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10/29/24

10/29/2024

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.

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.

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10/27/24

10/27/2024

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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.

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.

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.

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10/22/24

10/22/2024

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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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

3 Comments

10/15/24

10/15/2024

1 Comment

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?

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.

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?

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10/8/24

10/8/2024

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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.

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/

3 Comments

10/5/24

10/5/2024

1 Comment

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.

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?

      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.

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.

      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.

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Categories

An American Dream
HARRIS WINS!
United States elects its first woman president;
Voters reject Trump’s dark vision of the county.

Election countdown - 2 weeks left
TRUMP’S VULGAR FABLE ABOUT A GOLFER’S PENIS WON’T DEFEAT HIM. BUT AMERICAN VOTERS CAN.

WITNESS TO A GREAT POLITICAL CRUSADE
What I learned during an afternoon of calling Democrats at home

Election countdown - 1 month to go
"SO WHAT?"