second term, and when he confronted Trump in a TV debate, Biden disintegrated.
Under immense pressure from fellow Democrats, Biden on July 21 withdrew from the race, leaving his largely unloved vice president – Kamala Harris – as the only viable replacement as the Democratic nominee.
From that moment on, Harris emerged as a confident, competent and capable leader, instantly eloquent and in control, never making a strategic stumble or verbal misstep.
At the Democratic convention a month later, on Aug. 23, Harris succinctly summarized both Trump’s weakness and threat:
Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.
More than any policy position or stirring speech, Harris demonstrated that she had what it takes to be a president, and in their single TV debate, she demolished Trump.
But Harris’s personal qualities were not the only factor in her win.
During the three-month, exuberant and desperate campaign, millions of American rose to the challenge. Progressives mostly held their tongues as Harris reached out to conservatives. Conservative icons, like the Cheney family, set aside their ideology for core democratic principles. People from solidly blue states traveled to the seven battleground states to knock on doors. Volunteers made phone calls, wrote postcards and prayed.
On election night, it was too early to tell whether Harris would be among the good presidents; or whether she would be admitted to that rare group, the Washingtons, the Lincolns, and, with my bias is showing here, the Bidens.
But what we did know is that Harris’s election opened a new, promising chapter in the American story.
Now we would be able to confront a brutal economy, which leaves many American impoverished, homeless and hungry. Now we would be able to confront climate change, Russian aggression, deadly conflict in the Middle East and all the surprises and challenges that are the ordinary, everyday elements of American life.
* * *
IF YOU HAVE READ THIS FAR, you may say that my vision of what we’ll be experiencing next Tuesday is a fantasy, born of wishful thinking and spacey sentiment.
Maybe.
But my American dream is based in our country’s difficult, aspirational and inspired history.
And without this dream, we will never have the country that we want for ourselves and that our children deserve.
BETRAYED!
After the Washington Post shamefully bows to Trump, what should readers do? Cancel? Keep footing the bill?
WE ARE BETRAYED.
In a nauseating, abject, obsequious act of subjection to Donald Trump, the Washington Post this week killed its expected endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
It was a betrayal on many levels: of the paper's extraordinary journalistic history, its talented staff, its readers, and most importantly, of the country, at an unprecedented hour of peril.
It was Jeff Bezos’ doing.
He’s the owner of the Post, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest men. He moved the election’s outcome toward Trump, perhaps only by inches, but closer.
What should those who care about a storied newspaper and its place in our public life do about this shocking, surprising treachery?
Should the paper’s editorial board, which had prepared an endorsement, resign? Should the rest of the staff – the writers, analysts, cartoonists, columnists likewise quit?
Should readers – myself included – cancel our subscriptions?
Tens of thousands of readers, who denounced the endorsement debacle in online comments and letters to the paper, threatened to do just that – quit paying for the Post, and thereby give up reading it.
To all of those possible moves, I say no – please don’t.
In a nauseating, abject, obsequious act of subjection to Donald Trump, the Washington Post this week killed its expected endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
It was a betrayal on many levels: of the paper's extraordinary journalistic history, its talented staff, its readers, and most importantly, of the country, at an unprecedented hour of peril.
It was Jeff Bezos’ doing.
He’s the owner of the Post, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest men. He moved the election’s outcome toward Trump, perhaps only by inches, but closer.
What should those who care about a storied newspaper and its place in our public life do about this shocking, surprising treachery?
Should the paper’s editorial board, which had prepared an endorsement, resign? Should the rest of the staff – the writers, analysts, cartoonists, columnists likewise quit?
Should readers – myself included – cancel our subscriptions?
Tens of thousands of readers, who denounced the endorsement debacle in online comments and letters to the paper, threatened to do just that – quit paying for the Post, and thereby give up reading it.
To all of those possible moves, I say no – please don’t.
THE STAFF, INCLUDING THE EDITORIAL BOARD, should stay put and continue producing its insightful commentaries. The reporting staff should keep working and writing, turning out some of the country’s best political, investigative and other journalism.
And the readers should keep paying the Post’s bills, galling and infuriating as that might seem.
Newspapers, especially the good ones like the Post, which have survived the near collapse of the industry, are simply too precious and rare to be allowed to disappear, even if, at the moment, it seems that the Post has brought injury upon itself.
As for those of us who are subscribers, withdrawing our financial support is simply a self-inflicted wound, one that’s only momentarily satisfying in the heat of our collective tantrum.
The fact is that newspapers are unique, even in the digital age. The really good ones, with huge, experienced staffs, are the only news outfits equipped to do proper journalism.
So if we undermine the paper’s financial footings, we only hurt ourselves, as well as the country.
It may well be that the Post will not survive, anyway. While it flourished initially after Bezos purchased it and wisely recognized the Internet could make it a national, subscription newspaper, the paper these day seems not to be so healthy, financially or journalistically.
And if Trump wins the election with the help of cowards like Bezos, Trump has promised to include high-quality news outlets among his first targets. It’s just what dictators do.
Then there’s the practicality of the limited responses available to the paper’s staff and to the readers.
Bezos won’t care if reporters and other staffers disappear from his payroll; he won’t miss the readers’ contributions – the fact is the Post's online subscriptions aren’t all that expensive, so a rich man may be willing to lose thousands of readers.
And frankly, now that the paper is struggling, he probably won’t care very much if “his” Washington Post lives or dies.
He is, after all, a traitor to journalism, or he wouldn’t have done what he did in the first place – refused to honor his own writers’ voluminous reporting that showed Trump to be a clear and present danger to the country.
And the readers should keep paying the Post’s bills, galling and infuriating as that might seem.
Newspapers, especially the good ones like the Post, which have survived the near collapse of the industry, are simply too precious and rare to be allowed to disappear, even if, at the moment, it seems that the Post has brought injury upon itself.
As for those of us who are subscribers, withdrawing our financial support is simply a self-inflicted wound, one that’s only momentarily satisfying in the heat of our collective tantrum.
The fact is that newspapers are unique, even in the digital age. The really good ones, with huge, experienced staffs, are the only news outfits equipped to do proper journalism.
So if we undermine the paper’s financial footings, we only hurt ourselves, as well as the country.
It may well be that the Post will not survive, anyway. While it flourished initially after Bezos purchased it and wisely recognized the Internet could make it a national, subscription newspaper, the paper these day seems not to be so healthy, financially or journalistically.
And if Trump wins the election with the help of cowards like Bezos, Trump has promised to include high-quality news outlets among his first targets. It’s just what dictators do.
Then there’s the practicality of the limited responses available to the paper’s staff and to the readers.
Bezos won’t care if reporters and other staffers disappear from his payroll; he won’t miss the readers’ contributions – the fact is the Post's online subscriptions aren’t all that expensive, so a rich man may be willing to lose thousands of readers.
And frankly, now that the paper is struggling, he probably won’t care very much if “his” Washington Post lives or dies.
He is, after all, a traitor to journalism, or he wouldn’t have done what he did in the first place – refused to honor his own writers’ voluminous reporting that showed Trump to be a clear and present danger to the country.
MANY OF THE POST'S past and current writers, eloquent folks that they are, have written on the Post’s own pages and website with far more insight and spirit than I can, about the endorsement disgrace.
Marty Baron, the iconic former editor of the paper, was quoted in a Post story:
“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Look, I don’t hold out much hope for the long-term future of the Post after this traumatic injury.
But I want to be wrong.
Maybe the Post will continue its courageous, remarkable work. Maybe Jeff Bezos will hold a news conference today, apologize for his mistake, read the endorsement out loud and then publish it – thanking the readers for caring so much.
It’s obvious in the real world that the paper can continue only if the staff stays put and readers foot the bill.
At the very least, let’s not do Donald Trump’s dirty work for him.
Marty Baron, the iconic former editor of the paper, was quoted in a Post story:
“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Look, I don’t hold out much hope for the long-term future of the Post after this traumatic injury.
But I want to be wrong.
Maybe the Post will continue its courageous, remarkable work. Maybe Jeff Bezos will hold a news conference today, apologize for his mistake, read the endorsement out loud and then publish it – thanking the readers for caring so much.
It’s obvious in the real world that the paper can continue only if the staff stays put and readers foot the bill.
At the very least, let’s not do Donald Trump’s dirty work for him.
Election countdown - 2 weeks left
TRUMP’S VULGAR FABLE ABOUT A GOLFER’S PENIS WON’T DEFEAT HIM. BUT AMERICAN VOTERS CAN.
I THOUGHT – STUPIDLY – that when Donald Trump told a political rally last Saturday that the late golf icon, Arnold Palmer, had a substantial penis, and, later, at the same event, he called his opponent a “shit,” those would be major developments in the campaign.
Trump’s behavior was so awful and so unseemly that the rally story had to have implications for the election, and at the very least, it would have a longer than usual life in the news cycle.
Because it was profane and vulgar.
Because it showed Trump is continuing to lose his grip. (Or that he's not).
Because it was one of those simple to understand parables that explains so much about why Trump should not be president.
If Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, had done that sort of thing, it would have been the finale act of her campaign – Curtains for Kamala.
As it was, I saw only one really good story about the rally, in the Washington Post, although even in that paper, it never got top billing; the New York Times “explained” it academically as another Trumpian visit to the sewer. And NPR at one point mentioned that Trump had described Palmer’s “anatomy,” without saying which part.
I am embarrassed to say I was surprised and genuinely shocked that he would discuss somebody’s dick and that he would describe his rival as poop.
And at the very least, I expected that the story would be talk of the liberal press, the liberal blogs, the liberal podcasts. But it faded quickly in the ongoing blizzard of other “news.” Did you know, for example, that the next day Donald Trump dished out french fries at a staged visit to a McDonald’s restaurant?
If you've read this far, you’re probably saying : “Where have you been the last nine years? Nothing that Donald John Trump does or says matters. Don’t you know that? By now?”
Even worse, a remote part of my brain involuntarily continues to expect Donald Trump to self-extinguish, so that sooner than later he will go too far, and that suddenly there will be a national consensus that whatever the elusive “too far” is, Trump will reach that threshold, and that will be that.
Of course, that's not going to happen. Donald Trump is not going to bring Donald Trump down. Which doesn’t mean that Donald Trump is invincible – only that Donald Trump won’t be the one to do himself in.
I’D LIKE TO LINGER in the Trump gutter briefly. Both his Long Schlong Story and his Harris-Is-A-Shit assessment tell us much about the man, who, according to the polls, has at least a 50-50 chance of becoming president – as we mark the two week point before Election Day.
I would add this warning: we should not take Trump at his word that Arnold Palmer had an outsized penis. Trump is a serial, pathological liar, and we should always presume he's making up stuff until we know otherwise.
I’m not even sure how you'd begin to fact-check this story, or whether PolitiFact or similar organizations have tried to.
Trump’s behavior was so awful and so unseemly that the rally story had to have implications for the election, and at the very least, it would have a longer than usual life in the news cycle.
Because it was profane and vulgar.
Because it showed Trump is continuing to lose his grip. (Or that he's not).
Because it was one of those simple to understand parables that explains so much about why Trump should not be president.
If Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, had done that sort of thing, it would have been the finale act of her campaign – Curtains for Kamala.
As it was, I saw only one really good story about the rally, in the Washington Post, although even in that paper, it never got top billing; the New York Times “explained” it academically as another Trumpian visit to the sewer. And NPR at one point mentioned that Trump had described Palmer’s “anatomy,” without saying which part.
I am embarrassed to say I was surprised and genuinely shocked that he would discuss somebody’s dick and that he would describe his rival as poop.
And at the very least, I expected that the story would be talk of the liberal press, the liberal blogs, the liberal podcasts. But it faded quickly in the ongoing blizzard of other “news.” Did you know, for example, that the next day Donald Trump dished out french fries at a staged visit to a McDonald’s restaurant?
If you've read this far, you’re probably saying : “Where have you been the last nine years? Nothing that Donald John Trump does or says matters. Don’t you know that? By now?”
Even worse, a remote part of my brain involuntarily continues to expect Donald Trump to self-extinguish, so that sooner than later he will go too far, and that suddenly there will be a national consensus that whatever the elusive “too far” is, Trump will reach that threshold, and that will be that.
Of course, that's not going to happen. Donald Trump is not going to bring Donald Trump down. Which doesn’t mean that Donald Trump is invincible – only that Donald Trump won’t be the one to do himself in.
I’D LIKE TO LINGER in the Trump gutter briefly. Both his Long Schlong Story and his Harris-Is-A-Shit assessment tell us much about the man, who, according to the polls, has at least a 50-50 chance of becoming president – as we mark the two week point before Election Day.
I would add this warning: we should not take Trump at his word that Arnold Palmer had an outsized penis. Trump is a serial, pathological liar, and we should always presume he's making up stuff until we know otherwise.
I’m not even sure how you'd begin to fact-check this story, or whether PolitiFact or similar organizations have tried to.
 ARNOLD PALMER, RIGHT, with Palmer statue at Laurel Valley Golf Course, Ligonier, PA, near Latrobe | Palmer’s Wikipedia page makes no mention. I suppose someone could ask members of his family or other golfers, whom Trump claims were witnesses to the phenomenon. It’s possible there are biographies that include a chapter or two. Or, maybe there’s an archival edition of Golf Digest with insights. But for our purposes, size is not the main issue; it’s the rudeness and Trump's obvious delight in telling the fable. Trump’s rally was in Pennsylvania, the most important of the seven battleground states, specifically in the community of Latrobe, which was Palmer’s hometown. Palmer, who won 62 PGA Tour titles, died in 2016 at age 87. |
Here’s how Trump's story played out, and you can see it yourself on a C-Span video by clicking on this link:
Trump spent a good 10 minutes extolling Palmer’s golfing career. But you could tell all of that background was just a long-winded introduction to the story that he really wanted to tell:
Trump spent a good 10 minutes extolling Palmer’s golfing career. But you could tell all of that background was just a long-winded introduction to the story that he really wanted to tell:
| So, you know, I've been here before and I've told the story before, not in this kind of detail, because, you know, you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn't be so good, right? And it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn't be as good. And I didn't want to do that. I said when I come here, I'm going to tell the real story of Arnold, but Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. (Crowd cheers) But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all-man. This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it; but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said: “Oh, my God, that's unbelievable.” (Laughter). I had to say it. I have to say we have women that are highly sophisticated here. But they used to look at Arnold (garbled). But he was really something special. Arnold was something special. So I just want to tell you, you're very lucky, the people that live in Latrobe. And it's an honor for me to be here, because of him. And he was actually, he was a great man, and I don't think there would be golf to this, to the extent that you have it today. It probably wouldn't be that way without the great Arnold Palmer. So enjoy it. Everybody enjoy it. And I had to tell you the shower part of it because it's, it's true. What can I tell? We want to be honest, we want to be upfront. It's true. |
Again, you and I don’t know that “it’s true.” What’s also not clear is why Trump or anyone else would want to tell this story in public (or private).
Did he want the people of Latrobe to know an important historic detail? Certainly, the folks at the rally and maybe the nation watching on TV will never be able to “unhear” it. Did Trump want the world of golf to know? Did he want us to believe that long ago golfers took showers and that they made sure they checked out the size of other people's equipment?
Maybe, it's just that an old man, with the brain of a middle-schooler, likes to talk to talk dirty, so that he'll be noticed.
IT WOULD BE UNFAIR to say that Trump limited his remarks to a supposedly legendary body part. His rally went on for more than an hour, and as usual, Trump zigzagged from topic to topic. Immigrants are drug dealers, murderers and mental patients. Joe Biden has been a foreign policy failure. Recently, “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, phoned Trump. Elon Musk is a genius; tariffs will push the economy into high gear.
At one point, Trump apparently caught a glimpse of himself in a TV monitor, prompting this remark:
Did he want the people of Latrobe to know an important historic detail? Certainly, the folks at the rally and maybe the nation watching on TV will never be able to “unhear” it. Did Trump want the world of golf to know? Did he want us to believe that long ago golfers took showers and that they made sure they checked out the size of other people's equipment?
Maybe, it's just that an old man, with the brain of a middle-schooler, likes to talk to talk dirty, so that he'll be noticed.
IT WOULD BE UNFAIR to say that Trump limited his remarks to a supposedly legendary body part. His rally went on for more than an hour, and as usual, Trump zigzagged from topic to topic. Immigrants are drug dealers, murderers and mental patients. Joe Biden has been a foreign policy failure. Recently, “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, phoned Trump. Elon Musk is a genius; tariffs will push the economy into high gear.
At one point, Trump apparently caught a glimpse of himself in a TV monitor, prompting this remark:
| I’m looking at my hair up there. Let’s say, “Oh, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. Excuse me. I’m going to recomb my hair.” Do you mind? I’ll leave the stage for five minutes. I’m going to recomb my hair.” |
Trump apparently had second thoughts about ducking the spotlight for the recomb.
Lest anyone forget that he has twice escaped assassination attempts, he noted that his Secret Service protection has increased – and he turned that point into another opportunity to reference Palmer.
Lest anyone forget that he has twice escaped assassination attempts, he noted that his Secret Service protection has increased – and he turned that point into another opportunity to reference Palmer.
| They give you a little extra security now. It has, you know, hey, I got more machine guns than I've ever seen in my. Look at these guys. Hey, yay, yay. I got more machine guns. I never saw guns like that. I said to my son, Don, he knows a lot about guns and Eric knows – they are great shots; they really understand. I said, “What kind of a gun is that?” They said, “Dad, you don't even want to know.” They are serious guns. We got more guys than … every one of them is like central casting, too. Holy. I'm looking -they look like Arnold Palmer. They look like Arnold; can't look better than Arnold. |
AND, OF COURSE, TRUMP made many mentions of Kamala Harris. Here’s one, in which he compared her to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and managed to get in a barnyard word:
| Bernie is radical left and this one, Kamala, is further left than them. So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough, that you just can't take it anymore. We can't stand you. You're a shit vice president, the worst. You're the worst. Vice President Kamala, you're fired. Get the hell out of here, you're fired. Get out of here, get the hell out of here. |
If Harris had discussed a man's private parts, that would probably end her chances of becoming the first woman president.
If she said that Trump had been “a shit President,” that would have been big news and reason for much worry, despair and critical editorials.
I don’t know why Trump gets away with it all. He tried to overthrow an election. He’s been convicted of falsifying records to cover up payments to a porn star. He wants to let global warming destroy the planet. He’s a liar, a business cheat, a misogynist and a bigot. He proposes detaining and expelling millions of immigrants. He sent Russia's Vladimir Putin Covid drug tests during the pandemic.
Here’s the bottom line:
The only way we are going to be free of Trump is to defeat him in the election, which ends just two weeks from now on Nov. 5.
Donald Trump won’t rid America of Donald Trump.
But American voters can.
If she said that Trump had been “a shit President,” that would have been big news and reason for much worry, despair and critical editorials.
I don’t know why Trump gets away with it all. He tried to overthrow an election. He’s been convicted of falsifying records to cover up payments to a porn star. He wants to let global warming destroy the planet. He’s a liar, a business cheat, a misogynist and a bigot. He proposes detaining and expelling millions of immigrants. He sent Russia's Vladimir Putin Covid drug tests during the pandemic.
Here’s the bottom line:
The only way we are going to be free of Trump is to defeat him in the election, which ends just two weeks from now on Nov. 5.
Donald Trump won’t rid America of Donald Trump.
But American voters can.
OH, REALLY? THERE'S A DANGEROUS ELECTION HEADING OUR WAY?
WE’VE BEEN HAVING THE BEST WEATHER of the year in Rhode Island. Gorgeous conditions – warm, crystal clear air, drenched with sunshine, piercingly blue skies and the most gentle winds.
And that’s a problem.
You’d think that everything is terrific, and it will stay that way.
It’s not okay, of course, not in North Carolina and Florida and the other states that have been devastated by hurricanes Helene and Milton, with their homicidal winds, sea surges, monsoon rains and sneak tornadoes.
Even more treacherous is the election, now just three weeks away, which will turn the country in one of two directions: toward dictatorship or toward democracy.
And yet, just as with the balmy weather here in Rhode Island, there is remarkable calm about this election, easily the most important in my eight-decade lifetime.
I can’t figure out why.
Kamala Harris promises essentially a New America, one in which the country continues to make progress toward our founding ideals and principles.
Donald Trump will plunge the country into an authoritarian hellscape, probably one from which escape will be impossible.
If a hurricane – or an asteroid - were threatening the entire country, not just part of it, there would be alarms and warnings aplenty.
The airwaves and cyberspace should be filled with announcements; there’d be leaflets, billboards, sound-trucks (Do we still have those?). Volunteers would be spreading the word. We would be filling the equivalent of sandbags, towncriers would alerting us to the coming catastrophe.
We had a terrific street fair in Newport last Saturday. Shouldn’t we instead have been taking to the streets about the election?
And that’s a problem.
You’d think that everything is terrific, and it will stay that way.
It’s not okay, of course, not in North Carolina and Florida and the other states that have been devastated by hurricanes Helene and Milton, with their homicidal winds, sea surges, monsoon rains and sneak tornadoes.
Even more treacherous is the election, now just three weeks away, which will turn the country in one of two directions: toward dictatorship or toward democracy.
