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5/31/24

5/31/2024

VERDICT:
DON’T GIVE UP ON HOPE

HERE’S WHAT I got wrong about the Manhattan trial that has now marked Donald John Trump as a felon.
     It wasn’t the guilty verdict itself; or the jury’s speed in reaching it; or even the clean sweep decision – guilty on all 34 counts.
     Almost everyone got some or all of those guesses wrong.
     The pundits, the legal eagles, analysts, inside-the-courtroom, outside-the-courthouse reporters – collectively, The Experts – didn’t forecast what happened late on a May 30 afternoon.
    It’s a lesson that as much as we lean on and even respect The Experts, who arguably do their best, they are mortals and rarely have all the answers.
     What I got wrong was forgetting that the most important factor of the 2024 election is hope.
     I should know better.
     Hope is the real X-factor of any crisis, no more so than an election that’s the most consequential of my lifetime .
     None of us knows what’s going to happen on Nov. 5. At best, some are “worried;” and, at worst, others are "resigned" to an outcome in which America delivers itself to a dystopian dictatorship.
     The odds often seem unsettling.
     Bad enough that Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, and other Republican notables, dressed up like Trump, showed up at the courthouse to support the defendant, then, after the verdict, attacked the justice system.
     The most depressing factor in this campaign was, and is, that millions and millions of Americans say they’ll vote for a failed president, a serial liar, an insurrectionist, a racist and an anti-environmentalist.
     All of which takes a toll on hope.

SO IT WAS with the New York trial.
     My prediction was that there would be a hung jury – that one or more jurors would disagree with her or his fellows, resulting in a mistrial, which Trump would claim as an acquittal.
     The case sounded too complicated. The jury needed to believe that Trump – long, long ago in 2016 - purchased the silence of porn celebrity Stormy Daniels about an even earlier encounter with her, then faked business records to pay the bill, all with the purpose of cheating on election laws.
     Frankly, a fair-minded anti-Trumper could reasonably agree to disagree with the prosecution. We also could suspect that a member of the Trump cult had lied during jury selection to become the stealth hold-out.
     There was also Trump’s most inscrutable, mysterious characteristic that has served him throughout his P.T. Barnum career in business and politics – his ability to fool so many, then to get away with it.
     He’d managed to stall the other three pending indictments, about the far more serious charges of attempted election subversion and possession of secret records possession, so that those trials won’t occur until after the election – if ever.

HOPE WAS AT A LOW EBB when I returned from an errand late in afternoon and my wife reported that the jury had reached a verdict.
     She been listening to the radio (we are old enough so that’s how we still get a lot of our news).
     My reaction was that it was too soon, just two days of deliberations, rather than the two months I’d expected, and so this had to mean acquittal.
     Rather than have my heart broken with the next “Breaking News” report, I went outside to adjust the pressure of the tires on our car. Better to do something positive.
     When I returned, my wife had more news.
     “Guilty!” my wife announced. “On all counts. Thirty-four counts.”

STUNNED. AND ASHAMED.
     Shame on me: I had gotten it wrong. No mistrial, as I’d predicted. Nobody likes to be wrong, although I knew that somehow, I’d get over that.
     But the real shame was that I’d forgotten the most important factor of the crusade to protect American democracy: hope.
     I’d let Trump mess with my brain, nearly extinguishing hope. There were no excuses for that. After all, I live in a state whose motto is “Hope.” “Hope” is on the state flag. Hope is on the Rhode Island state seal.
     It’s possible that the conviction, in the end, will work in Trump’s favor and inspire even more voters to come to his rescue.
     And while it’s unlikely he’ll end up in prison, even that wouldn’t necessarily be the end of Trump. Many giants of history have spent time in the slammer, heroes like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and in Trump’s case, Adolf Hitler.
     Appellate courts surely could overturn the jury’s verdict – The Experts tell us there’s plenty of legal wriggle room.
     But the Manhattan jury did more than declare Donald John Trump a felon 34 times. It reminded me, and I think lots of others, of the power of hope.
     As individuals, we can’t do much to influence the outcome of an election. We can cast our one vote; donate money; write letters; argue with neighbors; maybe go to the Six States That Count to ring doorbells.
     But hope – that’s something we can control.
     Hope is scary, uncomfortable, energizing and essential.
     In the end, hope is not an option for a democracy.   The future of our country and the planet depends on it.

