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.   “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.
1 Comment
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: 
 Governor Walz described the “business” as a sports metaphor:
 Kamala Harris defined the “business” as a single mission: confronting Donald Trump, the shady businessman and Constitutional criminal.
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.  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.   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.
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. WITH 3 MONTHS LEFT, THE ELECTION IS A STARK CHOICE – GOOD OR EVIL
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.
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. |
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. |
RSS Feed