And yet, just as with the balmy weather here in Rhode Island, there is remarkable calm about this election, easily the most important in my eight-decade lifetime.
I can’t figure out why.
Kamala Harris promises essentially a New America, one in which the country continues to make progress toward our founding ideals and principles.
Donald Trump will plunge the country into an authoritarian hellscape, probably one from which escape will be impossible.
If a hurricane – or an asteroid - were threatening the entire country, not just part of it, there would be alarms and warnings aplenty.
The airwaves and cyberspace should be filled with announcements; there’d be leaflets, billboards, sound-trucks (Do we still have those?). Volunteers would be spreading the word. We would be filling the equivalent of sandbags, towncriers would alerting us to the coming catastrophe.
We had a terrific street fair in Newport last Saturday. Shouldn’t we instead have been taking to the streets about the election?
 |  |
SURE, IF YOU ARE TUNED IN to MSNBC or political podcasts, you know what the stakes are.
But for much of America, my sense is that life is proceeding as usual. Yup, there’s an election. But also Halloween. Daylight Savings Time is about to end, drastically shrinking afternoon daylight. But heck, these are things that happen every year.
In one sense, this sense of Everything’s Fine is a tribute to the Joe Biden presidency. He promised to return the United States to normal after the chaos of the Trump years.
And Biden delivered. The country recovered, with exceptions, from Covid; the economy surged, if imperfectly, because a market-system is unfair to the underdog; climate control got its strongest forward push, although still far too feeble. Mainly, the machinery of democracy is working as it’s supposed to.
But the peril of a Trump return to the White House is real and possible.
Trump makes no secret of his awful plans.
He wants to imprison, and deport, millions of immigrants, a crusade of hatred that will have massive spillover into scapegoating other groups and eventual reversal of all civil rights.
He wants local police to crack heads. He’ll appoint political judges and if there are openings in the Supreme Court, he’ll do what he did with his three nominees, who dispossessed women of equal medical care and created unheard of legal immunity for presidents, mocking the principal that “no one is above the law.” Trump lies and lies and lies. The election was stolen. Refugees eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. The election was stolen. Biden won’t even call governors in storm-torn states. The election was stolen.
Last night, at a “town hall” event in Pennsylvania, after two people apparently collapsed in an overly hot hall, Trump stopped answering questions and spent the next half hour encouraging his audience to listen to his favorite songs played over the sound system, twisting and shifting to the music.
The Washington Post’s headline:
Trump sways and bops to music for
39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode
Why wasn’t this the Post’s main headline, the banner headline on every newspaper, the lead story on every newscast, the talk of the town and the country, a rocking would-be president off his rocker?
Trump will change the culture, and turn it mean, ugly and strange.
But for much of America, my sense is that life is proceeding as usual. Yup, there’s an election. But also Halloween. Daylight Savings Time is about to end, drastically shrinking afternoon daylight. But heck, these are things that happen every year.
In one sense, this sense of Everything’s Fine is a tribute to the Joe Biden presidency. He promised to return the United States to normal after the chaos of the Trump years.
And Biden delivered. The country recovered, with exceptions, from Covid; the economy surged, if imperfectly, because a market-system is unfair to the underdog; climate control got its strongest forward push, although still far too feeble. Mainly, the machinery of democracy is working as it’s supposed to.
But the peril of a Trump return to the White House is real and possible.
Trump makes no secret of his awful plans.
He wants to imprison, and deport, millions of immigrants, a crusade of hatred that will have massive spillover into scapegoating other groups and eventual reversal of all civil rights.
He wants local police to crack heads. He’ll appoint political judges and if there are openings in the Supreme Court, he’ll do what he did with his three nominees, who dispossessed women of equal medical care and created unheard of legal immunity for presidents, mocking the principal that “no one is above the law.” Trump lies and lies and lies. The election was stolen. Refugees eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. The election was stolen. Biden won’t even call governors in storm-torn states. The election was stolen.
Last night, at a “town hall” event in Pennsylvania, after two people apparently collapsed in an overly hot hall, Trump stopped answering questions and spent the next half hour encouraging his audience to listen to his favorite songs played over the sound system, twisting and shifting to the music.
The Washington Post’s headline:
Trump sways and bops to music for
39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode
Why wasn’t this the Post’s main headline, the banner headline on every newspaper, the lead story on every newscast, the talk of the town and the country, a rocking would-be president off his rocker?
Trump will change the culture, and turn it mean, ugly and strange.
SO MUCH FOR OUR SWEET, GENTLE AUTUMN.
A terrible storm – the most frightening in our history – is headed our way.
Unlike natural disasters, this is ours – the voters – to control.
We can let the storm have its way with our country, ripping apart our traditions, and degrading the lives of every one of our citizens.
Or we can change its course, and send it harmlessly out to sea.
As of this moment, as a country, we don’t seem to care all that much which way the winds blow. Nice weather here in the east. Baseball playoffs underway. Football is getting started. Donald Trump is twisting and lying.
What’s the big deal?
A terrible storm – the most frightening in our history – is headed our way.
Unlike natural disasters, this is ours – the voters – to control.
We can let the storm have its way with our country, ripping apart our traditions, and degrading the lives of every one of our citizens.
Or we can change its course, and send it harmlessly out to sea.
As of this moment, as a country, we don’t seem to care all that much which way the winds blow. Nice weather here in the east. Baseball playoffs underway. Football is getting started. Donald Trump is twisting and lying.
What’s the big deal?
WITNESS TO A GREAT POLITICAL CRUSADE
What I learned during an afternoon of calling Democrats at home
YOU’D THINK THAT CALLING PEOPLE, even for a righteous cause – like saving the country from a dictator – would be rotten work.
We all hate these phone calls; so you’d wouldn’t want to be the one doing it.
Bothering folks at home, interrupting them, spoiling lunch, making them drop the paint bucket to answer a call on the chance it might be the medical lab tests results, or the monthly call from an overseas cousin or the lawyer with news you’re in the will of a rich godmother you never knew existed.
I was on one of those national phone banks last Sunday for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign, which enlisted hundreds of volunteers to make political calls. I came away, after two hours, inspired.
The excitement, enthusiasm I heard in the people who actually answered their phones – and more than half did – was extraordinary. It made me realize what a crusade we are witnessing – this effort to preserve democracy as the cloud of Donald Trump once again menaces the country.
The people I reached were all-in for Harris . They really, really liked her, admired her and saw in her a hopeful future that is the antithesis of the hellscape Trump has in mind for America .
“I am one-hundred-thousand-and-ten-percent for her,” exclaimed one woman, reaching for a number to adequately measure her support for Harris.
We all hate these phone calls; so you’d wouldn’t want to be the one doing it.
Bothering folks at home, interrupting them, spoiling lunch, making them drop the paint bucket to answer a call on the chance it might be the medical lab tests results, or the monthly call from an overseas cousin or the lawyer with news you’re in the will of a rich godmother you never knew existed.
I was on one of those national phone banks last Sunday for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign, which enlisted hundreds of volunteers to make political calls. I came away, after two hours, inspired.
The excitement, enthusiasm I heard in the people who actually answered their phones – and more than half did – was extraordinary. It made me realize what a crusade we are witnessing – this effort to preserve democracy as the cloud of Donald Trump once again menaces the country.
The people I reached were all-in for Harris . They really, really liked her, admired her and saw in her a hopeful future that is the antithesis of the hellscape Trump has in mind for America .
“I am one-hundred-thousand-and-ten-percent for her,” exclaimed one woman, reaching for a number to adequately measure her support for Harris.
KAMALA HARRIS on 60 Minutes Monday night
“I am absolutely voting for her,” said another woman who was walking not one but two dogs at a park, dogs that didn’t necessarily welcome meeting other pooches.
Wrangling the two dogs, which weren’t small, would have made an acceptable excuse for her hang up her cell phone, but she wanted to stay on the line, just to talk about how much she appreciated the campaign.
I reached a woman in Puerto Rico. She had gone there from the mainland to take care of an uncle who was in his 80s. She was a bit younger – in her 70s – but said she was eager to vote.
How eager?
Well, she was planning to return home at the end of October, so she could vote in person, and then planned to fly back to Puerto Rico, to resume her care-taking duties.
“I’m old school, and I want to vote in person,” she said. Then she added, ominously, I thought at first: “I have two cousins in Pennsylvania and Florida – and they are going to vote for Harris, too.”
Another person said that four years ago, there were a few Trump signs in her neighborhood, but that so far, the only signs she was seeing were for Harris and Walz.
“Now, this is anecdotal,” she cautioned me. “You can’t always tell what’s going on with those signs. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing.”
LIKE THE SIGN SPOTTER, I don’t want to give you the wrong signals.
If you are a Democrat, or an Independent leaning left, or a Republican Never-Trumper, you are worried and have been for nine years, "worried" being a euphemism for being scared silly and sleepless.
Most of my friends are nervous in the closing weeks of the campaign. It just doesn’t feel right. Harris should be doing better in the polls. The euphoria that surged when she assumed the nomination this summer seems to have cooled now that it's fall.
I'm sorry that I can’t relieve those fears, based on the feedback I was getting from my calls, which were steered to Democrats.
And we know Democrats are born scared and nervous, it’s in their DNA; and Donald Trump’s 2016 victory is a trauma from which they will never fully recover. Plus, it’s a fact that Trump has a crazed following for whom facts have no meaning.
Most importantly, I wasn't talking with a cross-section of normal Democrats. Mainly, the people I seemed to be reaching seemed plucked fom a data base of super Democratic voters.
In essence, I was calling up the choir. On a Sunday.
The purpose of the calls was to recruit people to do just what I was doing, making phone calls from home, through the wizardry of campaign shoftware linked to me laptop computer. So, maybe the same software was finding people likely to be activists, or, at least might be recruitable, or, as a pollster might put it, “leaning recruitable.”
Indeed, of the 30 or so calls that got through, five or six said they would give phone banking a try – especially after I explained that if I could follow the campaign's instructions, anyone could. (The campaign holds a Zoom learning session before the calls start).
One guy said flatly "No, I can't do it today." But then he said that if I texted him the contact information (the software does it for the volunteers), he might be able to fit a shift into his schedule later - maybe Tuesday or Wednesday .
More than a handful said they already were doing stuff and lots of it: door-to-door canvassing for “down-ballot” state and local candidates, writing postcards, and doing some phone work.
AND THAT'S THE POINT:
There are a lot of people across the country – millions, actually – who are working hard, pulling out all the stops, running scared, but feeling glad and upbeat.
Nobody can tell whether the enthusiasm I sensed will be “enough.”
But it sure is good to know that it is there, and that its real and its powerful.
And without this remarkable enthusiasm, Harris will have no chance.
I’m now 82, and there’s a lot I don’t like about being old.
But I’m grateful for having lived long enough to witness all of this - one of the greatest political crusades the country has experienced in decades
* * *
NOTE: Interested in doing something in the closing days of the election? Here’s a Democrats’ volunteer website: https://events.democrats.org/
Wrangling the two dogs, which weren’t small, would have made an acceptable excuse for her hang up her cell phone, but she wanted to stay on the line, just to talk about how much she appreciated the campaign.
I reached a woman in Puerto Rico. She had gone there from the mainland to take care of an uncle who was in his 80s. She was a bit younger – in her 70s – but said she was eager to vote.
How eager?
Well, she was planning to return home at the end of October, so she could vote in person, and then planned to fly back to Puerto Rico, to resume her care-taking duties.
“I’m old school, and I want to vote in person,” she said. Then she added, ominously, I thought at first: “I have two cousins in Pennsylvania and Florida – and they are going to vote for Harris, too.”
Another person said that four years ago, there were a few Trump signs in her neighborhood, but that so far, the only signs she was seeing were for Harris and Walz.
“Now, this is anecdotal,” she cautioned me. “You can’t always tell what’s going on with those signs. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing.”
LIKE THE SIGN SPOTTER, I don’t want to give you the wrong signals.
If you are a Democrat, or an Independent leaning left, or a Republican Never-Trumper, you are worried and have been for nine years, "worried" being a euphemism for being scared silly and sleepless.
Most of my friends are nervous in the closing weeks of the campaign. It just doesn’t feel right. Harris should be doing better in the polls. The euphoria that surged when she assumed the nomination this summer seems to have cooled now that it's fall.
I'm sorry that I can’t relieve those fears, based on the feedback I was getting from my calls, which were steered to Democrats.
And we know Democrats are born scared and nervous, it’s in their DNA; and Donald Trump’s 2016 victory is a trauma from which they will never fully recover. Plus, it’s a fact that Trump has a crazed following for whom facts have no meaning.
Most importantly, I wasn't talking with a cross-section of normal Democrats. Mainly, the people I seemed to be reaching seemed plucked fom a data base of super Democratic voters.
In essence, I was calling up the choir. On a Sunday.
The purpose of the calls was to recruit people to do just what I was doing, making phone calls from home, through the wizardry of campaign shoftware linked to me laptop computer. So, maybe the same software was finding people likely to be activists, or, at least might be recruitable, or, as a pollster might put it, “leaning recruitable.”
Indeed, of the 30 or so calls that got through, five or six said they would give phone banking a try – especially after I explained that if I could follow the campaign's instructions, anyone could. (The campaign holds a Zoom learning session before the calls start).
One guy said flatly "No, I can't do it today." But then he said that if I texted him the contact information (the software does it for the volunteers), he might be able to fit a shift into his schedule later - maybe Tuesday or Wednesday .
More than a handful said they already were doing stuff and lots of it: door-to-door canvassing for “down-ballot” state and local candidates, writing postcards, and doing some phone work.
AND THAT'S THE POINT:
There are a lot of people across the country – millions, actually – who are working hard, pulling out all the stops, running scared, but feeling glad and upbeat.
Nobody can tell whether the enthusiasm I sensed will be “enough.”
But it sure is good to know that it is there, and that its real and its powerful.
And without this remarkable enthusiasm, Harris will have no chance.
I’m now 82, and there’s a lot I don’t like about being old.
But I’m grateful for having lived long enough to witness all of this - one of the greatest political crusades the country has experienced in decades
* * *
NOTE: Interested in doing something in the closing days of the election? Here’s a Democrats’ volunteer website: https://events.democrats.org/
Election countdown - 1 month to go
"SO WHAT?"
Trump’s callous rebuke, after learning of his vice president’s escape from Capitol rioters, may be the question that decides the 2024 election
 SO WHAT? if Nibi, the rescued beaver, were forced to return to the woodlands this winter. |  SO WHAT? If Donald J.Trump, defendant, were returned to the White House this winter |
IN ELECTIONS, as in life, what really matters often boils down to this short, but loaded question: “So what?”
With Election Day now down to just one month away, Nov. 5 – 30 days, to be exact – “So what?” is profound, because it’s the answer that matters.
"So, what?" if there’s an election a month from now. Well, for one thing, it could mean whether American democracy will continue to evolve or will die – that’s what.
"So what?" comes in two flavors. It can force us to considers how deeply we care about something; or it can be a thoughtless remark about to something that should matter.
The question popped up recently in a legal filing by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting criminal case Number 23-cr-257, “United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, defendant.”
That’s the indictment about Trump’s “scheme to overturn the 2020 election.”
The legal memo recalls the chaotic events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters broke into the Capitol to halt Congress’s certification of the election. Enraged by a Trump Tweet criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for not cooperating with the scheme, the mob chanted for Pence’s death.
“One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol,” the legal memo says. An aide rushed to tell Trump what had happened, hoping he would protect his vice president.
Instead, “the defendant looked at him and said only, ‘So what?’”
IN NORMAL TIMES, “So what?” can have an easy answer, as in the matter of Nibi, a beaver, who had been found two years ago as a kit, or infant, by the side of a Massachusetts road.
Nibi was brought to a rehabilitation facility, which tried, but failed to have her bond with wild beavers.
With Election Day now down to just one month away, Nov. 5 – 30 days, to be exact – “So what?” is profound, because it’s the answer that matters.
"So, what?" if there’s an election a month from now. Well, for one thing, it could mean whether American democracy will continue to evolve or will die – that’s what.
"So what?" comes in two flavors. It can force us to considers how deeply we care about something; or it can be a thoughtless remark about to something that should matter.
The question popped up recently in a legal filing by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting criminal case Number 23-cr-257, “United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, defendant.”
That’s the indictment about Trump’s “scheme to overturn the 2020 election.”
The legal memo recalls the chaotic events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters broke into the Capitol to halt Congress’s certification of the election. Enraged by a Trump Tweet criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for not cooperating with the scheme, the mob chanted for Pence’s death.
“One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol,” the legal memo says. An aide rushed to tell Trump what had happened, hoping he would protect his vice president.
Instead, “the defendant looked at him and said only, ‘So what?’”
IN NORMAL TIMES, “So what?” can have an easy answer, as in the matter of Nibi, a beaver, who had been found two years ago as a kit, or infant, by the side of a Massachusetts road.
Nibi was brought to a rehabilitation facility, which tried, but failed to have her bond with wild beavers.
 | Nibi, it turned out, preferred to hang around with humans, while enjoying her quarters at the refuge, which included a large enclosure and her own pond. Alarms were raised when state wildlife officials declared Nibi had to be returned to the Massachusetts woodlands. Her caretakers feared she would not survive the winter. |
As news reports spread word of the plight of furry little Nibi, the question of “So what?” played a major role in what would happen next.
BUT “SO WHAT?” becomes a more consequential question when Election Day is a month away. The polls say the contest is a tie, while skeptics wonder whether it’s actually a landslide - but for whom?
BUT “SO WHAT?” becomes a more consequential question when Election Day is a month away. The polls say the contest is a tie, while skeptics wonder whether it’s actually a landslide - but for whom?
You’d think the answer would be a no-brainer.
Trump not only tried to overthrow the election he lost to Joe Biden four years ago, he’s been convicted, and now awaits sentencing, for filing false business reports to hide hush payments to a porn star; and he’s facing two other cases, one about improperly taking government records and another about election skull drudgery.
He was a terrible president for four years after his upset victory in 2016, but he retains a mystical connection with a cult-like base of voters, who shrug off his lies, his racism and his unhinged campaign orations. Adding to his mystique has been his survival of two assassination attempts, one in which a bullet grazed his ear.
Trump’s only real accomplishment in the current campaign was watching Biden disintegrate on national TV during their only debate, which resulted in the president dropping out of the campaign, replaced as the Democratic nominee by Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
Harris effortlessly took over the race, picked a charmingly down-home running mate in Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, stage-managed an enthusiastic national convention, and went on to demolish Trump in their only debate.
"So what?"
It would seem to be a no-contest choice.
Harris, an energetic, 59-year-old former prosecutor, California attorney general and U.S. Senator and now a vice president; pragmatic, well-spoken, nimble, multi-racial, the epitome of someone ready to lead the country into an exciting new, chapter.
Trump, 78, increasingly bitter, insulting, and spreading cruel lies at every campaign stop, with dark, authoritarian plans to deport millions of immigrants and turn the Department of Justice into the Department of Revenge to punish his enemies.
“SO WHAT?” haunts the election.
We know a lot of people have answered: Trump’s devoted base remains loyal; and apparently, an equal number of Democrats and others alarmed by Trump, support Harris.
It’s difficult to imagine in the election’s remaining days that very many minds can be changed.
What’s more, there’s not as much time left as it seems, since voting has started in some states, either by mail ballot or in-person early voting. So many votes already are locked in.
The Pew Research Center says that in the 2022 midterm elections, only 43 percent of voters waited until Election day; 36 percent cast mail ballots; 21 percent voted early.
In the face of the stubbornness of Trump’s supporters and the dwindling time that’s left, I’m impressed at how hard people are working to elect Harris, and by the breadth of her support.
Millions of people have donated money, volunteered to knock on doors and make phone calls and send post cards into the battleground states.
I’m also encouraged in the way that some rock-solid Republicans like Liz Cheney, once the third highest leader in the House, have endorsed Harris. And the same goes for her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president who once was the Democrats’ Darth Vader.
Liz Cheney this week went a step further by campaigning with Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party got its start.
Trump not only tried to overthrow the election he lost to Joe Biden four years ago, he’s been convicted, and now awaits sentencing, for filing false business reports to hide hush payments to a porn star; and he’s facing two other cases, one about improperly taking government records and another about election skull drudgery.
He was a terrible president for four years after his upset victory in 2016, but he retains a mystical connection with a cult-like base of voters, who shrug off his lies, his racism and his unhinged campaign orations. Adding to his mystique has been his survival of two assassination attempts, one in which a bullet grazed his ear.
Trump’s only real accomplishment in the current campaign was watching Biden disintegrate on national TV during their only debate, which resulted in the president dropping out of the campaign, replaced as the Democratic nominee by Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
Harris effortlessly took over the race, picked a charmingly down-home running mate in Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, stage-managed an enthusiastic national convention, and went on to demolish Trump in their only debate.
"So what?"
It would seem to be a no-contest choice.
Harris, an energetic, 59-year-old former prosecutor, California attorney general and U.S. Senator and now a vice president; pragmatic, well-spoken, nimble, multi-racial, the epitome of someone ready to lead the country into an exciting new, chapter.
Trump, 78, increasingly bitter, insulting, and spreading cruel lies at every campaign stop, with dark, authoritarian plans to deport millions of immigrants and turn the Department of Justice into the Department of Revenge to punish his enemies.