5 Comments

5/20/24

5/20/2024

1 Comment

DON'T HEAD FOR THE STORM CELLAR YET. BIDEN CAN - AND MUST - WIN

I HAVE FRIENDS who are resigned to a Trump victory – and for sound reasons.
     They believe that Donald Trump has momentum in the presidential campaign; that Joe Biden is stalled; and that the polls are stubborn in asserting that a psychopath is leading.
      So, it makes sense that preparations are in order: Psychologically, to get through a terrible election night; Tactically, to survive a Trump catastrophe.
      If you see a tornado coming ....
     My view is different.
     I believe that Biden will win. More about that later.
     Even if the election looks seems close or worse – like a Trump landslide – it is too soon to head for the storm shelters.
     Call me crazy, but I believe this fact: the only effective way to survive a Trump second term is to make sure there isn’t one.

TRUMP, arriving at the Manhattan trial earlier this month

I DON’T BLAME PEOPLE for being worried, which is too mild a word for the terror that vaporizes our brains, the thought of a return Trump presidency.
      If you are a Biden supporter, there's already a lot that's gone wrong, and now we'll have to contend with all the terrible events that surely will unfold the rest of this spring, summer and fall.
     There's no question that Biden’s road to a second term is just like one of my state's infamously defective highways: nasty potholes, time-bomb engineering, time-wasting detours, confusing highway signs, all of which must be navigated by an elderly driver who may not have figured out his car's GPS system or remembered to charge his EV.
      Roadblock One is the Constitution.
     I'm sorry to say this. We were taught that the nation's central founding document is a work of genius, a miraculous tapestry of checks and balances that guarantee perpetual democracy.
      But we now know that the Constitution is an antique, like one of those family heirlooms that visitors are warned not to sit on, too fragile to carry the weight of their original purpose.
     You know the major problem: a presidential candidate can win the most votes overall, but lose the "electoral" count, so that the “winner” is decided by six or so special "battleground" states.
       When Biden won four years ago, he did so not just because he got 7 million more total votes than Trump, but because he won the battlegrounds, three of them by a combined total of only 43,809 votes.
      Polls say that, at the moment, Biden is losing in most of the battlegrounds, and that's been the case for months.
       No wonder discouragement is setting in.
       There are lots more wrong turns that could produce an Election of Doom:
      People may decide not to vote, seeing Biden and Trump as too yesterday, too alike, too unlikable. These abstainers probably would vote for Biden, while Trump voters never have second, third or twenty-third thoughts.
      Then there are the "principled" voters. Worried their souls will be corrupted by choosing either Biden or Trump, they might seek to protect their moral immorality by voting for someone else. Anyone will do: crazy Robert Kennedy Jr. Or how about write-in choices like Ben, the lovable option. Ben is our family cat. Ben will take votes away from Biden, not Trump.
     Gloomier and gloomier.
     Inflation. Gaza. Inflation. The Border. Inflation. Black and Hispanic voters determined, in this election, not to be taken for granted. Inflation. A Biden flub at a debate. Trump’s flubs don't matter. Inflation.
     How about that Manhattan trial? What will an acquittal mean? A hung jury? Even a conviction? All good. Because when you're a Trump voter, nothing matters. Anyway, come Nov. 5, the Trump trial will have faded from the national memory. Stormy who?
      Worry away, Democrats and anyone else who cares whether democracy survives, whether the climate can be rescued and whether the U.S. can continue its imperfect pledge to try to be better this year than last year.

JOE BIDEN, wearing signature sunglasses, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in 2023