“SO WHAT?” haunts the election.
We know a lot of people have answered: Trump’s devoted base remains loyal; and apparently, an equal number of Democrats and others alarmed by Trump, support Harris.
It’s difficult to imagine in the election’s remaining days that very many minds can be changed.
What’s more, there’s not as much time left as it seems, since voting has started in some states, either by mail ballot or in-person early voting. So many votes already are locked in.
The Pew Research Center says that in the 2022 midterm elections, only 43 percent of voters waited until Election day; 36 percent cast mail ballots; 21 percent voted early.
In the face of the stubbornness of Trump’s supporters and the dwindling time that’s left, I’m impressed at how hard people are working to elect Harris, and by the breadth of her support.
Millions of people have donated money, volunteered to knock on doors and make phone calls and send post cards into the battleground states.
I’m also encouraged in the way that some rock-solid Republicans like Liz Cheney, once the third highest leader in the House, have endorsed Harris. And the same goes for her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president who once was the Democrats’ Darth Vader.
Liz Cheney this week went a step further by campaigning with Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party got its start.
KAMALA HARRIS, Democratic nominee for president, and Liz Cheney, arch Republican, on the same stage, united in their determination to defeat Donald Trump
Cheney, who served on the House committee that investigated the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, said:
“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself.”
“I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,” she said. “That is depravity, and we must never become numb to it.”
Will all of this be enough?
I have no idea – I swing back and forth between recurring daytime nightmares of a Trump return and late-night fantasies of the celebrations that would follow a Harris landslide.
But more and more, the campaign certainly will come down to whether enough people reach deep within their souls for the answer to “So what?”
EPILOGUE
If we don’t yet know the power of “So what?” in the election, we do know how it played out for Nibi, the abandoned beaver in Massachusetts.
There’s nothing like a photogenic furry face, plus the talent of operators of a wildlife refuge for public relations, to stir the collective conscience.
“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself.”
“I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,” she said. “That is depravity, and we must never become numb to it.”
Will all of this be enough?
I have no idea – I swing back and forth between recurring daytime nightmares of a Trump return and late-night fantasies of the celebrations that would follow a Harris landslide.
But more and more, the campaign certainly will come down to whether enough people reach deep within their souls for the answer to “So what?”
EPILOGUE
If we don’t yet know the power of “So what?” in the election, we do know how it played out for Nibi, the abandoned beaver in Massachusetts.
There’s nothing like a photogenic furry face, plus the talent of operators of a wildlife refuge for public relations, to stir the collective conscience.
As reports of Nibi’s life-and-death crisis spread, a lawsuit delayed Nibi’s return to the wilds of Massachusetts, and 25,000 people signed an on-line petition to support the beaver remaining at the only home she'd ever known.
Next came a demonstration of government at its best – responding to the public’s (aka voters') “So what?” moment.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey decreed that Nibi could remain at the Newhouse Wildlife Rescue refuge in Chelmsford, to enjoy her own enclosure and personal pool.
Along with her reprieve, came an official assignment for Nibi.
Healey said the beaver’s new duties would be “… to educate the public about this important species.”
“So what?”
It’s the positive thing that can happen when people of good will - and not the defendant, Donald J. Trump - choose to answer one of life's most profound questions.
Next came a demonstration of government at its best – responding to the public’s (aka voters') “So what?” moment.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey decreed that Nibi could remain at the Newhouse Wildlife Rescue refuge in Chelmsford, to enjoy her own enclosure and personal pool.
Along with her reprieve, came an official assignment for Nibi.
Healey said the beaver’s new duties would be “… to educate the public about this important species.”
“So what?”
It’s the positive thing that can happen when people of good will - and not the defendant, Donald J. Trump - choose to answer one of life's most profound questions.
POSTCARDS:
To the voters who count
POSTCARD PLEA - One of the cards I've been sending to potential voters in swing states. The illustration is by Frank Gerardi, a Newport artist
ALL SUMMER, and now into Fall, I’ve been sending postcards to places I will never visit, writing to people I will never meet.
Some of my hand-printed postcards have landed in exotic-sounding places like Fishtail, Montana; Surprise, Arizona; and Sparks, Nevada.
A number of the recipients have terrific-sounding first names like Destiny, Freedom, and Zoica; and others are somewhat ironic, like “Brian,” meaning that the addressee and addresser have the same name (“Dear Brian,” . . . “Thanks, Brian”).
The postcards are aimed at Democratic voters in the seven or so battleground or swing states, the ones that will determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be president, and whether Democrats and Republicans control Congress.
The recipients are thought to be folks who have voted previously, but who might not have followed the current campaign very closely and might not vote this time.
The hope is that they can be nudged gently to the polls on Nov. 5, Election Day, and better still, prompted to vote ahead of time by mail or to drop by polls open for early, in-person voting.
I HAVE NO IDEA if postcards will do the job.
The theory is that if many millions of cards are sent, some thousands of voters will indeed vote, and in close elections, those will be enough to make the difference.
So far, I’ve mailed 315 cards, which may be a lot, or pathetic, depending on how you look at it. I’m hoping to mail 250 more before Nov. 5.
It’s better than doing absolutely nothing while the cloud of a second and more destructive Trump presidency hangs over the nation.
And in my best moments, I’m thinking that the cards will arrive at places I can’t go to; that they’ll end up in Apt. 3, North 102nd Blvd., and 36 Hacker Dr. – actual homes, with real people in them.
THE IDEA is pretty smart.
Phone calls are annoying. And so are political (aka “junk”) letters that go directly to a wastebasket, unopened.
But a postcard has a fair chance of at least being flipped over and possibly read, maybe in its entirety. In my wildest dreams, one or two get attached to refrigerators with red-white-and-blue magnets.
The downside is that under the rules, I can’t write what’s really on my mind to people in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Fishtail, Billings, Surprise and Sun City West.
I’ve been working with a group called Activate America, one of a number of voter-contact organizations, and its brain trust has rock solid instructions for its volunteers:
Print, don’t use cursive handwriting, which no longer is taught in many schools; leave at last a half-inch below the address block in case the Post Office attaches a bar code sticker; sign your first name or initials; don’t include your return address. Oh, yeah - provide your own postcards and stamps.
Most of all, volunteers MUST use Activate’s scripts. The messages, we’re told, have been vetted with local groups, have proven effective in past campaigns and are carefully worded to appeal to the potential voters, whose names and addresses have been culled from voter records and methodically sorted.
Bland is too bland a description of many scripts:
“Democratic Congressman So & So stands with union and workers. He’s brought millions of federal dollars to our state to fund construction of affordable housing.”
I’m skeptical that’s compelling enough to inspire a maybe-voter to fill out a mail ballot, much less get him or her out of the house and to the polls.
I once got into an e-mail argument over one script that I thought violated all sorts of communication rules. It began:
“Dear _____: Your MAGA Republican Congressman puts his extremist agenda above the needs of our families.”
It seemed to me that the first thing you should do is to catch a recipient’s eye with the the name of our candidate. Just as bad, the wording about “YOUR Maga Republican.” That seemed to blame the recipient for putting the MAGA Republican into the House seat.
I suggested a brilliant rewrite, and to the credit of Activate’s postcard program director, I got back a long explanation of why the script read the way it did, a gracious way of saying “Our way or the highway.”
Which makes sense: the Activate folks have done the work, analyzed and refined their approach, and of course, figured out to whom we should write. At the very least, we should respect the process.
BUT WHAT IF we could write from the heart?
First of all, I’m pretty sure I would like a lot of the people I’ve been writing to if I met them – door-to-door canvassing being the best way to talk with potential voters.
After all, they’re Democrats, meaning that, it’s likely most of us aren't bullies; we don’t look kindly at the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; we don’t support book bans; don’t want women dying in hospital parking lots; we’re worried about the collapsing environment; and we don’t teach our children to lie, cheat, swear or to call people insulting and cruel nicknames.
Some of my hand-printed postcards have landed in exotic-sounding places like Fishtail, Montana; Surprise, Arizona; and Sparks, Nevada.
A number of the recipients have terrific-sounding first names like Destiny, Freedom, and Zoica; and others are somewhat ironic, like “Brian,” meaning that the addressee and addresser have the same name (“Dear Brian,” . . . “Thanks, Brian”).
The postcards are aimed at Democratic voters in the seven or so battleground or swing states, the ones that will determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be president, and whether Democrats and Republicans control Congress.
The recipients are thought to be folks who have voted previously, but who might not have followed the current campaign very closely and might not vote this time.
The hope is that they can be nudged gently to the polls on Nov. 5, Election Day, and better still, prompted to vote ahead of time by mail or to drop by polls open for early, in-person voting.
I HAVE NO IDEA if postcards will do the job.
The theory is that if many millions of cards are sent, some thousands of voters will indeed vote, and in close elections, those will be enough to make the difference.
So far, I’ve mailed 315 cards, which may be a lot, or pathetic, depending on how you look at it. I’m hoping to mail 250 more before Nov. 5.
It’s better than doing absolutely nothing while the cloud of a second and more destructive Trump presidency hangs over the nation.
And in my best moments, I’m thinking that the cards will arrive at places I can’t go to; that they’ll end up in Apt. 3, North 102nd Blvd., and 36 Hacker Dr. – actual homes, with real people in them.
THE IDEA is pretty smart.
Phone calls are annoying. And so are political (aka “junk”) letters that go directly to a wastebasket, unopened.
But a postcard has a fair chance of at least being flipped over and possibly read, maybe in its entirety. In my wildest dreams, one or two get attached to refrigerators with red-white-and-blue magnets.
The downside is that under the rules, I can’t write what’s really on my mind to people in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Fishtail, Billings, Surprise and Sun City West.
I’ve been working with a group called Activate America, one of a number of voter-contact organizations, and its brain trust has rock solid instructions for its volunteers:
Print, don’t use cursive handwriting, which no longer is taught in many schools; leave at last a half-inch below the address block in case the Post Office attaches a bar code sticker; sign your first name or initials; don’t include your return address. Oh, yeah - provide your own postcards and stamps.
Most of all, volunteers MUST use Activate’s scripts. The messages, we’re told, have been vetted with local groups, have proven effective in past campaigns and are carefully worded to appeal to the potential voters, whose names and addresses have been culled from voter records and methodically sorted.
Bland is too bland a description of many scripts:
“Democratic Congressman So & So stands with union and workers. He’s brought millions of federal dollars to our state to fund construction of affordable housing.”
I’m skeptical that’s compelling enough to inspire a maybe-voter to fill out a mail ballot, much less get him or her out of the house and to the polls.
I once got into an e-mail argument over one script that I thought violated all sorts of communication rules. It began:
“Dear _____: Your MAGA Republican Congressman puts his extremist agenda above the needs of our families.”
It seemed to me that the first thing you should do is to catch a recipient’s eye with the the name of our candidate. Just as bad, the wording about “YOUR Maga Republican.” That seemed to blame the recipient for putting the MAGA Republican into the House seat.
I suggested a brilliant rewrite, and to the credit of Activate’s postcard program director, I got back a long explanation of why the script read the way it did, a gracious way of saying “Our way or the highway.”
Which makes sense: the Activate folks have done the work, analyzed and refined their approach, and of course, figured out to whom we should write. At the very least, we should respect the process.
BUT WHAT IF we could write from the heart?
First of all, I’m pretty sure I would like a lot of the people I’ve been writing to if I met them – door-to-door canvassing being the best way to talk with potential voters.
After all, they’re Democrats, meaning that, it’s likely most of us aren't bullies; we don’t look kindly at the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; we don’t support book bans; don’t want women dying in hospital parking lots; we’re worried about the collapsing environment; and we don’t teach our children to lie, cheat, swear or to call people insulting and cruel nicknames.
| Dear Zoica, Your vote counts. I mean REALLY. You’re in one of those states that could elect the next president. Whereas, I live in Rhode Island, a state so ridiculously small it shouldn’t even be a state; and it's so Democratic, my vote is taken for granted. But you’re in a “battleground” state, where the outcome may be VERY close. Zoica, my vote barely counts. Yours can change history. Thanks, Brian – a volunteer. * * * Dear Freedom, Every day, I wake up scared out of my mind. I have panic attacks at the supermarket and walking down the street. The reason is Donald Trump. He lies. He abuses women. Calls people names. He tried to overturn the election that he lost. You’re in a battleground state, where a few thousand votes may decide this year’s election. Freedom, you can stop this monster. Thanks, Brian – A volunteer * * * Hello Destiny, We’ve never met. But I know the power of your vote. That’s because just a few states will decide this election. And you live in one. Will America continue as a democracy, led by Kamala Harris; or will it turn into a dictatorship, under Donald Trump? Destiny, your vote can save the country. Thanks, Brian – A volunteer * * * Hey Brian, Let’s speak frankly, Brian to Brian. Brians are not stupid. Many are patriots. But some, like me, live in states where our votes barely count. Others, like you, are in swing states, where your vote, and a few thousand others, could decide who’ll be our next president. So, Brian, stick up for Brians everywhere; for our families, friends, neighbors and all of our fellow citizens. I’m pleading. Vote! Please, Please, PLEASE, P L E A S E! Thanks, Brian - A Brian |
HER DEBATE SUCCESS PREVIEWS HOW SMARTLY HARRIS WOULD GOVERN
I DREADED TUESDAY NIGHT’S DEBATE. I'm not apologizing, since Democrats worry a lot - and we have our reasons.
As it turned out, the debate was unquestionably a win for Kamala Harris. As for Donald Trump, except for of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, the debate was his worst humiliation since his assault on our politics began nine years ago.
Harris's debate triumph was followed by an endorsement by Taylor Swift, perhaps the world's most popular singer, whose potential influence is limited only by the fact that some of her fans are too young to vote.
The irony of this double-header win is that it remains unclear whether Harris will carry the Nov. 5 election.
In part, this is due to the tenacious, supernatural force with which Trump holds tens of millions of voters.
And it's also because Trump has eluded the kind of justice found mainly in old comic books and Western movies, wherein the villain always gets what's coming to him - at least being sent directly to home confinement without passing Go.
But Trump persists like Long Covid. The polls say the election, which is now just weeks - not months – away, is close. Maybe the polls are right. Or maybe they're missing the lurking landslide that favors one side or the other.
What's for sure is that if Harris hadn’t pulled off a spectacular performance - some observers called it unprecedented in the history of presidential debates - her campaign likely would have stalled and failed.
Instead, she's holding her position in the race, and maybe has even increased the momentum that's defined her campaign since July 21, when she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, quickly named Tim Walz as her folk-hero running mate and then stage-managed a joyous Democratic National Convention.
AS LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE ENDED, I, and maybe lots of other Worrier Democrats, realized our fears were unfounded: she hadn't fallen flat on her face or started speaking in tongues.
But what had happened?
If you’d asked me immediately what I thought, I would have been at a loss. That happens sometimes when I watch a sports event, go to a concert, see a movie. It takes time – a long time - to even remember what what happened.
I did feel a tinge of disappointment that Harris had not delivered the “knockout” blow so many people yearn for. Of course, those single, defining moments are rare – Biden’s horrific failure in his June debate with Trump being one of the exceptions.
But I knew after the Harris-Trump debate that something had happened - something big - as if a powerful hurricane had swept into America's living rooms and, just as suddenly disappeared.
I like to think that when I witness something, I don’t need Big Media's analysts and pundits to tell me what I just experienced. But this time, the Know-It-Alls helped explain some of what happened.
TAKE THE OPENING MOMENT. I didn’t make much of it when I saw Harris walk across the stage and force Trump to shake hands.
But some pundits pointed out that was the moment Harris took charge. From the start, Harris forced Trump to say things and act in ways he shouldn't. From the start, she mostly controlled the proceedings.
The Commentariate also pointed out how Harris repeatedly lured Trump into a variety of traps that forced his lizard-brain to show himself at his true worst.
An example was when Harris suggested that voters drop into one of Trump's rallies. Here's what she said, according to the ABC News transcript:
As it turned out, the debate was unquestionably a win for Kamala Harris. As for Donald Trump, except for of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, the debate was his worst humiliation since his assault on our politics began nine years ago.
Harris's debate triumph was followed by an endorsement by Taylor Swift, perhaps the world's most popular singer, whose potential influence is limited only by the fact that some of her fans are too young to vote.
The irony of this double-header win is that it remains unclear whether Harris will carry the Nov. 5 election.
In part, this is due to the tenacious, supernatural force with which Trump holds tens of millions of voters.
And it's also because Trump has eluded the kind of justice found mainly in old comic books and Western movies, wherein the villain always gets what's coming to him - at least being sent directly to home confinement without passing Go.
But Trump persists like Long Covid. The polls say the election, which is now just weeks - not months – away, is close. Maybe the polls are right. Or maybe they're missing the lurking landslide that favors one side or the other.
What's for sure is that if Harris hadn’t pulled off a spectacular performance - some observers called it unprecedented in the history of presidential debates - her campaign likely would have stalled and failed.
Instead, she's holding her position in the race, and maybe has even increased the momentum that's defined her campaign since July 21, when she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, quickly named Tim Walz as her folk-hero running mate and then stage-managed a joyous Democratic National Convention.
AS LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE ENDED, I, and maybe lots of other Worrier Democrats, realized our fears were unfounded: she hadn't fallen flat on her face or started speaking in tongues.
But what had happened?
If you’d asked me immediately what I thought, I would have been at a loss. That happens sometimes when I watch a sports event, go to a concert, see a movie. It takes time – a long time - to even remember what what happened.
I did feel a tinge of disappointment that Harris had not delivered the “knockout” blow so many people yearn for. Of course, those single, defining moments are rare – Biden’s horrific failure in his June debate with Trump being one of the exceptions.
But I knew after the Harris-Trump debate that something had happened - something big - as if a powerful hurricane had swept into America's living rooms and, just as suddenly disappeared.
I like to think that when I witness something, I don’t need Big Media's analysts and pundits to tell me what I just experienced. But this time, the Know-It-Alls helped explain some of what happened.
TAKE THE OPENING MOMENT. I didn’t make much of it when I saw Harris walk across the stage and force Trump to shake hands.
But some pundits pointed out that was the moment Harris took charge. From the start, Harris forced Trump to say things and act in ways he shouldn't. From the start, she mostly controlled the proceedings.
The Commentariate also pointed out how Harris repeatedly lured Trump into a variety of traps that forced his lizard-brain to show himself at his true worst.
An example was when Harris suggested that voters drop into one of Trump's rallies. Here's what she said, according to the ABC News transcript:
| I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about (how) windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will. |
For Trump, anyone, but especially a woman, moreover, a person of color, making fun of his rallies is probably the severest insult imaginable, worse than the cruel nicknames, profane and racial slurs in which he specializes. And it set off a torrent of boasts, exaggerations, lies and fantasies.
Trump said:
Trump said:
| First, let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That's because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk -- not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far -- the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It's a very simple phrase. Make America great again. She's destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success. We'll end up being Venezuela on steroids. |
Really, if you had just dropped in from Mars and wanted to know what on Earth was causing so much fuss, that exchange was about all you needed to decide the differences between Harris and Trump.
And, of course, what the visitors from outer space could see with their 16 eyes on the split TV screen was just as important as what they heard with their giant ears protruding from their foreheads:
On their left, a scowling, menacing Trump; on their right, a skeptical, sometimes radiant Harris.
And, of course, what the visitors from outer space could see with their 16 eyes on the split TV screen was just as important as what they heard with their giant ears protruding from their foreheads:
On their left, a scowling, menacing Trump; on their right, a skeptical, sometimes radiant Harris.
ONE OF THE SEVERAL HUNDRED things I had worried about before the debate was whether Harris would show up over-prepared.
I had read that she'd holed-up in a Pennsylvania hotel for days, practicing in a studio-like space, going through all the possible scenarios, so she wouldn’t be caught off guard by Trump’s insults and showmanship or by an actual surprise question from a debate moderator.
Biden had over-prepared in June, and it’s reasonable to think that the sheer volume of materials muddled his already over-taxed mind.
But Harris was once a prosecutor, comfortable with the advanced work that goes into knowing the facts and details of a case, as well as being prepared for the unexpected drama of the courtroom.
So her methodical advance work paid off, and she arrived as a walking, talking, breathing briefing book.
I doubt anything Kamala Harris said Tuesday night was spontaneous or unrehearsed.
Did that make her “inauthentic?”
Absolutely not.
The presidency is an impossible job, almost as daunting as the challenges that a candidate faces in accomplishing the trillion or so things that the experts demand that she “must do” in a single 90-minute debate.
The kind of person we want in the Oval Office is someone who will do everything that they humanly can to perform at their very best. And that’s what Kamala Harris demonstrated in Tuesday's debate.
The debate may or may not change the course of the election.
But surely the debate showcased the stark choices in this election:
A terrifying, wacko and inept president.
An inspiring, rational and capable president.
I had read that she'd holed-up in a Pennsylvania hotel for days, practicing in a studio-like space, going through all the possible scenarios, so she wouldn’t be caught off guard by Trump’s insults and showmanship or by an actual surprise question from a debate moderator.
Biden had over-prepared in June, and it’s reasonable to think that the sheer volume of materials muddled his already over-taxed mind.
But Harris was once a prosecutor, comfortable with the advanced work that goes into knowing the facts and details of a case, as well as being prepared for the unexpected drama of the courtroom.
So her methodical advance work paid off, and she arrived as a walking, talking, breathing briefing book.
I doubt anything Kamala Harris said Tuesday night was spontaneous or unrehearsed.
Did that make her “inauthentic?”
Absolutely not.
The presidency is an impossible job, almost as daunting as the challenges that a candidate faces in accomplishing the trillion or so things that the experts demand that she “must do” in a single 90-minute debate.
The kind of person we want in the Oval Office is someone who will do everything that they humanly can to perform at their very best. And that’s what Kamala Harris demonstrated in Tuesday's debate.
The debate may or may not change the course of the election.
But surely the debate showcased the stark choices in this election:
A terrifying, wacko and inept president.
An inspiring, rational and capable president.
Election Countdown
ANOTHER GOOD MAN WADES INTO THE TRUMP SEWER. WHY?
SPENCER COX, Utah governor. CREDIT: Cox campaign
IT'S WORTH REMEMBERING that there are some really good Republicans, including those who saved democracy when Donald Trump sought to overthrow the 2020 election.
Among the most admirable GOPers has been Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, whose decency, compassion and willingness to defend the underdog set him apart from his party’s extremists, including Trump.
Until last month.
That’s when something terrible happened.
Among the most admirable GOPers has been Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, whose decency, compassion and willingness to defend the underdog set him apart from his party’s extremists, including Trump.
Until last month.
That’s when something terrible happened.
| It was sort of a miracle in reverse, if you think of miracles as astonishing, unexplainable events that change people and society for the better. What happened? On July 14, a day after an assassin attempted to kill Trump, Cox declared Trump’s survival a miracle, and that as a result, only Trump could unite the nation. “I will do my best to help and support you,” Cox wrote to the nation’s most dangerous and deranged politician. It gets worse. The following month, Spencer accompanied Trump on his infamous visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where 13 soldiers, one of them from Utah, were to be “honored” for losing their lives during the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Federal rules prohibit using the burial grounds as a backdrop for political purposes; nonetheless photos were taken of Trump and Cox; later, they were used in Cox reelection fundraising emails. The governor apologized, and seemed to blame staffers for using the materials. |  TWO MONTHS UNTIL NOV. 5 - ELECTION DAY Nothing is certain. Election outcomes in a divided nation are difficult - if not impossible - to predict. Are the polls accurate? If so, they show only that the race is "close." But a landslide is possible for either side. Clearly, Kamala Harris has improved the position of Democrats, since she replaced President Joe Biden as the party's nominee. Inconceivably, Donald Trump remains a strong contender, despite his record as an insurrectionist, a bigot, a liar, etc., etc. Catastrophe looms. But so does the chance for a newprogressive era in American history. Democracy continues at the cliff's edge. |
Cox’s embrace of Trumpism was now complete. Not only did he endorse Trump, he was acting like him. The Salt Lake Tribune described Cox’s fall from grace in a scathing editorial:
| … in a macabre sort of way, a photo of Trump and Cox in a cemetery is appropriate. It was where they came to bury Spencer Cox’s honor. |
 |
WE ARE NOW JUST TWO MONTHS from Nov. 5, Election Day. And once more, we are confounded by the essential treachery of Donald Trump, a psychopath, liar, bigot and criminal who should not even be on the ballot: how does he attract and corrupt decent Americans like Spencer J. Cox?
I became a Cox fan two years ago when he came to the defense of school athletes who had transitioned from their at-birth genders.
The Utah legislature had passed a bill banning their participation. Cox personally explored the issue, then vetoed the bill – knowing that his move would be both unpopular and unsuccessful.
Cox concluded that the proposed ban was a vast overreaction to a small group of young persons, whose struggles with gender identity left some open to suicide.
Here’s what he said:
I became a Cox fan two years ago when he came to the defense of school athletes who had transitioned from their at-birth genders.
The Utah legislature had passed a bill banning their participation. Cox personally explored the issue, then vetoed the bill – knowing that his move would be both unpopular and unsuccessful.
Cox concluded that the proposed ban was a vast overreaction to a small group of young persons, whose struggles with gender identity left some open to suicide.
Here’s what he said:
| Four kids and only one of them playing girls’ sports. That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live. |
Many people across the country were astounded by Cox’s courage and common sense. I wrote a blog piece about it, headlined:
We're betting that you'll
Wish to borrow this guy
To be your governor
Here's a link to that essay:
Cox was lionized nationally as one of the rare Republicans willing to stand up to the bullying of MAGA Trumpism. He did not vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and earlier in July, said he wouldn’t vote for Trump this year, based on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection that attempted to overthrow Joe Biden’s election.
Overall, Cox was concerned about the wide political and cultural divisions in the U.S., and as head of the National Governors Association last year, he backed a program called “Disagree Better.”
But on July 13, a would-be assassin’s bullet struck Trump’s ear, and missed his skull. Donald Trump would go on being Trump, but Spencer Cox underwent a drastic change.
Why? Was Cox’s U-turn just one more example of political opportunism? Had aliens taken over his being, as in the old horror movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
I HAVE BEEN WARNED against spending even a millisecond worrying about Trump’s effect on his supporters, because defeating Trump and electing Kamala Harris are the only things that matter.
Jody McPhillips, a friend who knows how to focus on the desperate stakes in the election, put this elegantly in a comment she made on one of my recent blog posts:
We're betting that you'll
Wish to borrow this guy
To be your governor
Here's a link to that essay:
Cox was lionized nationally as one of the rare Republicans willing to stand up to the bullying of MAGA Trumpism. He did not vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and earlier in July, said he wouldn’t vote for Trump this year, based on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection that attempted to overthrow Joe Biden’s election.
Overall, Cox was concerned about the wide political and cultural divisions in the U.S., and as head of the National Governors Association last year, he backed a program called “Disagree Better.”
But on July 13, a would-be assassin’s bullet struck Trump’s ear, and missed his skull. Donald Trump would go on being Trump, but Spencer Cox underwent a drastic change.
Why? Was Cox’s U-turn just one more example of political opportunism? Had aliens taken over his being, as in the old horror movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
I HAVE BEEN WARNED against spending even a millisecond worrying about Trump’s effect on his supporters, because defeating Trump and electing Kamala Harris are the only things that matter.
Jody McPhillips, a friend who knows how to focus on the desperate stakes in the election, put this elegantly in a comment she made on one of my recent blog posts:
| I don't care why so many continue to support Trump; it's like pondering why we all die or why dogs have such short lifespans when they are so much nicer than we are. If we all keep doing what we're doing to defeat him, we will. We can worry about understanding it all later. |
But I can’t help it. I’d even argue that understanding the Trump Effect may help determine the outcome of the election.
Let’s deal first with the theory there's been mischief by aliens from outer space.
When I read about Cox’s about-face, I was reminded of the 1978 science-fiction film, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which aliens drop down to earth and turn humans into scary pod-like replicas.
It’s a nice metaphor, but of course it’s malarkey, as Joe Biden would say.
Also fiction, but in a more serious way, is the assassination “miracle" theory. Lots of people believe that God intervened, so that the assassin’s bullet struck Trump’s ear, but spared his brain.
Governor Cox buys Big Time into the "miracle." In his letter to Trump, Cox wrote:
Let’s deal first with the theory there's been mischief by aliens from outer space.
When I read about Cox’s about-face, I was reminded of the 1978 science-fiction film, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which aliens drop down to earth and turn humans into scary pod-like replicas.
It’s a nice metaphor, but of course it’s malarkey, as Joe Biden would say.
Also fiction, but in a more serious way, is the assassination “miracle" theory. Lots of people believe that God intervened, so that the assassin’s bullet struck Trump’s ear, but spared his brain.
Governor Cox buys Big Time into the "miracle." In his letter to Trump, Cox wrote:
| I want you to know that I truly believe that God had a hand in saving you. * * * Your life was spared. Now, because of that miracle, you have the opportunity to do something that no other person on earth can do right now: unify and save America.” |
Why didn’t Cox look deeper into the miracle? If God wanted to spare Donald Trump, why did She allow the assassination attempt to happen in the first place? And how come God decided no miracle was needed for Corey Comperatore, the rally-goer, Army reservist and volunteer firefighter, who was killed by the assassin?
The miracle theory is bunk. And for that matter, so is the secular theory that old-fashioned political opportunism was at work: that Cox, like so many other Republicans, was making nice with Trump to help his reelection bid.
A number of news stories cast doubts on that, saying that after an unpleasant, but successful primary, Cox seems safely headed for reelection in November, without need of Trump’s blessing.
Further, Cox’s letter declared it that he didn’t want any favors:
The miracle theory is bunk. And for that matter, so is the secular theory that old-fashioned political opportunism was at work: that Cox, like so many other Republicans, was making nice with Trump to help his reelection bid.
A number of news stories cast doubts on that, saying that after an unpleasant, but successful primary, Cox seems safely headed for reelection in November, without need of Trump’s blessing.
Further, Cox’s letter declared it that he didn’t want any favors:
| Mr. President, I know we have some differences and you probably don’t like me much. And that’s OK. I get it. I’m not writing this letter looking for a position in your Cabinet or a role on your team. |
Instead, he later acknowledged that by supporting Trump, he had a better chance of his long-time goal of unifying the country – concluding that was something he couldn’t do as a Trump skeptic.
That’s what he told McKay Coppins, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, who rushed to Salt Lake City to find out why Cox had veered off course. Coppins talked with the governor for 90 minutes. He wrote:
That’s what he told McKay Coppins, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, who rushed to Salt Lake City to find out why Cox had veered off course. Coppins talked with the governor for 90 minutes. He wrote:
| … Cox was surprisingly transparent about the calculation he was making. He told me that the Never Trump movement had utterly failed, and said he’d come to realize that he couldn’t have any influence on the modern GOP “if I’m not on the team”—that is, Trump’s team. “It’s absolutely a litmus test. I don’t think it should be. I wish it wasn’t that way. But it is.” |
JAMES COMEY Finally, we get to the crux of why otherwise rational people pledge allegiance to Donald Trump, and pay an awful price when they do.
James Comey, the former FBI director, whom most people dislike, but who I believe has a cop’s insight into how the underworld works, outlined the process long ago, in a 2019 essay for the New York Times.
Comey said that well-meaning people – generals, lawyers, fellow politicians - think that despite Trump’s flaws, they can steer him in the right direction. But he noted the risks involved:
James Comey, the former FBI director, whom most people dislike, but who I believe has a cop’s insight into how the underworld works, outlined the process long ago, in a 2019 essay for the New York Times.
Comey said that well-meaning people – generals, lawyers, fellow politicians - think that despite Trump’s flaws, they can steer him in the right direction. But he noted the risks involved:
| You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet. Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul. |
I hope that Spencer Cox, who has been a good citizen and an inspiring politician, finds a way to resurrect his honor and reclaim his soul.
He surely has the personal resources and intellect to wake up tomorrow morning and say: “How silly of me. What was I thinking?”
It’s not likely, of course. It’s hard to change one’s mind; and much harder change it again.
That would amount to a miracle.
But it would be the kind of real-life miracle a country needs on the eve of the most important election of our lifetime.
He surely has the personal resources and intellect to wake up tomorrow morning and say: “How silly of me. What was I thinking?”
It’s not likely, of course. It’s hard to change one’s mind; and much harder change it again.
That would amount to a miracle.
But it would be the kind of real-life miracle a country needs on the eve of the most important election of our lifetime.
ASKS THE CAT: WHY HAVE AN INTERVIEW, WHEN EVERY QUESTION WILL HAVE THE SAME ANSWER?
“WHAT’S THE POINT?”
“Who’s asking?” I said.
“What’s the point of that interview Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are scheduled to have Thursday night on CNN?”
The voice seemed to be coming from our living room ceiling, but I couldn’t determine the origin until I spotted Ben, the cat, sitting on the top of a tall step ladder I was using to fix some old windows.
“Are you sure you can get down from there?” I asked. The ladder was so tall that Ben's head practi;cally bumped the ceiling when he sat straight up.
“You’re avoiding the question” Ben scolded. “Sounds like classic deflection to me. You don’t know the answer, so you’ve changed the subject.”
“It’s possible,” I acknowledged. “But really, Ben, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
HUMANS HAVE A HARD TIME figuring out what cats think. Do they like us? Are they hungry? Does Ben relish the dry food that appears in his bowl day after day? What does he make of the rabbits in the backyard, whom he never gets to meet face-to-face, because he’s an “indoor cat,” a status in which he’s had absolutely no say? Will he, one night, murder us in our sleep?
The mystery has become worse since he began talking a few weeks ago. There’s nothing wrong with his diction - he has a slight Southern accent, since he was born in Florida - but when he talks, it only about one thing: the Election.
I suppose that makes sense. NPR and MSNBC play incessantly in our house, along with various podcasts featuring an array of conservative and liberal Never-Trumpers. The New York Times is delivered Monday through Friday. This is unhealthy for any brain, cat or human.
But Ben started talking when J.D. Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” surfaced after Trump named the Ohio senator as his running mate.
A lot of people took the comment as an ugly slur against single women. But Ben worried that Republicans were declaring war on an important element of the cat-care ecosystem. Suddenly, politics was personal.
“Who’s asking?” I said.
“What’s the point of that interview Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are scheduled to have Thursday night on CNN?”
The voice seemed to be coming from our living room ceiling, but I couldn’t determine the origin until I spotted Ben, the cat, sitting on the top of a tall step ladder I was using to fix some old windows.
“Are you sure you can get down from there?” I asked. The ladder was so tall that Ben's head practi;cally bumped the ceiling when he sat straight up.
“You’re avoiding the question” Ben scolded. “Sounds like classic deflection to me. You don’t know the answer, so you’ve changed the subject.”
“It’s possible,” I acknowledged. “But really, Ben, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
HUMANS HAVE A HARD TIME figuring out what cats think. Do they like us? Are they hungry? Does Ben relish the dry food that appears in his bowl day after day? What does he make of the rabbits in the backyard, whom he never gets to meet face-to-face, because he’s an “indoor cat,” a status in which he’s had absolutely no say? Will he, one night, murder us in our sleep?
The mystery has become worse since he began talking a few weeks ago. There’s nothing wrong with his diction - he has a slight Southern accent, since he was born in Florida - but when he talks, it only about one thing: the Election.
I suppose that makes sense. NPR and MSNBC play incessantly in our house, along with various podcasts featuring an array of conservative and liberal Never-Trumpers. The New York Times is delivered Monday through Friday. This is unhealthy for any brain, cat or human.
But Ben started talking when J.D. Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” surfaced after Trump named the Ohio senator as his running mate.
A lot of people took the comment as an ugly slur against single women. But Ben worried that Republicans were declaring war on an important element of the cat-care ecosystem. Suddenly, politics was personal.
“THE POINT OF THE CNN INTERVIEW is to find out what kind of a president and vice president Harris and Walz might be,” I said, getting back to Ben’s question.
“You mean that Dana Bash will ask Harris and her Veep, after they win this election, whether they will try to overthrow the 2028 election if they don’t win enough votes?” Ben said.
Give Ben credit for knowing that the interviewer would be Bash, the cable network’s chief political correspondent; but the cat gets zero points for suggesting a frivolous question.
“There are lots of important things,” I said, “that voters want to know and deserve to know about Harris and Walz – before they vote on Nov. 5.”
“Should Bash ask whether Harris-Walz are, like Trump?” Ben suggested. “Are they rapists, serial liars, would-be autocrats and dictators, women-haters, Putin poodles? Do they want to round up, detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants?”
“Respectable journalists have raised big issues," I said. "Take the New York Times’s columnist David Leonhardt; he came up with a list of 25 major questions, the kind Harris and Walz should be able to answer for voters. Here’s one:”
Madam Vice President, your agenda revolves around helping the middle class — such as offering a credit of up to $25,000 for first-time home buyers and increasing the child tax credit. You haven’t said much about some big related issues, though, including paid leave and universal preschool. Will you try to revive President Biden’s plans?
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Pompous, too wordy,” the cat said, “And that's just for starters. What’s the deal about ‘reviving’ Biden’s plans for paid leave and universal preschool? Sounds like a sneaky way of asking whether Harris is going to be a Joe Biden clone.”
“But a legitimate issue,” I argued. “Should voters know whether Harris plans to continue the work of President Biden?”
“Whatever Harris says won’t make any difference,” Ben growled, glaring down from his stepladder perch. “Let’s say she gives one of three possible responses:
"Answer A: Biden belongs in a nursing home, not the Oval Office.
"Answer B: President Biden is the greatest president in our lifetime.
"Answer C. Joe who?”
“So, Ben, the cat, sees no value in knowing what a Harris-Walz administration will do?”
“I know, and you know,” Ben said. “David Leonhardt and everyone else knows what this election is about. There’s only one issue: making sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected president.
“This is a “Yes or No” election.”
“Turn right at the fork; or turn left.”
“On or Off.”
“Forward or Backward.”
“I see what you're getting at,” I said. “This is not an ordinary election. If you don’t like this Harris policy or that Walz position, does that mean you vote for Trump instead? Of course not.”
“It’s just common sense,” said the cat.
“Pompous, too wordy,” the cat said, “And that's just for starters. What’s the deal about ‘reviving’ Biden’s plans for paid leave and universal preschool? Sounds like a sneaky way of asking whether Harris is going to be a Joe Biden clone.”
“But a legitimate issue,” I argued. “Should voters know whether Harris plans to continue the work of President Biden?”
“Whatever Harris says won’t make any difference,” Ben growled, glaring down from his stepladder perch. “Let’s say she gives one of three possible responses:
"Answer A: Biden belongs in a nursing home, not the Oval Office.
"Answer B: President Biden is the greatest president in our lifetime.
"Answer C. Joe who?”
“So, Ben, the cat, sees no value in knowing what a Harris-Walz administration will do?”
“I know, and you know,” Ben said. “David Leonhardt and everyone else knows what this election is about. There’s only one issue: making sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected president.
“This is a “Yes or No” election.”
“Turn right at the fork; or turn left.”
“On or Off.”
“Forward or Backward.”
“I see what you're getting at,” I said. “This is not an ordinary election. If you don’t like this Harris policy or that Walz position, does that mean you vote for Trump instead? Of course not.”
“It’s just common sense,” said the cat.
NOW, IT’S 'BUSINESS,' AS DEMOCRATS WORK TO ELECT HARRIS & BANISH TRUMP
“OKAY, LET’S GET TO BUSINESS. Let’s get to business. All right,” Kamala Harris pleaded, as she struggled to quiet the cheers and applause and whoops as she appeared at the podium on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.
It seemed a strangely pedestrian way to introduce her speech, which was so anticipated, coming after the princes and princesses of the Democratic Party had assembled in Chicago to show off their skills as nation’s most eloquent, seasoned and practiced political orators.
But I thought it really was “business” that Harris had on her mind: there was so much to get done in a very little time in the heart-stopping mission of stopping Donald Trump from destroying the country.
Harris’s immediate business on Aug. 22 was simply not to fall flat on her face.
But the real challenge was not preaching to the adoring choir in Chicago, but convincing election skeptics, slouches and cynics of the seven “battleground” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, who would determine the outcome to vote Democratic, with less than three months to do so.
She already had established herself as a campaign sorcerer, taking hold of the Democratic Party instantly on July 21, when President Joe Biden finally withdrew from the race after his disastrous “debate” with Trump on June 27, endorsing his vice president to take his place.
The response had astonished everyone. No pollster, pundit or fabulist would have dared predict the explosion of support Harris received, or how confident and happy she seemed as she assumed mantel of instant nominee.
Her winning streak had continued with choosing as her running mate the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, a political Everyman, who disarmed friend and foe with his Midwestern charm; his biography as a high school teacher, football coach, National Guard veteran and hunter; daring anyone to challenge his embrace of progressivism, which he defined as the dastardly act of offering free lunches to hungry school children.
Would Harris slip on the proverbial banana peel tonight? And then what of the endless carpet of banana peels that would appear the morning after and the one after that?
DEMOCRATS MAY NEVER GET OVER NOV. 8, 2016, the night that Hilary Clinton won the election, but Donald Trump captured the presidency because of the Constitution’s absurd Electoral College system of allocating votes.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has crippled Democrats’ mental processes ever since, not only because the one-time First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State was so much more qualified than the profane, bigot, liar and business cheat.
But it was the fact that so many neighbors, spouses, cousins and business colleagues had voted for him – an astonishing 62.9 million Americans had betrayed the other 65.8 million.
Many believed that Joe Biden’s decisive victory, winning both the popular and Electoral College in 2020, had driven Trump from their nightmares at last.
But Democrats’ PTSD proved well founded. Despite two impeachments, various court indictments, and an assassin’s bullet missing his brain by an inch, Trump has persisted and so has his appeal.
On the day that Biden left the 2024 race, polls showed Trump beating Biden 43 to 39 percent.
Three days later, presumptive nominee Harris was ahead by nearly 1 percentage point, and her margin has generally increased ever since, so that today according to some estimates, she’s leading Trump, 47.2 to 43.7 percent.
But Democrats aren’t fooled and surely not by polls.
You may see them joyful and dancing in the daytime, but at night, if they manage to sleep at all, they awaken screaming at the terror and mystery of Trump’s hold on so much of the country.