WHY AM I OPTIMISTIC?
     Because Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. That's a fact. He is too corrupt, too cruel, too inept, too evil.
     It simply cannot be allowed to happen.
     I'm optimistic because Joe Biden has been a competent president, and will be the same for another four years.
     Joey's not a perfect president now, nor will he be in 2025. There never has been President Perfect. I don't like Biden's Gaza strategy or China tariffs. But he makes some historic choices, like his defense of Ukraine, the climate and democracy.
     Across the country, people - smart people, determined people, imaginative people - are working hard to reelect Biden and keep the nuclear codes out of a madman's hands.
      I believe there are more people of good will than otherwise, and you have to factor them into any election equation. We pay attention to members of Trump's cult and to his Republican opportunists, but there are other powerful forces at work, and they count.
       Many Americans - most Americans - believe in justice, more than are committed to a legal system that punishes only the weak and the enemies of the powerful, but pardons the rest.
      More people are committed to climate-saving technology and policies than support a poisoned, burning planet. More people want to move forward with civil rights than hope to return to the Jim Crow days.
     More people dream of an economy that provides homes, food, education and medical care for all Americans than would rather have millions living on sidewalks, going hungry, growing up ignorant and dying too early.
     I’m betting that there are lots of people, who once were embarrassed by cliches like “patriotism,” “the flag” and “citizenship,” but who now see that their country is in peril, so they've decided that to defend it.
     The election of 2024 seems complicated, but it comes down to a series of yes or no choices:

Democracy or dictatorship
Progress or regression
Compassion or violence
Truth or lies
Good or evil
Joe Biden or Donald Trump

     Simple choices, but for millions, not easy ones.
     Even an optimist knows the outcome of this election isn't certain - only that it’s possible.
      This is no time to head for the storm cellar.

1 Comment

5/12/24

5/12/2024

4 Comments

A “SORDID” STORY, TOLD IN COURT
THIS SPRING; WORTH RECALLING
IN AN ELECTION THIS FALL

STORMY DANIELS, if that's actually her, a photo on what's purported to be her Facebook site.

WHAT DID WE LEARN from the Trump hush-money/doctored business records/election-influence trial last week as Stormy Daniels swept in and out of the witness chair?
     Nothing really new.
     We already understood the basics about the defendant: Donald John Trump is a sleaze, a bully, a liar, a sexual outlaw, a misogynist, a corrupter, an adulterer and a creep.
     Still, Daniels’ appearance was a reminder of some of Trump’s key character traits as he seeks a second term as president of the United States.
     With the election less than six months away, it’s helpful to remember a word that’s often used in news reports about the trial, that so perfectly describes Trump: “sordid.”
     Unfortunately, it’s also one of the the words that's often been used about Ms. Daniel’s testimony, making it seem like the “sordid” stuff is her fault and might even favor Trump.
     For example, this headline from a Wall Street Journal analysis:

                       How Stormy Daniels’s Sordid
                       Testimony Could Help Trump
      Porn stars’ details about alleged sexual encounter took trial about
            falsifying business records off course, some lawyers say

    Reporters also speculated about the possible backfire effect of Ms. Daniels’ testimony as being so explicit that, as one New York Times writer put it: “...the jury develops some sympathy for Trump.”
     Sympathy for Donald Trump?
     Ladies and gentleman on the jury (of public opinion), we are asked today decide who, exactly, is the “sordid” one:

The businessman, author, TV star and politician who has won and lost presidential elections?
The actor, writer and director, who once wanted to be a veterinarian, but built a career in pornography?

     To borrow a phrase from an earlier trial, if the word “sordid” fits, you must convict.

LET’S GO TO THE TRANSCRIPT of May 7, 2024.
     In which Ms. Daniels describes her “encounter” with Trump in 2006 as he slithers his way into bed with her – just briefly, just once, just one of many times he’s abused women.
     Ms. Daniels testifies she is at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe, part of a team from her employer, Wicked Pictures, which has sponsored a “hole,” (she notes the irony) at the golf course, and later, she hands out company swag at a gift room visited by players, including Trump.
      She’s 27 and Trump is “older than my father.” Later, he dispatches “Keith” to see if she’ll have dinner with Trump at a hotel.
     At first she answers “F. no.” But after consulting her publicist, she decides there might be an advantage to her career, and she goes to his room.
     They chat about her career, and Ms. Daniels asks about Trump's wife:
     "Oh, don't worry about that," he tells her. "We are -- actually don't even sleep in the same room."
     Trump brings up the possibility of Ms. Daniels appearing on his hit TV show, “The Apprentice,” which she first dismisses, doubting a national TV network would feature a porn star.
     But Trump assures her can put in the fix, the way pro-wrestling shows do when they script a match.
     “I can't have you win, but we can -- I am in control. I know what's going to happen,” Trump tells her. “I can give you some advantage to make sure you at least make a good showing.”
     Sounds good to her.
     As they talk, Trump flatters her progress in the adult film industry, praises how she’s overcome stereotypes that belittle participants as bimbos, even comparing Ms. Daniels to his own daughter:
     “You remind me of my daughter, because she is smart and blond and beautiful and people underestimate her was well.”
     Wow.