WHICH IS WHY SO MANY SPEAKERS warned the convention choir and the faithful everywhere not to get ahead of themselves.
Michelle Obama, the former First Lady and perhaps the best orator of our times, including her husband, spelled out the “business” in convincingly harsh terms:
It seemed a strangely pedestrian way to introduce her speech, which was so anticipated, coming after the princes and princesses of the Democratic Party had assembled in Chicago to show off their skills as nation’s most eloquent, seasoned and practiced political orators.
But I thought it really was “business” that Harris had on her mind: there was so much to get done in a very little time in the heart-stopping mission of stopping Donald Trump from destroying the country.
Harris’s immediate business on Aug. 22 was simply not to fall flat on her face.
But the real challenge was not preaching to the adoring choir in Chicago, but convincing election skeptics, slouches and cynics of the seven “battleground” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, who would determine the outcome to vote Democratic, with less than three months to do so.
She already had established herself as a campaign sorcerer, taking hold of the Democratic Party instantly on July 21, when President Joe Biden finally withdrew from the race after his disastrous “debate” with Trump on June 27, endorsing his vice president to take his place.
The response had astonished everyone. No pollster, pundit or fabulist would have dared predict the explosion of support Harris received, or how confident and happy she seemed as she assumed mantel of instant nominee.
Her winning streak had continued with choosing as her running mate the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, a political Everyman, who disarmed friend and foe with his Midwestern charm; his biography as a high school teacher, football coach, National Guard veteran and hunter; daring anyone to challenge his embrace of progressivism, which he defined as the dastardly act of offering free lunches to hungry school children.
Would Harris slip on the proverbial banana peel tonight? And then what of the endless carpet of banana peels that would appear the morning after and the one after that?
DEMOCRATS MAY NEVER GET OVER NOV. 8, 2016, the night that Hilary Clinton won the election, but Donald Trump captured the presidency because of the Constitution’s absurd Electoral College system of allocating votes.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has crippled Democrats’ mental processes ever since, not only because the one-time First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State was so much more qualified than the profane, bigot, liar and business cheat.
But it was the fact that so many neighbors, spouses, cousins and business colleagues had voted for him – an astonishing 62.9 million Americans had betrayed the other 65.8 million.
Many believed that Joe Biden’s decisive victory, winning both the popular and Electoral College in 2020, had driven Trump from their nightmares at last.
But Democrats’ PTSD proved well founded. Despite two impeachments, various court indictments, and an assassin’s bullet missing his brain by an inch, Trump has persisted and so has his appeal.
On the day that Biden left the 2024 race, polls showed Trump beating Biden 43 to 39 percent.
Three days later, presumptive nominee Harris was ahead by nearly 1 percentage point, and her margin has generally increased ever since, so that today according to some estimates, she’s leading Trump, 47.2 to 43.7 percent.
But Democrats aren’t fooled and surely not by polls.
You may see them joyful and dancing in the daytime, but at night, if they manage to sleep at all, they awaken screaming at the terror and mystery of Trump’s hold on so much of the country.
WHICH IS WHY SO MANY SPEAKERS warned the convention choir and the faithful everywhere not to get ahead of themselves.
Michelle Obama, the former First Lady and perhaps the best orator of our times, including her husband, spelled out the “business” in convincingly harsh terms:
| ... as we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt. Let us not forget what we are up against. Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great now. We’re loving it. They are packing arenas across the country. Folks are energized. We are feeling good. But remember, there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome, who are ready to question and criticize every move Kamala makes, who are eager to spread those lies, who don’t want to vote for a woman, who will continue to prioritize building their wealth over ensuring that everyone has enough. So no matter how good we feel tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle. So folks, we cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected. |
Governor Walz described the “business” as a sports metaphor:
| You know, you might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team. It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced. And Kamala Harris is ready. Our job, our job, our job, our job for everyone watching, is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling. One inch at a time. One yard at a time. One phone call at a time. One door knock at a time. One $5 donation at a time. Look, we’ve got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. |
Kamala Harris defined the “business” as a single mission: confronting Donald Trump, the shady businessman and Constitutional criminal.
| Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. Consider — consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite — he fanned the flames. And now, for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans, and separately — and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse. And consider, consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol. His explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens. Consider, consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States. Not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself. |
Pundits often instruct this or that politician on what he or she “must do” when facing one particular crisis or that one.
Before Harris’s speech accepting the nomination, the commentators said that she had to “introduce” herself to millions of voters, whom the punditry decided did not yet know who she was; had to “humanize” herself; had to “spell out” what she would do as president; had to present herself as “presidential” and a credible commander-in-chief; all the while trying not to fall flat on her face.
She accomplished all of that and more. The consensus was that Kamala Harris gave one of the best convention speeches ever. One of my friends compared it to John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech.
THE “BUSINESS’ QUESTION is whether Harris and the Democrats can convince enough voters to vote for her and not Trump.
Stirring as the convention was, it’s hard for me to imagine that many viewers, listeners and readers tuned in if they were not ready to vote for Harris. I certainly didn’t watch a minute of the Republican convention last months.
It’s possible that nationwide more people will vote for Harris than for Trump on Nov. 5, just as they did for her Democratic predecessors in 2016 and 2020. But what will voters do in the seven states that matter in the electoral count this year?
The same tiresome, terrifying question that has haunted us for nearly a decade is still unanswered: why are so many Americans so drawn to Trump? Why has he endured as a political and cultural presence all of these years?
Solving that puzzle is indeed the “business” Harris alluded to at the convention.
What matters now is what she, Walz and the rest of us do in the remaining 72 days.
Oops! I got that wrong.
I was writing this late one night, which predictably turned into the next day.
So, now the count is down to 71.
I look forward to, as well as dread, what the number will be tomorrow.
THE ELECTION HITS CLOSE TO HOME - SORT OF
USUALLY, THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION has seemed both urgent and personal – but always far away.
Then, suddenly, it’s practically in our backyard.
Which was the case yesterday.
Tim Walz - who just nine days earlier was named by Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for president, as her running mate - was right here in my hometown, Newport, R.I.
Walz, in fact, passed just a few feet away from my wife and me on his way to a fundraising event, which itself was a mere eight-tenths of a mile from our house.
Our goals were modest. Probably we wouldn't meet Walz. But would we catch sight of him?
Walz, since being introduced to the nation only on Aug. 6, has has added to the excitement that Vice President Harris as stirred among Democrats - including us - since she replaced President Joe Biden as the party’s best bet to keep Donald Trump out of the White House and to keep American free.
It was Walz who labeled Trump as “weird,” which quickly became the party’s favorite word to humiliate Trump. Overnight, Walz emerged as a the embodiment of the down-home favorite uncle, a guy who liked to hunt, who coached high school football, served in the National Guard and wasn’t at all ashamed of defending progressive outrages like serving lunch to hungry school children. One of his old campaign ads, when running for governor, showed him giving advice on a cheap do-it-yourself way of fixing your headlights, all the better to get voters safely to the polls.
So, it would have been great to chew the fat with the neighborly Tim Walz, maybe pick up some pointers on repairing our balky gutters, or probe his views on the best way to protect democracy from the despotic and despicable Mr. Trump.
WHEN WORD FIRST GOT OUT that Walz would be stopping off in Newport, there was a fair amount of mystery to the event. Nobody – at least nobody we knew – seemed aware of what time he would arrive, where he would be and what route he might take to get there.
Walz was in Newport as part of a five-state swing to gather campaign cash as opposed to actually meeting lots of voters.
Unwilling to part with $1,000 for a ticket for the event, much less $10,000 to have our photo taken with the guest of honor, Mr. & Mrs. Jones best hope was for a glimpse of the man, or at least to spot his car.
News stories indicated the event would be in one of the city's former Robber Baron mansions, including some that make up part of Salve' Regina University's spectacular campus, which overlooks the city’s ocean fronting Cliff Walk.
Then, my wife got an email from the Newport Democratic City Committee, suggesting an impromptu welcoming party gather between 12:30 and 1 p.m. at the corner of one of the city’s busiest intersections - Memorial Boulevard at Bellevue Avenue.
Bellevue Avenue is the city’s signature "street," which includes the Tennis Hall of Fame, along with restored mansion/museums like The Elms, Marble House, Rosecliff and Rough Point.
Thirty or so people showed up. No one seemed to know in which direction the Walz motorcade – assuming there would be a motorcade – would be traveling.
But it was a boisterous group – reflecting the mania Harris and now Walz have let loose. Some people brought handmade signs – MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS (a popular Walz quote defending abortion rights); DEMOCRACY YES, AUTOCRACY NO, WELCOME GOV. WALZ! And HONK FOR DEMOCRACY.
Then, suddenly, it’s practically in our backyard.
Which was the case yesterday.
Tim Walz - who just nine days earlier was named by Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for president, as her running mate - was right here in my hometown, Newport, R.I.
Walz, in fact, passed just a few feet away from my wife and me on his way to a fundraising event, which itself was a mere eight-tenths of a mile from our house.
Our goals were modest. Probably we wouldn't meet Walz. But would we catch sight of him?
Walz, since being introduced to the nation only on Aug. 6, has has added to the excitement that Vice President Harris as stirred among Democrats - including us - since she replaced President Joe Biden as the party’s best bet to keep Donald Trump out of the White House and to keep American free.
It was Walz who labeled Trump as “weird,” which quickly became the party’s favorite word to humiliate Trump. Overnight, Walz emerged as a the embodiment of the down-home favorite uncle, a guy who liked to hunt, who coached high school football, served in the National Guard and wasn’t at all ashamed of defending progressive outrages like serving lunch to hungry school children. One of his old campaign ads, when running for governor, showed him giving advice on a cheap do-it-yourself way of fixing your headlights, all the better to get voters safely to the polls.
So, it would have been great to chew the fat with the neighborly Tim Walz, maybe pick up some pointers on repairing our balky gutters, or probe his views on the best way to protect democracy from the despotic and despicable Mr. Trump.
WHEN WORD FIRST GOT OUT that Walz would be stopping off in Newport, there was a fair amount of mystery to the event. Nobody – at least nobody we knew – seemed aware of what time he would arrive, where he would be and what route he might take to get there.
Walz was in Newport as part of a five-state swing to gather campaign cash as opposed to actually meeting lots of voters.
Unwilling to part with $1,000 for a ticket for the event, much less $10,000 to have our photo taken with the guest of honor, Mr. & Mrs. Jones best hope was for a glimpse of the man, or at least to spot his car.
News stories indicated the event would be in one of the city's former Robber Baron mansions, including some that make up part of Salve' Regina University's spectacular campus, which overlooks the city’s ocean fronting Cliff Walk.
Then, my wife got an email from the Newport Democratic City Committee, suggesting an impromptu welcoming party gather between 12:30 and 1 p.m. at the corner of one of the city’s busiest intersections - Memorial Boulevard at Bellevue Avenue.
Bellevue Avenue is the city’s signature "street," which includes the Tennis Hall of Fame, along with restored mansion/museums like The Elms, Marble House, Rosecliff and Rough Point.
Thirty or so people showed up. No one seemed to know in which direction the Walz motorcade – assuming there would be a motorcade – would be traveling.
But it was a boisterous group – reflecting the mania Harris and now Walz have let loose. Some people brought handmade signs – MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS (a popular Walz quote defending abortion rights); DEMOCRACY YES, AUTOCRACY NO, WELCOME GOV. WALZ! And HONK FOR DEMOCRACY.
Now, Newport police began blocking traffic in all directions, a good omen, at least for the welcoming party. But backed-up motorists began leaning on their horns, but probably they were not honking for democracy.
Flashing lights appeared, coming in from the west.
A swarm of police motorcycles grew closer, sweeping through the left-turn onto Bellevue.
They were followed by handful of the kind of big black SUVs favored by politicians and those who guard them. The windows were rolled up, so you couldn’t make out who was who inside.
But one of them HAD to be carrying Walz.
And then they were gone.
Flashing lights appeared, coming in from the west.
A swarm of police motorcycles grew closer, sweeping through the left-turn onto Bellevue.
They were followed by handful of the kind of big black SUVs favored by politicians and those who guard them. The windows were rolled up, so you couldn’t make out who was who inside.
But one of them HAD to be carrying Walz.
And then they were gone.
BACK HOME, I HOPED FOR ANOTHER SIGHTING.
Driving to Salve Regina University obviously would be a lost cause.
But I figured I could walk there from our home in a modest neighborhood that once housed many of the people who worked in the original summer mansions. (My wife wisely took a pass on this venture).
Who would be suspicious of an elderly man, about the age of Joe Biden, stumbling along the side streets clutching his antique camera?
“I know you can’t answer this,” I said to one police person, whose cruiser was blocking one of the streets leading to the university, “but could you tell me when the motorcade will leave?”
“They’ll be there for an hour and 15 minutes. They arrived at 1,” replied the officer, who was surprisingly pleasant, but left me to do the rest of the math.
I headed toward the largest of the side streets, where earlier I'd had seen a smiling woman waving a huge TRUMP banner, and who now, thankfully, had disappeared.
I hiked down to Ochre Point Avenue, where the event reportedly was being held. There was a police person in the middle of the road, which was completely empty.
“I guess I can’t go down the street,” I said.
“That’s right,” the officer said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you,” the officer said, but in a way that indicated I’d overstayed my welcome.
I headed back toward Bellevue Avenue, passing an intersection where several cruisers were parked, with officers directing traffic away from the university.
“Would I be wasting my time if I waited here?” I asked yet another police officer.
“They didn’t come this way,” the officer said. “They were supposed to, but the route was changed at the last minute.”
As I walked back to Bellevue Avenue, I was thinking how stressful it must be to be part of a security detail like this, especially after the near assassination of Trump, before which the gunman had been spotted, but eluded local and federal officers.
Now, police where holding up traffic in every direction on Bellevue Avenue and its intersections. Again the horns sounded, and not honking for democracy.
A long stretch of the roadway was empty of cars. Tourists visiting the mansions were on the sidewalks, seemingly unaware of what was going on around them.
Someone pushing a wheelchair moved it off the bumpy sidewalk and onto the smoother roadway.
“Get back on the sidewalk," an officer bellowed. "GET BACK ON THE SIDEWALK!”
A man hauling a wagon containing two small children tried the same thing.
“Get off of the road. GET OFF THE ROAD!”
In the distance, the rumble of motorcycles.
A squadron of motorcycles emerged from a side street and roared past. But no SUVs.
Then a second group of motorcycles, followed by the motorcade, raced up the avenue. Had that first group been a deliberate distraction?
I took as many photos as I could with the old camera. Again, presumably Tim Walz was in one of those big, black cars just a few feet away.
He HAD to be in one.
EPILOGUE
Back home, I looked through my text messages.
One was from Walz. It turned out that, despite my failed attempts to catch sight of him, he and I actually were on a first-name basis.
I took as many photos as I could with the old camera. Again, presumably Tim Walz was in one of those big, black cars just a few feet away.
He HAD to be in one.
EPILOGUE
Back home, I looked through my text messages.
One was from Walz. It turned out that, despite my failed attempts to catch sight of him, he and I actually were on a first-name basis.
| Brian, Tim Walz here. I had to text you about an observation that I’ve made. You’ve probably made it too. It’s about Donald Trump and JD Vance. These guys are creepy. And, yes, just weird as hell. Right? If you agree, then I hope you’ll pitch in to defeat them, power Kamala and my campaign, and support Democrats across the country today. https://kamala-harris.us/7x64Pm Let's win this thing, Tim |
The hyperlink leads to a campaign site, suggesting a range of donations, starting at a modest $25.
The election remained so urgent, so personal, and so far away. But it felt right that for an hour or two it really had been close to home.
The election remained so urgent, so personal, and so far away. But it felt right that for an hour or two it really had been close to home.
WITH 3 MONTHS LEFT, THE ELECTION IS A STARK CHOICE – GOOD OR EVIL
 KAMALA HARRIS CREDIT: Harris Instagram |  DONALD TRUMP CREDIT: Frank Gerardi |
I WAS DOING ONE of those really disagreeable political chores last week: telephoning people at suppertime.
I was part of a phone bank where volunteers were calling on behalf of a Democratic candidate, who happens to be well liked for his diligent, often brilliant hard work on critical issues.
Even so, I couldn’t imagine people answering their phone at this most important, precious hour of the day – when personally, I go berserk every time the phone rings, no matter who’s calling.
But the knockout surprise was not hat some people did answer, but they were more than civil: they were excited to hear from a fellow Democrat. In some cases, they were over-the-top ecstatic and eager to talk, at length.
It was the Kamala Harris effect.
By now, this isn’t news to you.
Ever since the vice president replaced Joe Biden as the Democrats’ nominee, Harris has had a phenomenal impact. She raised a huge amount of money in a short time – over $300 million – had thousands of people volunteer for her campaign and drawn big, energized crowds.
Harris has measured up.
She turns out to be a true Happy Warrior. She’s confident, sure-footed, well-spoken, quick-moving and adroit.
As if it were the most natural thing in politics to instantly move from second banana in the Biden administration to the top campaign spot, with a mission of rescuing not just White House, but the entire Democrat Party’s election prospects.
Which is not a bad place to be today, Aug. 5: exactly three months to go until the Nov. 5 election.
THERE ARE TWO WAYS of thinking about the next three months:
Sure she’s holding the spotlight – hogging most of the news coverage, largely positive; receiving spontaneous social media raves; and benefiting from the best sort of recommendations: neighbors chatting up neighbors.
But how many people actually know who she is?
I’m thinking of people who don’t do well in the kind of quizzes that ask them to list the three branches of government, point to California on the map and name the current vice president of the United States.
It’s quite possible that the Harris voice, the Harris image, the Harris presence will not have broken through to the kind of voters who may matter the most on Nov. 5: citizens who could care less.
Political analysts try to be polite about these folks, giving them pseudo technical names like “low-information,” “disengaged,” and “distracted” voters.
In actuality, they are lazy, selfish and negligent slouches, whom I personally think should be stripped of their right to vote. Which is why I’m glad I’m not in charge of anything, because in a democracy, everyone counts, including people who don’t care that they do count.
Simply put, is there enough time for Harris to reach enough of us?
THE OTHER SIDE of the three-month mark is the question of whether there’s Too-Much-Time between where we are now, broiling at height of summer and suffering the chill of late fall?
Imagine all the things that can go wrong, and understand that some of them really will.
Just this morning, for example, the stock market fell sharply as investor/lemmings panicked about a recession.
Other events could easily overtake her, just like Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump; or Trump’s truly miraculous escape from an assassin’s bullet.
Harris is sure to say something wrong, to stumble, to disappoint.
The Middle East war could turn nuclear; China could invade Taiwan; gas stations could suddenly billboard astronomical prices as voters stop to fill up on their way to the polls.
Trump, now seeming desperate to find just the right cruel, racist, misogynistic label to slap on Harris, will, in fact, find a nickname that will resonate with his base and beyond.
Maybe, people won’t like the person she selects as her vice president, which is expected today or tomorrow.
Worst of all, maybe Harris will be unable to keep her initial momentum going, and the excitement will go out of the race like a punctured campaign balloon.
Such are the dangers facing a country whose future has been brought unfairly to a cliff’s edge by Donald Trump, a treacherous, malevolent, criminal and cruel presence in American politics, whose enduring appeal baffles both friend and foe.
WHAT IS FOR SURE about the sudden arrival of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is that she has sharpened the choices in this race in a way that we’ve never seen, at least in my lifetime.
Ralph Nader, the consumer hero turned political spoiler, once mocked the differences between Republican and Democratic candidates as that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
No longer.
The contrast between Harris and Trump couldn’t be starker.
- There’s no-time-at-all until Nov. 5.
- There’s too-much-time left before Election day.
Sure she’s holding the spotlight – hogging most of the news coverage, largely positive; receiving spontaneous social media raves; and benefiting from the best sort of recommendations: neighbors chatting up neighbors.
But how many people actually know who she is?
I’m thinking of people who don’t do well in the kind of quizzes that ask them to list the three branches of government, point to California on the map and name the current vice president of the United States.
It’s quite possible that the Harris voice, the Harris image, the Harris presence will not have broken through to the kind of voters who may matter the most on Nov. 5: citizens who could care less.
Political analysts try to be polite about these folks, giving them pseudo technical names like “low-information,” “disengaged,” and “distracted” voters.
In actuality, they are lazy, selfish and negligent slouches, whom I personally think should be stripped of their right to vote. Which is why I’m glad I’m not in charge of anything, because in a democracy, everyone counts, including people who don’t care that they do count.
Simply put, is there enough time for Harris to reach enough of us?
THE OTHER SIDE of the three-month mark is the question of whether there’s Too-Much-Time between where we are now, broiling at height of summer and suffering the chill of late fall?
Imagine all the things that can go wrong, and understand that some of them really will.
Just this morning, for example, the stock market fell sharply as investor/lemmings panicked about a recession.
Other events could easily overtake her, just like Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump; or Trump’s truly miraculous escape from an assassin’s bullet.
Harris is sure to say something wrong, to stumble, to disappoint.
The Middle East war could turn nuclear; China could invade Taiwan; gas stations could suddenly billboard astronomical prices as voters stop to fill up on their way to the polls.
Trump, now seeming desperate to find just the right cruel, racist, misogynistic label to slap on Harris, will, in fact, find a nickname that will resonate with his base and beyond.
Maybe, people won’t like the person she selects as her vice president, which is expected today or tomorrow.
Worst of all, maybe Harris will be unable to keep her initial momentum going, and the excitement will go out of the race like a punctured campaign balloon.
Such are the dangers facing a country whose future has been brought unfairly to a cliff’s edge by Donald Trump, a treacherous, malevolent, criminal and cruel presence in American politics, whose enduring appeal baffles both friend and foe.
WHAT IS FOR SURE about the sudden arrival of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is that she has sharpened the choices in this race in a way that we’ve never seen, at least in my lifetime.
Ralph Nader, the consumer hero turned political spoiler, once mocked the differences between Republican and Democratic candidates as that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
No longer.
The contrast between Harris and Trump couldn’t be starker.
 |  |
With three months to go, will voters take the country backward, repeating some of the worst chapters of our history; or will they choose to try, once again, to achieve the vision of the founders?
Will the country finally acknowledge that women are 50 percent ore more of the population and deserve a chance to lead the country? Or will we regress into the machismo of a woman-hater, woman-abuser determined to create a second-class cast of breeders and cooks?
Will the country, which becomes more diverse every day, choose a biracial exemplar, or a white bigot?
Will the country choose someone whose career has included enforcing the law and upholding Constitutional values, or a traitor and dictator-in-waiting who tried to overturn an election?
Will the country choose a leader well aware of the country’s and the world’s perils, such as climate change and economic inequality; or will we choose a psychopath unconcerned that our grandchildren will inherit a planet on fire?
In the next three months, voters have a choice far simpler and more drastic than they’ve ever been: between democracy and dictatorship, and between good and evil.
Will the country finally acknowledge that women are 50 percent ore more of the population and deserve a chance to lead the country? Or will we regress into the machismo of a woman-hater, woman-abuser determined to create a second-class cast of breeders and cooks?
Will the country, which becomes more diverse every day, choose a biracial exemplar, or a white bigot?
Will the country choose someone whose career has included enforcing the law and upholding Constitutional values, or a traitor and dictator-in-waiting who tried to overturn an election?
Will the country choose a leader well aware of the country’s and the world’s perils, such as climate change and economic inequality; or will we choose a psychopath unconcerned that our grandchildren will inherit a planet on fire?
In the next three months, voters have a choice far simpler and more drastic than they’ve ever been: between democracy and dictatorship, and between good and evil.
AS THE NOV. 5 ELECTION APPROACHES, A COMMON SENSE CAT SPEAKS OUT
“HE DIDN’T REALLY WRITE THAT, YOU KNOW.”
“Who didn’t?” I asked.
“Bill Clinton. He doesn’t know you from Adam. And he had nothing to do with what you’re reading.”
I had been going through my email, which I do several times a day, and had stopped to look at a message that was slugged: “Now is the time to....” with the sender identified as “Bill Clinton.”
“It’s just fund-raising,” the voice said.
I was about to respond to the comment – which was so incredibly obvious that it hardly deserved a reply - then realized there was nobody to respond to. I was alone at my desk, alone that is, except for Ben.
Ben is our cat.
Ben turned 3 on July 12 and my wife and I forgot his birthday, as usual, and I wondered: Did his snide tone mean that he was still carrying a grudge?
Then I realized that was the wrong question.
“Are you actually talking?” I asked.
“Are you actually listening?” Ben said.
Ben, who joined our household when he was 4 months old, is a handsome Tabby – we like to think of him as Bengal, or Bengal-like. He weighed 3 pounds at the time. Now, like many Americans, he’s struggling with his weight, hitting the scales the last time we were at the vet’s at 15+.
My wife and I have considered Ben unusually communicative, and we’ve had a fair share of cats with which to compare. He’s got a hearty “Yee-Oow,” and if you say something to him, he’ll give you a “Yee-Oow” right back.
“Who didn’t?” I asked.
“Bill Clinton. He doesn’t know you from Adam. And he had nothing to do with what you’re reading.”
I had been going through my email, which I do several times a day, and had stopped to look at a message that was slugged: “Now is the time to....” with the sender identified as “Bill Clinton.”
“It’s just fund-raising,” the voice said.
I was about to respond to the comment – which was so incredibly obvious that it hardly deserved a reply - then realized there was nobody to respond to. I was alone at my desk, alone that is, except for Ben.
Ben is our cat.
Ben turned 3 on July 12 and my wife and I forgot his birthday, as usual, and I wondered: Did his snide tone mean that he was still carrying a grudge?
Then I realized that was the wrong question.
“Are you actually talking?” I asked.
“Are you actually listening?” Ben said.
Ben, who joined our household when he was 4 months old, is a handsome Tabby – we like to think of him as Bengal, or Bengal-like. He weighed 3 pounds at the time. Now, like many Americans, he’s struggling with his weight, hitting the scales the last time we were at the vet’s at 15+.
My wife and I have considered Ben unusually communicative, and we’ve had a fair share of cats with which to compare. He’s got a hearty “Yee-Oow,” and if you say something to him, he’ll give you a “Yee-Oow” right back.
BUT IF BEN HAS SEEMED “TALKATIVE,” we've known that we’re stepping into the Forbidden Swamp of Anthropomorphism if we push too far, and we fully understand that Ben isn’t actually conversive, at least in the human sense.
“I didn’t think cats could talk,” I said, trying to sound calm.
Ben said crossly, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Let’s say that I’m not a crazy old man, and that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing,” I said. “How come you’ve decided to actually speak?”
“Because all I hear all day and into the night in this house is ‘The Election this; The Election that.’ It’s all you two talk about – especially YOU – and it just pours out of the radios and TVs hour after hour.
“And then there’s all the doomscrolling that you, in particular, do on your computer, checking the same websites over and over and over, and frankly, I’m fed up to here!” he said.
As he said that, Ben made a cutting motion against his throat with one of his paws – I’m not sure which one, because I’ve never noticed whether Ben is right-pawed or left, much less whether, politically, he leans left or right.
“So that means that you can read, too?” I said.
“I try my best not to swear,” Ben said. “But you make it really hard to be civil. Of course, I can read.
Which is why I know that the email you’re looking at is not from Bill Clinton. It wasn’t written by Bill Clinton; Bill Clinton doesn’t know your email address; and for sure, Bill Clinton does NOT know your first name, much less your last.”
“But the email starts out ‘Brian, it’s Bill Clinton,’ “ I said.
“#*@!+?$,” the cat said. “Did you even go to college – at least one that’s anyone’s heard of? It’s a computer-generated-money-raising pitch. Clinton has told someone it’s okay to use his name, and the algorithm does the rest.”
“They start small,” Ben said impatiently. “Scroll down a little and it starts off with a $25 contribution, which won’t buy you much cat food, but it gets their claws into you. You do REALIZE that!”
“Well,’ I said, “I did wonder where Bill gets the time to write to someone like me. I know that he’s not president anymore, but still, I’m sure he’s got a lot else going on, wondering what Monica is up to these days and all."
“Is there anything in there,” Ben asked pointing at my head, “other than a rock?”
Now, I was getting a little put off: “I get a lot of emails these days from important people.”
“You’ll notice, Mr. Smarty Cat, that the next email down from Bill’s is from Kamala Harris. And as you may have noticed, she is one busy person these days. She’s the likely Democratic nominee, juggling her vice presidential duties, picking her own veep, raising missions of dollars. She’s got Democrats smiling again. And, still, Kamala’s sending ME emails.”
“This answers the question about God,” Ben said. “If She did exist, She certainly wouldn’t have sent me to a house with you in it.”
I was searching for a pithy reply, when Ben continued:
“What makes living here bearable is that sometimes you leave the house, and I get to spend time exclusively with someone who actually likes and understands cats. You know whom I’m talking about: the Nice One.”
“She’s that and more,” I said. “At least we agree on something.”
“I didn’t think cats could talk,” I said, trying to sound calm.
Ben said crossly, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Let’s say that I’m not a crazy old man, and that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing,” I said. “How come you’ve decided to actually speak?”
“Because all I hear all day and into the night in this house is ‘The Election this; The Election that.’ It’s all you two talk about – especially YOU – and it just pours out of the radios and TVs hour after hour.
“And then there’s all the doomscrolling that you, in particular, do on your computer, checking the same websites over and over and over, and frankly, I’m fed up to here!” he said.
As he said that, Ben made a cutting motion against his throat with one of his paws – I’m not sure which one, because I’ve never noticed whether Ben is right-pawed or left, much less whether, politically, he leans left or right.
“So that means that you can read, too?” I said.
“I try my best not to swear,” Ben said. “But you make it really hard to be civil. Of course, I can read.
Which is why I know that the email you’re looking at is not from Bill Clinton. It wasn’t written by Bill Clinton; Bill Clinton doesn’t know your email address; and for sure, Bill Clinton does NOT know your first name, much less your last.”
“But the email starts out ‘Brian, it’s Bill Clinton,’ “ I said.
“#*@!+?$,” the cat said. “Did you even go to college – at least one that’s anyone’s heard of? It’s a computer-generated-money-raising pitch. Clinton has told someone it’s okay to use his name, and the algorithm does the rest.”
“They start small,” Ben said impatiently. “Scroll down a little and it starts off with a $25 contribution, which won’t buy you much cat food, but it gets their claws into you. You do REALIZE that!”
“Well,’ I said, “I did wonder where Bill gets the time to write to someone like me. I know that he’s not president anymore, but still, I’m sure he’s got a lot else going on, wondering what Monica is up to these days and all."
“Is there anything in there,” Ben asked pointing at my head, “other than a rock?”
Now, I was getting a little put off: “I get a lot of emails these days from important people.”
“You’ll notice, Mr. Smarty Cat, that the next email down from Bill’s is from Kamala Harris. And as you may have noticed, she is one busy person these days. She’s the likely Democratic nominee, juggling her vice presidential duties, picking her own veep, raising missions of dollars. She’s got Democrats smiling again. And, still, Kamala’s sending ME emails.”
“This answers the question about God,” Ben said. “If She did exist, She certainly wouldn’t have sent me to a house with you in it.”
I was searching for a pithy reply, when Ben continued:
“What makes living here bearable is that sometimes you leave the house, and I get to spend time exclusively with someone who actually likes and understands cats. You know whom I’m talking about: the Nice One.”
“She’s that and more,” I said. “At least we agree on something.”
“WHICH BRINGS ME TO WHY I’VE DECIDED TO SPEAK OUT,” Ben said. “I’m realizing that this Election is could be a make-or-break event. I mean, forget the stuff about whether “democracy is on the line” and this climate change business and whether the earth will burst into flames if Trump wins.”
“Those ARE big issues,” I pointed out.
“You want to know what’s a BIG issue?” Ben said with his little feline sneer. “It's all this stuff we’re hearing about ‘wilderness cat ladies.’ “
“I think you mean ‘childless cat ladies,’ “ I said.
“Whatever,” Ben said. “It’s downright super-wild-scary.”
Realizing that I now had the upper paw because we were discussing “facts,” I proceeded to lecture Ben on what Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick, had said three years ago to the notorious Tucker Carlson, then on Fox TV.
Vance had warned about
"... a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."
"It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.... And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"
“Worse than worrisome,” the cat said. “Very dangerous.”
“We’re in agreement, again,” I said. “Lots of people don’t have children – although Harris is a stepmom, and Buttigieg and his partner now have twins. But you can’t disenfranchise people who don’t have children.”
“Not my concern,” Ben said. "Who cares about 'the children?' "
“What does bother you?”
“If Trump and Vance win, they’ll go after the cat ladies. They’ll deport the undocumented cat ladies first, and scare the rest into letting their cats loose; ladies simply won’t want the stigma of having us in their homes.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
“Nobody has,” Ben said.
Now he was on a roll:
“Cats of America, rise up. Protect the cat ladies. Vote the cat ladies’ ticket. Who will look after, cherish, talk to and most importantly FEED America’s cats if we become a country without cat ladies? Nine lives will no longer be enough to protect us.
“SAVE THE CAT LADIES!
"SAVE THE CATS!”
“In the end," I said, "politics is always personal.”
“It’s just common sense,” Ben said.
“Those ARE big issues,” I pointed out.
“You want to know what’s a BIG issue?” Ben said with his little feline sneer. “It's all this stuff we’re hearing about ‘wilderness cat ladies.’ “
“I think you mean ‘childless cat ladies,’ “ I said.
“Whatever,” Ben said. “It’s downright super-wild-scary.”
Realizing that I now had the upper paw because we were discussing “facts,” I proceeded to lecture Ben on what Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick, had said three years ago to the notorious Tucker Carlson, then on Fox TV.
Vance had warned about
"... a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."
"It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.... And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"
“Worse than worrisome,” the cat said. “Very dangerous.”
“We’re in agreement, again,” I said. “Lots of people don’t have children – although Harris is a stepmom, and Buttigieg and his partner now have twins. But you can’t disenfranchise people who don’t have children.”
“Not my concern,” Ben said. "Who cares about 'the children?' "
“What does bother you?”
“If Trump and Vance win, they’ll go after the cat ladies. They’ll deport the undocumented cat ladies first, and scare the rest into letting their cats loose; ladies simply won’t want the stigma of having us in their homes.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
“Nobody has,” Ben said.
Now he was on a roll:
“Cats of America, rise up. Protect the cat ladies. Vote the cat ladies’ ticket. Who will look after, cherish, talk to and most importantly FEED America’s cats if we become a country without cat ladies? Nine lives will no longer be enough to protect us.
“SAVE THE CAT LADIES!
"SAVE THE CATS!”
“In the end," I said, "politics is always personal.”
“It’s just common sense,” Ben said.
FINALLY!
A SAD, INEVITABLE DAY
AS BIDEN QUITS THE RACE
THE NIGHT BEFORE Joe Biden quit his campaign, I was raging to my wife and our cat - who unjustly have had to endure so many political harangues - what a stubborn, selfish man the president had turned out to be.
Trying to cling to his candidacy for a second term, putting the nation – and all of us - at risk of another Donald Trump disaster, but much worse this time. Can you imagine the ego of the man.
But by yesterday afternoon, when Biden finally did “the right thing,” I just felt sad.
Wish came true, yup. But a letdown? Also, yes.
I missed him immediately. I can’t fully explain why, except that I’ve grown to like Joe Biden immensely in the more than three years in which he’s been president, the best president of my lifetime.
Here’s the thing: I’d gone all in on the Biden shtick: the aviator sun glasses, the bike-riding guy from Scranton, car-loving Everyman grinning in the cockpit of his ’67 Corvette Stingray.
He’d done the most important thing anyone could possibly do, saved the country, and all of us in it, from another four years of Donald Trump.
A friend once warned me that's the wrong thing to do, “liking” a politician.
They are not your buddies, he said. Ultimately, they aren’t even nice. The charm they exhibit doesn’t make them a good neighbor. Likeability is political Darwinism, natural selection; it’s impossible for them to get elected if they aren’t fun to be around.
Instead, my friend said, pols, officials, the people in charge, should be judged impersonally, dispassionately on the things they do right, which is rare; and condemned for the what they screw up, which is routine.
SO I GUESS I SHOULDN'T go all weepy about Joe’s exit.
Here’s the thing: it sure took him long enough – maybe too long – and drove everyone crazy waiting for the obvious. And when Joe did do it, it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart, or because he’s a patriot, or because he loves America.
He did it because he had to. Period. After the disaster of his June 27 debate, fellow Democrats, including his supposed “pals” like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, along with the pollsters, the media, rank-and-file voters, the Senate and House creatures of the “down ballot” and even Ben, our cat, they all made it impossible for him to remain in the race.
It's one of the realities of politics: sometimes you can’t do what you want.
Trying to cling to his candidacy for a second term, putting the nation – and all of us - at risk of another Donald Trump disaster, but much worse this time. Can you imagine the ego of the man.
But by yesterday afternoon, when Biden finally did “the right thing,” I just felt sad.
Wish came true, yup. But a letdown? Also, yes.
I missed him immediately. I can’t fully explain why, except that I’ve grown to like Joe Biden immensely in the more than three years in which he’s been president, the best president of my lifetime.
Here’s the thing: I’d gone all in on the Biden shtick: the aviator sun glasses, the bike-riding guy from Scranton, car-loving Everyman grinning in the cockpit of his ’67 Corvette Stingray.
He’d done the most important thing anyone could possibly do, saved the country, and all of us in it, from another four years of Donald Trump.
A friend once warned me that's the wrong thing to do, “liking” a politician.
They are not your buddies, he said. Ultimately, they aren’t even nice. The charm they exhibit doesn’t make them a good neighbor. Likeability is political Darwinism, natural selection; it’s impossible for them to get elected if they aren’t fun to be around.
Instead, my friend said, pols, officials, the people in charge, should be judged impersonally, dispassionately on the things they do right, which is rare; and condemned for the what they screw up, which is routine.
SO I GUESS I SHOULDN'T go all weepy about Joe’s exit.
Here’s the thing: it sure took him long enough – maybe too long – and drove everyone crazy waiting for the obvious. And when Joe did do it, it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart, or because he’s a patriot, or because he loves America.
He did it because he had to. Period. After the disaster of his June 27 debate, fellow Democrats, including his supposed “pals” like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, along with the pollsters, the media, rank-and-file voters, the Senate and House creatures of the “down ballot” and even Ben, our cat, they all made it impossible for him to remain in the race.
It's one of the realities of politics: sometimes you can’t do what you want.
I had an image of Pelosi, the former House speaker and greatest woman politician of our era (so far), descending on his summer home in Delaware, dragging him out, leaping behind the wheel of Stingray, plopping Biden in the passenger seat and driving him far, far away until he “agreed” to leave the race.
None of this is fair to Biden, after all he has done putting the country back to normal after the criminal chaos of Trump’s four years.
But Biden hasn’t been fair, either, being so obstinate, clinging to power, thinking that he could ignore whatever is going on in his body that has made him so frail, his voice too low to be able to make the proper case against Trump.
I DO ADMIT to being surprised by the Republicans in how low and ugly they are, as in how they instantly responded to Biden’s withdrawal. But the GOP playbook is vast, and its chapters go far beyond Rule # 1: Always be a sore loser.
Yesterday’s was # 36 - Never miss a chance to kick a man when he’s down.
Biden leaves the stage and in about a minute and a half later, they’re getting a few whacks into the 81-year-old suffering from Covid, as well as despair.
“Kick him, Mikey.”
“Yeah, Donny, you kick ‘em, too.”
Mikey Johnson, the House speaker:
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”
The “new” Donny Trump, chastened after God herself brushed an assassin’s bullet away from his brain, displayed his newfound compassion:
Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was! He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement.
FOR A MOMENT, Kamala Harris is looking good, terrific, in fact.
Harvesting endorsements, including one from everyone’s favorite uncle, Uncle Joe Biden; from fellow Democrats; hailed as a 59-year-old youngster and democracy’s best, last hope. But just wait until she starts getting the business from the Republicans, the media, jealous fellow party members who dream at night of walking into that Oval Office themselves and not as a guest.
Can Harris stand up to it? Can she rally the party? Can she beat Donald Trump?
Can a sizable chunk of the electorate even know the answer to this civics quiz question: Can you name the current vice president of the United States?
None of this is fair to Biden, after all he has done putting the country back to normal after the criminal chaos of Trump’s four years.
But Biden hasn’t been fair, either, being so obstinate, clinging to power, thinking that he could ignore whatever is going on in his body that has made him so frail, his voice too low to be able to make the proper case against Trump.
I DO ADMIT to being surprised by the Republicans in how low and ugly they are, as in how they instantly responded to Biden’s withdrawal. But the GOP playbook is vast, and its chapters go far beyond Rule # 1: Always be a sore loser.
Yesterday’s was # 36 - Never miss a chance to kick a man when he’s down.
Biden leaves the stage and in about a minute and a half later, they’re getting a few whacks into the 81-year-old suffering from Covid, as well as despair.
“Kick him, Mikey.”
“Yeah, Donny, you kick ‘em, too.”
Mikey Johnson, the House speaker:
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”
The “new” Donny Trump, chastened after God herself brushed an assassin’s bullet away from his brain, displayed his newfound compassion:
Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was! He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement.
FOR A MOMENT, Kamala Harris is looking good, terrific, in fact.
Harvesting endorsements, including one from everyone’s favorite uncle, Uncle Joe Biden; from fellow Democrats; hailed as a 59-year-old youngster and democracy’s best, last hope. But just wait until she starts getting the business from the Republicans, the media, jealous fellow party members who dream at night of walking into that Oval Office themselves and not as a guest.
Can Harris stand up to it? Can she rally the party? Can she beat Donald Trump?
Can a sizable chunk of the electorate even know the answer to this civics quiz question: Can you name the current vice president of the United States?
We should be humble about this: there's a lot we just don't know.
We just don’t know, can’t fathom, how a big part of the country has been driven crazy by Donald Trump. He shouldn’t even be in the race, and here he is, literally dodging bullets, getting legal cases dropped, on and on and on, and we all don’t know how he does it. Therefore, we don’t know what can be done about it.
But on Nov. 5, we’ll know almost everything: Did we do the right thing about throwing Favorite Uncle Joe under the bus? Did we wait too long to do that? Do people loath Donald Trump enough? Will we live free or die? All riddles will be solved.