TIME FOR A BATHROOM BREAK, Ms. Daniels tells the jury, and when she emerges, Trump is lying on a bed in his undershorts and t-shirt.
     Too late, she realizes that the author of “The Art of the Deal,” has set up a sex-for-a-favor arrangement.
     “I felt the blood basically leave my hands and my feet and almost like if you stand up too fast, and everything kind of spinned,” Ms. Daniels testifies.
     She indicates she wants to leave, and Trump seems to block her exit, mocking her efforts to walk way from both hotel room and the quid pro quo.
     “I thought we were getting somewhere,” she recalls Trump’s comment. “We were talking, and I thought you were serious about what you wanted. If you ever want to get out of that trailer park....”
     (She is offended, telling the jury: “I never lived in a trailer park.”)
     “Then I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, what did I misread to get here?’ Because the intention was pretty clear, somebody stripped down in their underwear and posing on the bed, like waiting for you.”
     She next recalls being on the bed, naked except for her bra, staring at the ceiling; Trump doesn’t use a condom, even though she’d told him how important condoms are in her industry; they are, briefly, in the missionary position.
     Afterwards, Ms. Daniels struggles to put on her clothes.
     “My hands were shaking so hard. I was having a hard time getting dressed. He said: ‘Oh, great. Let’s get together again, Honeybunch. We were great together.’ I just wanted to leave.”

THIS PROBABLY ISN’T the kind of sex scene Ms. Daniels would script for one of her films, perhaps too tame, maybe too lame.
     It’s up to the jury of public opinion – just like the one in courtroom – to decide how credible it is.
     Over the years, Ms. Daniels has changed her story, first denying they had sex, then altering some of the details. And for a while, she stayed in touch with Trump, hoping for the “Apprentice” spot that never materialized.
    To me, the story she tells in a Manhattan courtroom describes a Total Trump: the sexual opportunist he bragged about being on the “Access Hollywood” tapes that emerged in the closing days of the 2016 election: a celebrity entitled to grab women’s crotches, to kiss women and to screw them.
     Indeed, the story Ms. Daniel’s tells seems to warrant Trump paying $130,000 to keep secret, certainly until after the election, about a man who sent a go-between to proposition her; describing a man who suggested he could advance her career, then extorted some sex.
     I don’t know what the jury in New York will decide. My guess is that the case is legally convoluted, so maybe he’ll be acquitted, or that one or two holdout jurors will cause a mistrial. And then there’s this week’s expected testimony by Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s dicey star witness.
    But in the court of public opinion, I think the verdict on Stormy Daniels' testimony is uncontested.
    I hope that on Nov. 5, a majority of voters will remember her spring testimony as being among the hundreds of reasons not to elect Donald John Trump.
    “Just too sordid.”

4 Comments

5/5/24

5/5/2024

2 Comments

Election countdown
SIX MONTHS TO THE ELECTION
What will happen to Thanksgiving?

SOMEBODY MENTIONED THANKSGIVING recently, and a shiver went through me.
      It’s my favorite holiday, and I’m sure that’s the case with lots of people. No obligatory gifts and a lot fewer holiday themed cards and music. Mainly a gathering of family and friends and the year’s best food. It’s a lot of effort for the cooks. Old and repurposed grievances are always on the menu. But on the whole, it’s a day to look forward to.
      Not this year.
      Come Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024, the election will be three weeks in the proverbial rear-view mirror, so we’ll know whether the United States' future is that of a dictatorship or a democracy.
      It’s not that I think Donald Trump will win the presidency.
      Just that it’s possible he might.
      And that possibility, because it's real, plausible and odds-even, is a nightmare that will haunt the country the rest of this spring, all summer and into the fall.
      For me, anything that occurs after the Nov. 5 election - any holiday, any event, any date, anything scheduled beyond when the votes are all in and counted –fills me with one part dread, one part hope.
      Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year.
      Maybe. Maybe not.