But one question will haunt our generation and history itself, because it never will be answered:
Could Joe Biden have beaten Donald Trump?
We just don’t know, can’t fathom, how a big part of the country has been driven crazy by Donald Trump. He shouldn’t even be in the race, and here he is, literally dodging bullets, getting legal cases dropped, on and on and on, and we all don’t know how he does it. Therefore, we don’t know what can be done about it.
But on Nov. 5, we’ll know almost everything: Did we do the right thing about throwing Favorite Uncle Joe under the bus? Did we wait too long to do that? Do people loath Donald Trump enough? Will we live free or die? All riddles will be solved.
But one question will haunt our generation and history itself, because it never will be answered:
Could Joe Biden have beaten Donald Trump?
AS HE BATTLES COVID, WHICH
MESSAGE IS BIDEN HEARING:
“GET WELL.” OR, “GET OUT.”
SO, THE PRESIDENT HAS COVID.
After suffering “mild symptoms” Wednesday, President Joe Biden tested positive for the Covid-19 virus and left the campaign trail to recuperate and “self isolate,” while working from his Delaware home.
You’d expect an outpouring of good wishes for a swift recovery, with piles of sympathy cards, calls and emails to the commander-in-chief from political comrades, world leaders and ordinary citizens.
Biden purportedly sent a tweet over X, the loathsome social messaging platform, declaring that "I am feeling good and thank everyone for the well wishes."
But I’m not aware of an avalanche of get-better cards for Biden, at least there have been no hints of that sort encouragement in the icy, just-the-facts news reports about his illness so far.
Indeed, the subliminal theme suggests that the Covid development is just one more sign of frailty and decline perceived on national television June 27 when the 81-year-old Biden flubbed his debate with Donald Trump.
Indeed, the contrast between Biden and Trump seems to grow daily as the Republican convention roars to a finish, delegates euphoric about Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet last weekend.
Trump: the inspiring survivor, proudly wearing a bandage over the ear injured in a sniper’s attack, his fist-pumping cry still echoing throughout the convention hall and nation: fight, fight, fight.
Biden: the Democratic Party’s sick old man, forced to retreat from the campaign trail, carefully, slowly picking his way down the ramp from a presidential aircraft that brought him home, one deliberate step at a time.
Still, you’d expect a modicum of national concern for Biden.
After all, Covid still kills – nothing like the nearly 4,000 weekly deaths when the pandemic was at its peak several years ago. But the virus continues to arrive with a special grudge against old people.
I’M IGNORING, OF COURSE, the elephant in the room – well that’s the wrong political mascot – I’m ignoring the donkey in the room.
Ever since the debate debacle, Biden has been fighting for his political survival, with growing demands he give way to a more vigorous (i.e. younger) and articulate replacement.
Democrats are terrified that not only could Trump win a second term, which would be guaranteed to be far more malevolent than his first, but that Democrats could forfeit control of both chambers of Congress.
Adam Schiff, the California Congressman now running for the Senate and one of Trump’s fiercest and most effective critics, this week issued a sober plea to Biden to leave the race.
“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy,” Schiff said. “And I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Powerhouse Congressional leaders - House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer – were reported to have held separate, private meetings with Biden, warning of dire outcomes.
And today, word spread that former President Barack Obama has told allies that he’s worried about his former vice president’s impact on the race.
Polls show not only do many Democrats want Biden to give up the race, but there is genuine anger at the way he has stubbornly, pridefully refused to step aside, or engage in the conversation, at least so far
AT 1:39 P.M. TODAY, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, announced that Biden would continue working at home, saying that Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the presidential physician, noted that that Biden “is still experiencing mild upper respiratory symptoms.”
“He does not have a fever and his vital signs remain normal,” O’Connor said. “He will continue to conduct the business of the American people.“
So, the medical term – “self isolating” - that describes Biden as working at home to avoid spreading the infection, has political symbolism as well.
Bereft of the good will usually accorded everyone who’s under the weather, Biden continues a second day to manage his bout with Covid while cut off from the public and increasingly friendless, politically,
The incoming messages seem less likely to wish Patient Biden a cheerful “Get well,” than to take the form of a stern demand that Candidate Biden should “Get out.”
After suffering “mild symptoms” Wednesday, President Joe Biden tested positive for the Covid-19 virus and left the campaign trail to recuperate and “self isolate,” while working from his Delaware home.
You’d expect an outpouring of good wishes for a swift recovery, with piles of sympathy cards, calls and emails to the commander-in-chief from political comrades, world leaders and ordinary citizens.
Biden purportedly sent a tweet over X, the loathsome social messaging platform, declaring that "I am feeling good and thank everyone for the well wishes."
But I’m not aware of an avalanche of get-better cards for Biden, at least there have been no hints of that sort encouragement in the icy, just-the-facts news reports about his illness so far.
Indeed, the subliminal theme suggests that the Covid development is just one more sign of frailty and decline perceived on national television June 27 when the 81-year-old Biden flubbed his debate with Donald Trump.
Indeed, the contrast between Biden and Trump seems to grow daily as the Republican convention roars to a finish, delegates euphoric about Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet last weekend.
Trump: the inspiring survivor, proudly wearing a bandage over the ear injured in a sniper’s attack, his fist-pumping cry still echoing throughout the convention hall and nation: fight, fight, fight.
Biden: the Democratic Party’s sick old man, forced to retreat from the campaign trail, carefully, slowly picking his way down the ramp from a presidential aircraft that brought him home, one deliberate step at a time.
Still, you’d expect a modicum of national concern for Biden.
After all, Covid still kills – nothing like the nearly 4,000 weekly deaths when the pandemic was at its peak several years ago. But the virus continues to arrive with a special grudge against old people.
I’M IGNORING, OF COURSE, the elephant in the room – well that’s the wrong political mascot – I’m ignoring the donkey in the room.
Ever since the debate debacle, Biden has been fighting for his political survival, with growing demands he give way to a more vigorous (i.e. younger) and articulate replacement.
Democrats are terrified that not only could Trump win a second term, which would be guaranteed to be far more malevolent than his first, but that Democrats could forfeit control of both chambers of Congress.
Adam Schiff, the California Congressman now running for the Senate and one of Trump’s fiercest and most effective critics, this week issued a sober plea to Biden to leave the race.
“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy,” Schiff said. “And I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Powerhouse Congressional leaders - House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer – were reported to have held separate, private meetings with Biden, warning of dire outcomes.
And today, word spread that former President Barack Obama has told allies that he’s worried about his former vice president’s impact on the race.
Polls show not only do many Democrats want Biden to give up the race, but there is genuine anger at the way he has stubbornly, pridefully refused to step aside, or engage in the conversation, at least so far
AT 1:39 P.M. TODAY, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, announced that Biden would continue working at home, saying that Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the presidential physician, noted that that Biden “is still experiencing mild upper respiratory symptoms.”
“He does not have a fever and his vital signs remain normal,” O’Connor said. “He will continue to conduct the business of the American people.“
So, the medical term – “self isolating” - that describes Biden as working at home to avoid spreading the infection, has political symbolism as well.
Bereft of the good will usually accorded everyone who’s under the weather, Biden continues a second day to manage his bout with Covid while cut off from the public and increasingly friendless, politically,
The incoming messages seem less likely to wish Patient Biden a cheerful “Get well,” than to take the form of a stern demand that Candidate Biden should “Get out.”
AS DEFEATISM STALKS THE ELECTION, DEMOCRATS MUST STAY IN THE GAME - AND PLAY TO WIN
HERE’S SOME BREAKING NEWS for Democrats and all voters of good will:
The 2024 election is not over.
The election is not next week, next month or in two months. It’s Nov. 5.
This means there’s an opportunity to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous and vile politician in our lifetime, and perhaps the most hideous character in all of American history.
But a treacherous counterforce is starting to take hold: defeatism.
Trump’s momentum is so powerful that for some people his takeover of American government is no longer s question, but rather a matter of when work will be finished converting the Oval Office into a throne room.
This inevitability creeps into news reports. The word “if” - as in “... if Donald Trump wins a second term” - seems both obligatory and unconvincing. Sometimes the “if” is left out altogether.
The other night, I heard TV reporter say off-handedly that she had talked to a Democratic fund raiser, who not only was sure that the race was lost, but said the massive defeat would be a “party extinction event.”
That’s an expression that I’ve not heard, and I’m older than, let’s say, Joe Biden.
Yesterday, I saw a posting on The Bulwark website, which is unfriendly to Trump, in which Jonathan V. Last headlined his commentary “It’s Time to Prepare for the Worst,” and proceeded to give readers a talking-to about realism and coming to grips with a probable new Trump era.
THERE’S NO DENYING that events have been relentlessly bad, very bad, for Democrats and fellow voters.
It began with New York Times polls, which, instead of looking at the nation as a whole, concentrated on seven battleground states that are expected to determine the election, and finding that Trump was winning in most of them.
Later came the moment that permanently wrecked our brains, President Joe Biden’s debate, in which he looked grave-ready rather than just old, speaking in a spectral voice that was too quiet and incomprehensible.
And that was followed by an intraparty “debate” about replacing Old Joe with a fresh face, or maybe keeping Old Joe; the outcome was itself disastrous because it ended with no decision, only increased squabbling.
And then there was Supreme Court ruling which said Trump, as a once and future president, could get a way with murder.
And then there was the near assassination in Pennsylvania, with ionic photos of a bloodied Trump defiantly pumping his fists, giving supporters the fight chant while the American flag flew overhead. Put those images side by side with any photos of Old Joe at his most charming.
And then Judge Aileen Cannon opened the new week by dismissing the stolen records case, the most clear-cut of the cases against Trump.
As I’m writing now, I’m constantly scanning the news streams for the next development that will batter the spirits of soon-to-be-extinct Democrats. In the event your TV isn’t working, because you threw something at it after the last blast of bad news, I’ll be sure to let you know when there’s something fresh and mean and heart-breaking.
THIS IS DANGEROUS STUFF: defeatism is an affliction that can take hold during an election campaign or any other human undertaking. It’s destructive. When we were young and candid, it was known as chickening out.
Defeatism is particularly noxious because it’s something we do to ourselves. When the stakes are so high, as they are in this election – when the end means either democracy or dictatorship – this sort of self-inflicted surrender is a sin.
Discouragement, disappointment, hopelessness, resignation, fatalism, they are lethal because they cancel the one thing, the only thing, that we have under our control, which is our will to keep trying.
Sure, it sounds grown-up, mature, practical and responsible to realize that even before the votes are counted it’s obvious that we’re going to lose, so that it makes sense to prepare now to survive the consequences.
But we can’t have it both ways – staying the in the fight or or surrendering. Defeatism is not a neutral step. Planning to lose means giving up the possibility of winning.
I WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT SPORTS, because they provide the best metaphors and cliches that Democrats and their pals desperately need at this moment if the election is to be saved.
We need an inspired coach and enthusiastic cheerleaders, not disaster forecasters and fallout shelter architects.
We need the kind of encouragement - short and simple bits of wisdom – that can be plastered onto locker room walls, reminding players what their brains require as they head onto the field:
The 2024 election is not over.
The election is not next week, next month or in two months. It’s Nov. 5.
This means there’s an opportunity to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous and vile politician in our lifetime, and perhaps the most hideous character in all of American history.
But a treacherous counterforce is starting to take hold: defeatism.
Trump’s momentum is so powerful that for some people his takeover of American government is no longer s question, but rather a matter of when work will be finished converting the Oval Office into a throne room.
This inevitability creeps into news reports. The word “if” - as in “... if Donald Trump wins a second term” - seems both obligatory and unconvincing. Sometimes the “if” is left out altogether.
The other night, I heard TV reporter say off-handedly that she had talked to a Democratic fund raiser, who not only was sure that the race was lost, but said the massive defeat would be a “party extinction event.”
That’s an expression that I’ve not heard, and I’m older than, let’s say, Joe Biden.
Yesterday, I saw a posting on The Bulwark website, which is unfriendly to Trump, in which Jonathan V. Last headlined his commentary “It’s Time to Prepare for the Worst,” and proceeded to give readers a talking-to about realism and coming to grips with a probable new Trump era.
THERE’S NO DENYING that events have been relentlessly bad, very bad, for Democrats and fellow voters.
It began with New York Times polls, which, instead of looking at the nation as a whole, concentrated on seven battleground states that are expected to determine the election, and finding that Trump was winning in most of them.
Later came the moment that permanently wrecked our brains, President Joe Biden’s debate, in which he looked grave-ready rather than just old, speaking in a spectral voice that was too quiet and incomprehensible.
And that was followed by an intraparty “debate” about replacing Old Joe with a fresh face, or maybe keeping Old Joe; the outcome was itself disastrous because it ended with no decision, only increased squabbling.
And then there was Supreme Court ruling which said Trump, as a once and future president, could get a way with murder.
And then there was the near assassination in Pennsylvania, with ionic photos of a bloodied Trump defiantly pumping his fists, giving supporters the fight chant while the American flag flew overhead. Put those images side by side with any photos of Old Joe at his most charming.
And then Judge Aileen Cannon opened the new week by dismissing the stolen records case, the most clear-cut of the cases against Trump.
As I’m writing now, I’m constantly scanning the news streams for the next development that will batter the spirits of soon-to-be-extinct Democrats. In the event your TV isn’t working, because you threw something at it after the last blast of bad news, I’ll be sure to let you know when there’s something fresh and mean and heart-breaking.
THIS IS DANGEROUS STUFF: defeatism is an affliction that can take hold during an election campaign or any other human undertaking. It’s destructive. When we were young and candid, it was known as chickening out.
Defeatism is particularly noxious because it’s something we do to ourselves. When the stakes are so high, as they are in this election – when the end means either democracy or dictatorship – this sort of self-inflicted surrender is a sin.
Discouragement, disappointment, hopelessness, resignation, fatalism, they are lethal because they cancel the one thing, the only thing, that we have under our control, which is our will to keep trying.
Sure, it sounds grown-up, mature, practical and responsible to realize that even before the votes are counted it’s obvious that we’re going to lose, so that it makes sense to prepare now to survive the consequences.
But we can’t have it both ways – staying the in the fight or or surrendering. Defeatism is not a neutral step. Planning to lose means giving up the possibility of winning.
I WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT SPORTS, because they provide the best metaphors and cliches that Democrats and their pals desperately need at this moment if the election is to be saved.
We need an inspired coach and enthusiastic cheerleaders, not disaster forecasters and fallout shelter architects.
We need the kind of encouragement - short and simple bits of wisdom – that can be plastered onto locker room walls, reminding players what their brains require as they head onto the field:
| IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER. WINNERS NEVER QUIT. YOU CAN'T WIN IF YOU DON’T PLAY. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOT A FACT; IT’S AN OPINION. |
Lately at our house, we’ve taken to streaming the British Premier League – soccer. After a couple of seasons, we still understand little about the sport and remain confused by arcana, like the offside rules.
But we have seen matches that end in stunning upsets during the closing minutes and seconds.
Even as TV cameras show fans of the losing side exiting the stadium in disgust at their team’s betrayal, things are happening down on the pitch.
Suddenly, the presumptive losers score a goal during a mob scene at the net that’s so confusing several replays are needed for commentators and fans to figure out who did what and how.
Or the losing side gets a penalty kick, in which a lone player gets a shot at the goal that’s almost impossible for the opposing goal keeper to block.
“You, you, you defeatists,” we yell at the departing fans who have missed the most thrilling moments of the game. “You should have stayed in your overpriced seats.” (We have no idea what tickets cost.)
To be honest, these things usually don’t happen.
But they can.
There’s a reason why underdogs often don’t win.
But they can.
Teams that are behind rarely overturn lopsided scores.
But they can.
But we have seen matches that end in stunning upsets during the closing minutes and seconds.
Even as TV cameras show fans of the losing side exiting the stadium in disgust at their team’s betrayal, things are happening down on the pitch.
Suddenly, the presumptive losers score a goal during a mob scene at the net that’s so confusing several replays are needed for commentators and fans to figure out who did what and how.
Or the losing side gets a penalty kick, in which a lone player gets a shot at the goal that’s almost impossible for the opposing goal keeper to block.
“You, you, you defeatists,” we yell at the departing fans who have missed the most thrilling moments of the game. “You should have stayed in your overpriced seats.” (We have no idea what tickets cost.)
To be honest, these things usually don’t happen.
But they can.
There’s a reason why underdogs often don’t win.
But they can.
Teams that are behind rarely overturn lopsided scores.
But they can.
FIRST THOUGHTS ABOUT AN UGLY, AMERICAN DAY
AS SOMEONE who loathes and fears Donald Trump, I’m relieved that he survived a would-be assassin’s attempt to end his life.
Now, he can be confronted the right way, kept from the White House by voters, not a gunman. Now, he can be tried for his many sins by juries, not vigilantes.
Those of us who are of Trump’s and Joe Biden’s generation have witnessed successful assassinations, and we know their awful result.
John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King were snatched from our lives and our history before the promise of their life’s work was fully realized.
And the nation, and the world at large, remain the worse for their violent early exits.
I AM WRITING THIS EARLY in the morning the day after what was an ugly day, the ugliest so far in the 2024 election campaign.
So, I haven’t read the latest news, especially about what’s known about the purported assassin.
Last I heard, the gunman was killed by the Secret Service, that a person attending Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania was also killed and that two other persons were critically wounded.
So, I don’t know even the basic facts that already may in public view and surely will be by today’s end.
WHAT WON’T CHANGE, no matter what the onslaught of breaking news tells us in the coming hours and days, are several probabilities.
One is that Trump, to his followers, will assume even greater god-like stature. The Trump cult will now have a martyr, and a living one at that.
As awful as the news will be about the plot to kill Donald Trump, whether by one crazy man, a leftist study group, a Wall Street PAC, the Republicans will not be content with the truth.
Indeed, Trumpsters yesterday already were spinning up their lies, fantasies and conspiracies to glorify their leader and demonize Biden, Democrats and everyone else trying to block Trump’s march to become a dictator.
Also, the nation, once again, will miss an opportunity to confront and tame its violent character, and in particular, curb the use of guns whose only purpose is to kill presidents and the rest of us.
Democrats, sadly, will take the attempt on Trump’s life as one more dispiriting setback in a string of relentless misfortunes – Biden’s terrible debate, unsettling polls, the party’s fracturing constituencies – and lose still more ground and waste more time in the campaign to save democracy.
ON THIS LAST POINT, I’m hoping to be wrong.
My own plan, right after breakfast, is to hand-print another batch of postcards to send to folks in states where there are crucial Senate and House races, imagining that at least a few recipients will vote the way my scrawled messages suggest.
I hope not to let up, not for a second, in my contempt for and fear about Donald Trump and the terror he already has visited upon my country and the people I love.
I will not stop in worrying about and working against his vile plans going forward to do permanent and historic harm to the country and to the people I love.
As I said, the last I knew, Trump’s wounds were not serious, and he has survived in good health.
I am glad of this, because in the coming months, I’ll get to keep on learning, talking and writing about how hideous he is and what, collectively, we can do to stop him.
Best of all, come November, I'll get to vote against him.
Now, he can be confronted the right way, kept from the White House by voters, not a gunman. Now, he can be tried for his many sins by juries, not vigilantes.
Those of us who are of Trump’s and Joe Biden’s generation have witnessed successful assassinations, and we know their awful result.
John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King were snatched from our lives and our history before the promise of their life’s work was fully realized.
And the nation, and the world at large, remain the worse for their violent early exits.
I AM WRITING THIS EARLY in the morning the day after what was an ugly day, the ugliest so far in the 2024 election campaign.
So, I haven’t read the latest news, especially about what’s known about the purported assassin.
Last I heard, the gunman was killed by the Secret Service, that a person attending Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania was also killed and that two other persons were critically wounded.
So, I don’t know even the basic facts that already may in public view and surely will be by today’s end.
WHAT WON’T CHANGE, no matter what the onslaught of breaking news tells us in the coming hours and days, are several probabilities.
One is that Trump, to his followers, will assume even greater god-like stature. The Trump cult will now have a martyr, and a living one at that.
As awful as the news will be about the plot to kill Donald Trump, whether by one crazy man, a leftist study group, a Wall Street PAC, the Republicans will not be content with the truth.
Indeed, Trumpsters yesterday already were spinning up their lies, fantasies and conspiracies to glorify their leader and demonize Biden, Democrats and everyone else trying to block Trump’s march to become a dictator.
Also, the nation, once again, will miss an opportunity to confront and tame its violent character, and in particular, curb the use of guns whose only purpose is to kill presidents and the rest of us.
Democrats, sadly, will take the attempt on Trump’s life as one more dispiriting setback in a string of relentless misfortunes – Biden’s terrible debate, unsettling polls, the party’s fracturing constituencies – and lose still more ground and waste more time in the campaign to save democracy.
ON THIS LAST POINT, I’m hoping to be wrong.
My own plan, right after breakfast, is to hand-print another batch of postcards to send to folks in states where there are crucial Senate and House races, imagining that at least a few recipients will vote the way my scrawled messages suggest.
I hope not to let up, not for a second, in my contempt for and fear about Donald Trump and the terror he already has visited upon my country and the people I love.
I will not stop in worrying about and working against his vile plans going forward to do permanent and historic harm to the country and to the people I love.
As I said, the last I knew, Trump’s wounds were not serious, and he has survived in good health.
I am glad of this, because in the coming months, I’ll get to keep on learning, talking and writing about how hideous he is and what, collectively, we can do to stop him.
Best of all, come November, I'll get to vote against him.
A BIT OF LUCK AND A LITTLE LOVE
COULD GET DEMOCRATS THROUGH
THEIR CRUSADE TO STOP TRUMP
WHAT’S THE SINGLE, most important crisis of the election?
Is it deciding whether to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee?
Or shaming the media into paying as much attention to Donald Trump’s monstrous character defects as they are in monitoring Biden’s struggles with old age?
Nope.
It’s staying personable: treating each other with respect, kindness and dignity, keeping connected to each other despite our differences.
We can’t argue that Donald Trump is too abhorrent to be allowed back in the White House, if our tactics mimic his savage insults, slurs and sneers.
More importantly, we cannot win, much less survive, if we turn on one another.
None of this is easy, especially now, when the stakes in the election are so desperate; when our choices seem so limited; when time is so short; and when the outcomes are so uncertain.
It will take humility, discipline and equal bits of luck and love to make sure our debates stay civil and that our conversations nurture, rather than maim, the participants.
AN EXAMPLE of how to do this right way is a comment appended to my last posting on this blog by Jody McPhillips.
Jody is a friend, but what’s important for this discussion is that she’s a superstar when it comes to making the world a better place.
She was a reporter at the Providence Journal, where she served a stint in the paper’s Washington bureau. Later, she and her husband, Dave Bloss, the paper’s sports editor, undertook second careers to train new reporters in places that are hostile and dangerous for journalists, like Cambodia, East Timor and Georgia (the country).
Back home in Rhode Island, they are deeply interested, to put it mildly, in the election.
Take Jody’s contribution to the comments section of my last blog posting, in which I criticized Biden’s behavior and tactics in fighting to hold onto the Democratic nomination.
Hers is the classic way to do a tough, but humane rebuttal.
She goes after the ideas and not the speaker, at the outset, gently pushing aside anything that suggested it was personal:
You know I disagree with all of this.
She avoids saying things like what an idiot her friend, the author, turned out to be. Or questioning his limited qualifications, like mentioning the not-so-well-known college he attended. Or making snide asides: You do remember you’re actually older than Biden?
Nor does she savage the essay. Instead, she quotes one particularly objectionable passage:
A "selfish, untruthful bully, who is dividing his party and country" -- really?
Then moves on to state her case, with some eloquence, about the media and others who are paying undue attention to Biden, while virtually ignoring Trump; she argues that replacing Biden is unworkable; and states that she’s sticking with him.
How about a politician of his generation who is putting the best spin on things as he sees it, and who knows that *any* admission of weakness will be relentlessly, cruelly used against him?
This blatant media pile-on breaks my heart. It is so outrageously unfair that we hear barely a whisper about Donald Trump's incessant, malicious lying and demagoguing during this travesty of a debate, while pundits can't shut up about ashen-faced Joe and his struggles to get words out.
The guy was exhausted and sick. Bad judgment? Sure. Deserving of all this contempt and anger? NO. I read a lot of public commentary, and I believe actual voters are with Joe, as opposed to the Beltway crowd.
And I will keep working to get him elected a. because it's too late for any of the fanciful schemes being floated to work and b. because he has earned our support.
HERE’S THE THING (to use one of Biden’s pet phrases): Maybe she’s right.
Nobody can guarantee that she is, of course. Certainly not me. My claim in what is a long-running discussion is that I have been on both sides of it.
In March of last year, I argued that Joe Biden was too old to seek a second term, and there were plenty of able substitutes. I wrote this headline:
JOE BIDEN'S GREAT. IT
DOESN'T MAKE HIM AN
'INDISPENSABLE MAN'
Six months later, I decided that Joe Biden wasn’t too old after all. No other candidate was as well-known; magically, Biden had turned into the indispensable man, which required this headline:
'OH, NO!'
LET'S NOT WAKE UP NOV. 6, 2024 SAYING:
'WE DITCHED JOE BIDEN AS BEING TOO OLD'
Now, because of Biden’ dismal performance in the July 27 debate with Trump, I’ve again swerved my vintage Model T around.
I’m terrified Biden cannot win, especially among a relatively few, but critical, voters in “battleground” states, who seem only dimly aware, if at all, of Trump’s threat to the country.
Is it deciding whether to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee?
Or shaming the media into paying as much attention to Donald Trump’s monstrous character defects as they are in monitoring Biden’s struggles with old age?
Nope.
It’s staying personable: treating each other with respect, kindness and dignity, keeping connected to each other despite our differences.
We can’t argue that Donald Trump is too abhorrent to be allowed back in the White House, if our tactics mimic his savage insults, slurs and sneers.
More importantly, we cannot win, much less survive, if we turn on one another.
None of this is easy, especially now, when the stakes in the election are so desperate; when our choices seem so limited; when time is so short; and when the outcomes are so uncertain.
It will take humility, discipline and equal bits of luck and love to make sure our debates stay civil and that our conversations nurture, rather than maim, the participants.
AN EXAMPLE of how to do this right way is a comment appended to my last posting on this blog by Jody McPhillips.
Jody is a friend, but what’s important for this discussion is that she’s a superstar when it comes to making the world a better place.
She was a reporter at the Providence Journal, where she served a stint in the paper’s Washington bureau. Later, she and her husband, Dave Bloss, the paper’s sports editor, undertook second careers to train new reporters in places that are hostile and dangerous for journalists, like Cambodia, East Timor and Georgia (the country).
Back home in Rhode Island, they are deeply interested, to put it mildly, in the election.
Take Jody’s contribution to the comments section of my last blog posting, in which I criticized Biden’s behavior and tactics in fighting to hold onto the Democratic nomination.
Hers is the classic way to do a tough, but humane rebuttal.
She goes after the ideas and not the speaker, at the outset, gently pushing aside anything that suggested it was personal:
You know I disagree with all of this.
She avoids saying things like what an idiot her friend, the author, turned out to be. Or questioning his limited qualifications, like mentioning the not-so-well-known college he attended. Or making snide asides: You do remember you’re actually older than Biden?
Nor does she savage the essay. Instead, she quotes one particularly objectionable passage:
A "selfish, untruthful bully, who is dividing his party and country" -- really?
Then moves on to state her case, with some eloquence, about the media and others who are paying undue attention to Biden, while virtually ignoring Trump; she argues that replacing Biden is unworkable; and states that she’s sticking with him.
How about a politician of his generation who is putting the best spin on things as he sees it, and who knows that *any* admission of weakness will be relentlessly, cruelly used against him?
This blatant media pile-on breaks my heart. It is so outrageously unfair that we hear barely a whisper about Donald Trump's incessant, malicious lying and demagoguing during this travesty of a debate, while pundits can't shut up about ashen-faced Joe and his struggles to get words out.
The guy was exhausted and sick. Bad judgment? Sure. Deserving of all this contempt and anger? NO. I read a lot of public commentary, and I believe actual voters are with Joe, as opposed to the Beltway crowd.
And I will keep working to get him elected a. because it's too late for any of the fanciful schemes being floated to work and b. because he has earned our support.
HERE’S THE THING (to use one of Biden’s pet phrases): Maybe she’s right.
Nobody can guarantee that she is, of course. Certainly not me. My claim in what is a long-running discussion is that I have been on both sides of it.
In March of last year, I argued that Joe Biden was too old to seek a second term, and there were plenty of able substitutes. I wrote this headline:
JOE BIDEN'S GREAT. IT
DOESN'T MAKE HIM AN
'INDISPENSABLE MAN'
Six months later, I decided that Joe Biden wasn’t too old after all. No other candidate was as well-known; magically, Biden had turned into the indispensable man, which required this headline:
'OH, NO!'
LET'S NOT WAKE UP NOV. 6, 2024 SAYING:
'WE DITCHED JOE BIDEN AS BEING TOO OLD'
Now, because of Biden’ dismal performance in the July 27 debate with Trump, I’ve again swerved my vintage Model T around.
I’m terrified Biden cannot win, especially among a relatively few, but critical, voters in “battleground” states, who seem only dimly aware, if at all, of Trump’s threat to the country.
LAST NIGHT'S PRESS CONFERENCE did little to settle my jitters. Sure, Biden did better than in the debate, but that’s not saying much. His delivery seemed to me halting, sometimes unclear and hardly inspiring. And he made the much anticipated stumbles, for example, saying “Trump” when he meant Kamala Harris, his vice president.
This will happen every time he shows up in public: the president of the United States will make news not because of what he says, but whether he survives or flubs the moment.
I’m imagining the next debate, scheduled for Sept. 10.
Would a compassionate person, and more importantly, the rest of the country, want to subject Biden to such an ordeal?
Or would we rather that Donald Trump face Kamala Harris – if Trump, in that case, dared to show up at all?
People will disagree on the answer.
But if we are kind and united, we can put Donald Trump behind us on Nov. 5, leaving the historians and the courts to judge the effect of his evil trespass into our politics.
This will happen every time he shows up in public: the president of the United States will make news not because of what he says, but whether he survives or flubs the moment.
I’m imagining the next debate, scheduled for Sept. 10.
Would a compassionate person, and more importantly, the rest of the country, want to subject Biden to such an ordeal?
Or would we rather that Donald Trump face Kamala Harris – if Trump, in that case, dared to show up at all?
People will disagree on the answer.
But if we are kind and united, we can put Donald Trump behind us on Nov. 5, leaving the historians and the courts to judge the effect of his evil trespass into our politics.
THE ‘OLD’ JOE BIDEN BOTCHED THE DEBATE; A ‘NEW’ BIDEN IS MAKING THINGS WORSE
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN at his July 5 TV interview. CREDIT: ABC News
FOR THE FIRST TIME this year, I think Donald Trump will probably win the election in November, turning America into a diabolical dictatorship.
If so, it will be Joe Biden’s fault.
Let’s put aside age, because that’s not the immediate issue. Instead of looking at Biden, 81, as an old person, let’s consider him simply as a man, whom we used to like.
Biden, the man, put on a devastating performance June 27, at his “debate” with Donald Trump. He was frighteningly incoherent and failed to make a cogent, convincing case against Trump, which should have been an easy 90 minutes for an experienced politician.
Since then, Biden, the man, has only made things worse by declaring a civil war within his own party, dismissing his baffled and alarmed critics with contempt and disrespect.
By dividing, rather than unifying Democrats, Biden, the man, threatens the chances that Democrats will be able to control Congress, the only plausible defense during four years of terror promised by Trump.
Here’s what Biden, the man, could be doing since the debate:
THE THEME underlying Biden's behavior since the debate is his suggestion that he’s the Indispensable Man.
In this, he is imitating his opposite number, the most despicable man in American history.
Donald Trump declared, after he was nominated in 2016 at the Republican National Convention:
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
Here’s what Joe Biden, wrote to members of Congress on July 8, responding to people questioning his ability to win:
“... I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”
Nobody is the “only” or “best” man or woman who can do anything, including running the United States. It is absurd, as a matter of fact, and it’s a warning sign that the speaker has lost his objectivity.
Does Biden, the man, honestly believe that the woman he chose as his vice president, Kamala Harris, is not capable of serving as his replacement or running successfully against Trump?
LET’S LOOK MORE CLOSELY at what Joe Biden, a man, and a responsible one, could be doing.
He could candidly confront what went wrong during the debate, and, if he doesn’t know, he should get to the bottom of it – then share his insights with the public.
After all, it was Biden who challenged Trump to the debate and outlined the ground rules. The goal was to jump-start his stalled campaign. Biden did just the opposite.
It was all Biden’s doing, not the people who have reacted to his failed performance. He was impaired that night; he should find out how and why, and outline a plan to how he can overcome it, or, if necessary, how he'll get out of the race.
As to how he could respond to his fellow Democrats, who are as alarmed as Biden is about the consequences of a Trump presidency, he should embrace them, listen to them, work with them, rather than challenge their loyalty and character.
Two reasons:
One, is that he might learn something from them. They voted for him, supported him, trusted him, celebrated him. Now, their futures are imperiled.
Two, the worst thing that can happen to the Democrats is to fight among themselves. A splintered party has zero chances of winning on Nov. 5.
Instead, Biden is using his position as president, the leader of his party, the winner in the primary races, to divide people into enemies and allies. Echoes of Donald Trump, and Dick Nixon.
If so, it will be Joe Biden’s fault.
Let’s put aside age, because that’s not the immediate issue. Instead of looking at Biden, 81, as an old person, let’s consider him simply as a man, whom we used to like.
Biden, the man, put on a devastating performance June 27, at his “debate” with Donald Trump. He was frighteningly incoherent and failed to make a cogent, convincing case against Trump, which should have been an easy 90 minutes for an experienced politician.
Since then, Biden, the man, has only made things worse by declaring a civil war within his own party, dismissing his baffled and alarmed critics with contempt and disrespect.
By dividing, rather than unifying Democrats, Biden, the man, threatens the chances that Democrats will be able to control Congress, the only plausible defense during four years of terror promised by Trump.
Here’s what Biden, the man, could be doing since the debate:
- Explain what went wrong.
- Take responsibility for his performance that night and in the days following.
- Be a conciliator, rather than an antagonist, in the discussion of what he and the Democrats should do now.
- Welcome, rather than condemn, the alarms his fellow Democrats have raised, both about his - and the party’s – ability to win on Nov. 5.
- Tell the truth.
THE THEME underlying Biden's behavior since the debate is his suggestion that he’s the Indispensable Man.
In this, he is imitating his opposite number, the most despicable man in American history.
Donald Trump declared, after he was nominated in 2016 at the Republican National Convention:
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
Here’s what Joe Biden, wrote to members of Congress on July 8, responding to people questioning his ability to win:
“... I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”
Nobody is the “only” or “best” man or woman who can do anything, including running the United States. It is absurd, as a matter of fact, and it’s a warning sign that the speaker has lost his objectivity.
Does Biden, the man, honestly believe that the woman he chose as his vice president, Kamala Harris, is not capable of serving as his replacement or running successfully against Trump?
LET’S LOOK MORE CLOSELY at what Joe Biden, a man, and a responsible one, could be doing.
He could candidly confront what went wrong during the debate, and, if he doesn’t know, he should get to the bottom of it – then share his insights with the public.
After all, it was Biden who challenged Trump to the debate and outlined the ground rules. The goal was to jump-start his stalled campaign. Biden did just the opposite.
It was all Biden’s doing, not the people who have reacted to his failed performance. He was impaired that night; he should find out how and why, and outline a plan to how he can overcome it, or, if necessary, how he'll get out of the race.
As to how he could respond to his fellow Democrats, who are as alarmed as Biden is about the consequences of a Trump presidency, he should embrace them, listen to them, work with them, rather than challenge their loyalty and character.
Two reasons:
One, is that he might learn something from them. They voted for him, supported him, trusted him, celebrated him. Now, their futures are imperiled.
Two, the worst thing that can happen to the Democrats is to fight among themselves. A splintered party has zero chances of winning on Nov. 5.
Instead, Biden is using his position as president, the leader of his party, the winner in the primary races, to divide people into enemies and allies. Echoes of Donald Trump, and Dick Nixon.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS interviews President Biden. CREDIT: ABC news
FINALLY, BACK TO THE “TRUTH.”
If Biden, the man, were being honest about a sincere exploration of what went wrong, and what the country can do about, I think he would have broad support.
Instead, he’s given a number of questionable excuses for what went wrong and downplayed the seriousness of his disastrous appearance.
On July 5, Biden sat down for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which was supposed to show that the man we saw on June 27 was an aberration. Here’s some of the transcript:
If Biden, the man, were being honest about a sincere exploration of what went wrong, and what the country can do about, I think he would have broad support.
Instead, he’s given a number of questionable excuses for what went wrong and downplayed the seriousness of his disastrous appearance.
On July 5, Biden sat down for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which was supposed to show that the man we saw on June 27 was an aberration. Here’s some of the transcript:
| BIDEN: It was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and — and a bad night. STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you say you were exhausted. And — and I know you’ve said that before as well, but you came — and you did have a tough month. But you came home from Europe about 11 or 12 days before the debate, spent six days in Camp David. Why wasn’t that enough rest time, enough recovery time? BIDEN: Because I was sick. I was feeling terrible. Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked if they did a Covid test because they’re trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold. STEPHANOPOULOS: And — did you ever watch the debate afterwards? BIDEN: I don’t think I did, no. |
Really?
Biden, the man, did not watch a replay of the debate, the event he planned would turn the race around, but which did the opposite?
How could any man, woman, anyone, not watch the replay? And if not, why not?
Joe Biden is now a shadow of the man who’s had an exemplary presidency. He’s emerged as a selfish, untruthful bully, who is dividing his party and country.
This should be the old Joe Biden’s finest moment: a good man, leading the country to solve a catastrophic problem in an impossibly short length of time, listening, learning, healing and unifying.
I’m dismayed by the new Joe Biden. Of course, I'll vote for him, if it comes to that.
But I sure miss the old one.
Biden, the man, did not watch a replay of the debate, the event he planned would turn the race around, but which did the opposite?
How could any man, woman, anyone, not watch the replay? And if not, why not?
Joe Biden is now a shadow of the man who’s had an exemplary presidency. He’s emerged as a selfish, untruthful bully, who is dividing his party and country.
This should be the old Joe Biden’s finest moment: a good man, leading the country to solve a catastrophic problem in an impossibly short length of time, listening, learning, healing and unifying.
I’m dismayed by the new Joe Biden. Of course, I'll vote for him, if it comes to that.
But I sure miss the old one.
Election Countdown
4 MONTHS LEFT; STILL TIME
FOR THE RIGHT DEMOCRAT
TO DEFEAT DONALD TRUMP
NOTE: Things are changing fast, so that anything I’m writing now might be out-of-date and irrelevant as you’re reading this.
THERE ARE ONLY FOUR MONTHS to go until the Nov. 5 election, and the astonishing events of the past two weeks mean that there’s almost no time to waste to ensure a positive outcome.
Which is different than saying time has run out. Or, practically speaking, there’s no time left. Or that it’s a scientific fact that there’s insufficient time.
The consequences of Donald Trump returning to the White House are too awful for our country, and really, the rest of the world, meaning that while there is still an opportunity for a Democratic win, we must take full advantage.
EVERYTHING CHANGED for the country on June 27, when President Joe Biden put on the most devastating public demonstration of incompetence and unfitness to campaign or to hold office in the history of politics, and this goes for things that really happened in the past, or have been imagined in great fiction, like a Shakespearean tragedy.
I wish that was an exaggeration.
But if you’re like me, you’ve had enough space to have processed how terrible Biden’s part of the “debate” was and to have reached some conclusions.
Mine are simple:
I want Joe Biden gone from the race, fast; and for him to be replaced by someone terrific.
I HOPED HE WOULD QUIT on July Fourth, which would have been a perfect patriotic occasion.
But the day after will do. Supposedly, he’s to do a TV interview that night. That, too, would be fine moment for an announcement. So would Biden standing on a White House balcony and shouting: “I’m toast.”
Heck, Fifth Avenue would do, watching Trump around shooting people, now that the Supreme Court says anything he does is okay.
What I don’t want to hear is another word out of Biden’s mouth, other than “I will no longer be a candidate; if nominated, I will not accept.”
Same goes for his campaign, his “team,” his “advisors,” his family, including Dr. Jill (not a medical doctor) and especially Hunter Biden, who belongs in jail, not at Camp David strategy sessions urging Dad to keep on keeping on.
I don’t want to hear about what a great president he’s been, or what a debt we owe him for keeping Trump at bay four years ago, or that he’s a nice guy. That’s all just more “malarkey,” as Joe might have put in the days when he had something to say.
IF THERE’S the slightest chance that Joe Biden is, in any way, still functional during some part of any day or night or week, and if he retains the ability to say something spontaneously and without the help of electronic devices, it should be that he understands that he is not fit to seek a second term and will release delegates pledged to him at the national convention.
It would be nice if Biden’s withdrawal includes an apology, but none is needed. Because after what he put us and the rest of the country through two Thursdays ago, who cares whether he’s sorry, only that he’s gone.
MANY UNKNOWNS REMAIN in the next four months, but one thing is absolutely certain: Joe Biden cannot win.
After his babbling, incoherent, slack-jawed debacle at the “debate” with Donald Trump, Biden cannot be considered a serious candidate, and it would be a betrayal for those of us who believe in Democracy to pretend he can or should.
I personally want someone I can absolutely believe in, and her name is not Kamala Harris.
A lot of people don’t like Harris. For me, her name now brings unpleasant associations. The fact that she's vice president does not mean she's entitled for consideration; to the contrary, she's dropped from my list as being part of the Fib Machine that hid the fact that Biden’s brain has been on the blink.
I’m inspired by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
You may have someone else in mind.
I’ll be right beside you, as long as she or he, can win.
So, Democrats, let’s get moving.
And fast.
While there’s still time.
BRIAN C. JONES
I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 60 years, long enough to have learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about their answers.
This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, 2022, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I think about trying to reach her via cell phone.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about their answers.
This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, 2022, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I think about trying to reach her via cell phone.
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