TODAY, MAY 5, we are exactly six months away from that fateful turning point.
      It means there is still time.
      The question is, is there enough time to affect the outcome?
      Minds still can be changed. Mind you, not many minds, because changing your mind is among the hardest of human endeavors, and few of us are up to the challenge.
      It asks us to admit we were wrong, that we made a mistake, that we hadn’t thought something through.
      It took me a long time to admit that Bill Clinton was deeply flawed, most obviously the way he abused women in a way that called into question any of the things he said and did during his presidency.
      Similarly, it took me a while to admit that Hilary Clinton wasn’t the ideal candidate it thought she was for the Democrats to put up against Donald Trump. In retrospect, she only seemed to be unusually capable, experienced and talented. But she flunked the test, the only judgment that mattered, and the nation has been paying the price ever since.
      So, it’s a big ask to persuade someone who has signed on with Donald Trump to switch to Joe Biden.
      I, for sure, don’t know the magic combination that will unlock the mind of a Trump supporter. In part, that’s because I’m astounded that anyone could find common ground with such a flawed, repulsive person in the first place.

A MORE PROMISING use of the time remaining until Nov. 5 is to persuade people to vote, but who today are actively or unconsciously planning to sit out the election.
      There are a lot of reasons not to vote.
      I hate politics.
      I hate politicians.
      All politicians are alike.
      I don’t like Trump or Biden.
      I voted for Biden, but he’s let me down.
      My vote doesn’t count.
      Even if I vote, nothing will change.
      Nothing matters.
      A lot of people have little room in their lives for politics, much less a spare hour or two to vote.
      Many lives are overwhelmed by the effort it takes just to make it through the day, to get to tomorrow and maybe to next week.
      There is too much illness; too little money; too many brutal parents and partners; too much energy needed to manage unmanageable preschoolers and high-schoolers; too far to drive the jobs that pay too little; too many gossipy neighbors; too many drugs and too much booze; too many leaks in the plumbing and on the roof; too many worn out parts in cars that are too old; too many apartments with rents in the stratosphere; too much gunfire.
      The White House is too distant, too irrelevant, too removed from so many lives.
      The irony, of course, is that all of these non-voters, whether they are simply cynical, lazy or genuinely worn out, are the very people who have power to determine their own fate and the fate of the nation.
      Anyone planning not to vote, for whatever reason, is just plain wrong. It’s a democracy, and there’s enough time in most lives to think about the election and to vote.
      How we vote makes a difference in every aspect of our lives. Politics and government determine whether rents and medical care can be available and affordable; whether the streets are paved and driveable; whether the water is poison-free; whether guns can be tamed; whether the plumbing gets fixed; whether paychecks are big enough to pay the bills; whether another bridge falls down; and whether the earth will be livable.
      My guess is that if enough non-voters decide to vote, they’ll vote for Joe Biden, because, on balance, he’s a decent man, as much as that’s possible in politics, and because they realize that he’s a champion of democracy. More of them will decide against voting for Trump, because he’s so despicable, dreadful and dangerous; and enough people will realize Donald Trump isn’t joking about destroying democracy.

THERE’S STILL TIME, six months, to change a few minds and to encourage millions of others to vote.

      A whole half year to go, and then, a couple of weeks, later and a lot of us will be sitting down for Thanksgiving.
      What will the talk around the table be?
      It’s crazy, of course, to be thinking about Thanksgiving just as spring is finally getting underway.

     Out my window in Newport, the trees are more than halfway to turning green; the temperatures are on the cool side but not for much longer; the days seem brighter and they stay that way for longer.
      What will we be talking about on Thanksgiving?
      Is there enough turkey for seconds, even thirds?
      Did the polls get it wrong? Instead of a close election, was it a landslide? Was the outcome determined by people who voted in just three states, where the tallies were astonishingly close?
      Was voter turnout low?
      Did the numbers set a record?
      Had enough of us worked hard enough; did we do everything we could?
      Were we persuasive enough? Did we raise the alarm sufficiently about the historic stakes?
      Did we make the point that this time, the choice wasn’t just between Candidate A and Candidate B, but about freedom and autocracy?
      What will we say to one another on Thanksgiving?
      Will Christmas be merry?

2 Comments

5/31/24

VERDICT: DON’T GIVE UP ON HOPE