Category: Banana Republicanism

Random Election Season Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

Camden Public Library, Camden, ME – September 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

When projecting economic outcomes, economists always caution about “Black Swan” events. While the term has been around hundreds of years, today it means an unforeseen but consequential event. Two potential Black Swan events occurred last week.

The assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s seeming willingness to keep expanding operations against Lebanon seems very risky. Biden seems incapable of stopping Netanyahu from widening the war against Hamas and Hezbollah, and it’s clear that Netanyahu has never been a good faith negotiator regarding a cease fire. Harris now has to worry about how this impacts her campaign in Michigan.

The floods caused by the remnants of Hurricane Helene could be another “Black Swan”, although it’s difficult to see which candidate it will impact more severely. The flooding disproportionately affected the rural areas that Trump needs to win to keep North Carolina in the red column. Although heavily blue areas like Asheville also will still be recovering in early November. Here’s a map of power outages as of 9/28:

That said, the response to Helene may also highlight to voters the importance of FEMA and NOAA, both of which Project 2025 aims to defund. There are plenty of ads now running that emphasize that Project 2025 would defund NOAA. If the Feds can respond to the damage on I-40 like they did to I-95 in PA or Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, it may convince people in North Carolina that the government actually can be helpful.

Trump’s growing increasingly unhinged in public appearances is difficult to overlook. He’s adopted fascist language. Overall, he looks both weak and violent, but the mainstream press isn’t persistently covering him in that way. Its clear on Twitter that his crowds are smaller and are increasingly disengaged.

Lets turn to Elon Musk who tweeted this to his tech bros:

Let’s deconstruct this almost impossibly stupid thought:

  • People who enter illegally are not eligible for citizenship and non-citizens cannot and do not vote in federal elections.
  • People who are granted asylum can’t vote unless they become citizens, which takes ~5 years.
  • Even the most generous immigration reform proposal (which is unlikely to pass both Houses of Congress) would only apply to undocumented immigrants who’ve been here for years. And citizenship would require paying a fine, extensive background check, and going to the back of the line behind legal immigrant applicants – a process that could take a decade.
  • Currently, most of the undocumented population is of Hispanic origin – a demographic whose voting patterns have been moving to the right, not the left.

This is the same guy who after the second Trump assassin was arrested posted on Twitter:

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”

And this guy has a top security clearance! Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink, have a $4 billion contract with NASA and multimillion-dollar contracts with the Defense Department.

But there’s a bigger picture in play with a few wealthy South Africans who have joined the tech bros world: Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left at age five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent his childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped drive Trump’s Maga movement.

In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fifty-something white men who grew up in apartheid South Africa.

And what connects these men’s South African backgrounds with Maga? South Africa under apartheid offered an extreme version of some of what are now important themes of what Republicans want American life to look like today: Income inequality as the natural order of things and a contempt for government.

This is what the rich guys who support Trump want, and a few of the most influential rich guys grew up under apartheid.

Finally, Rachel Bitecofer, a political analyst who in July 2019 predicted that Trump would lose the 2020 election, with the Democratic candidate winning at least 278 electoral votes, has comments on polling that Wrongo hasn’t seen elsewhere about how older people are turning towards Harris:

If true, it will be helpful.

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New Methodology In Presidential Polling

The Daily Escape:

Today let’s take a look at an election prediction technology that may help explain the Harris/Trump polling disparities better than conventional polling. Wrongo, and he’s sure very few of you have ever heard of Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University and his innovative election forecasting model. From Northwestern Now:

“For the second U.S. presidential election in a row, a Northwestern University data scientist is running a novel forecasting platform that updates the odds of a win by former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris each day.

With this level of precision, followers can see how single events — such as a debate, campaign activities or legal rulings — might affect the potential outcome of the U.S. presidential election.”

Miller’s system uses data from PredictIt, the largest private political betting exchange in which users bet real money in real time on political races. He then uses that betting data as input to his models for how the Electoral College will vote. Fortune Magazine picked up on Miller’s work:

“I was intrigued by the highly original methodology Miller deployed in calling the trends, and outcomes, first in the presidential race, then for the two Georgia senatorial contests, where the surprise twin victories gave Democrats control of the upper chamber.”

More:

“In all three 2020 contests, Miller beat virtually every pollster, and modeler parsing multiple voter surveys. He missed the size of Biden’s win in the electoral college by just 12 votes, tagging every state for the correct column save Georgia.”

Here’s Miller’s innovative methodology: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“For the 2020 Biden-Trump face-off, Miller deployed the pricing posted on the largest US political betting site, Predictit. He took the Predictit odds in…56 individual voting jurisdictions, tracked the hourly changes, and used his proprietary model to roll the data into daily odds that were extremely current given that folks were posting bets for one candidate or the other 24-7 on the site.

For the [Georgia] Senate races, Miller took a different tack. He assembled a group of about 1,200 Georgians whom he lured by agreeing to pay them a few dollars to participate, and extra dollars if they named the contender most likely to win—not the necessarily one they planned to vote for, as well as predict the margin for victory. The method he developed, called a “prediction survey” taking the best parts of the polling and the betting market guided Miller to a near-perfect reading of the voting shares.”

Now you know who Miller is and maybe why we should listen to him.

Miller doesn’t rely on polls he primarily uses the betting markets. He points out that the right question isn’t “who are you voting for” but “who do you expect to win.” He says that while polls tell you about the past, the odds on the betting sites map the future. The traditional method builds in a four to five day lag in data. It also focuses on an opinion today that can be changed by tomorrow.

And while the pollsters don’t pose that query, it’s exactly how the participating bettors are making the presidential election into a market. This kind of analysis is dismissed by mainstream outlets.

But think about it: Miller relies on prediction markets that have tens of thousands of investors, with thousands of shares traded each day. Typical opinion polls involve between one and two thousand respondents.

As of the article, (9/16/24) Predictit is showing a price of 55 cents for Harris, and 45 cents for Trump. Once again, those odds translate in 55% of the popular vote for the Democrat according to Miller’s model. Miller then maps the votes to the Electoral College. So if the “market” situation persists, Trump faces an absolute rout.

From Miller:

“It would be somewhere between the defeats of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Bob Dole by Bill Clinton in 1996….We’re talking about a blowout where Harris gets over 400 electoral votes and wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and every other swing state.”

From his lips.

Of course there are caveats. America’s never witnessed a reversal of fortune remotely as dramatic as this one:

“It’s gone from a drastic landslide in Trump’s direction to a drastic landslide for Harris,”

Before the debate, the numbers were reversed with Trump holding 400 Electoral College votes.

What does it all mean? Time is short. Early voting has started in several states. The distance between Harris and Trump is now so great that only another epic swing would bring Trump back into contention. So Miller predicts that as of right now, it Harris will win big on November 5.

Is this bullshit soothsaying? Maybe. A polling phenom emerges with very election cycle by being the most accurate. We should also remember wild swings can happen. We know the late swing against Clinton in 2016 from the Comey letter precipitated her loss.

Who knows what might happen in the next month and a half? Whatever the outcome Trump will say it was stolen. There’s no scenario in which he won’t.

And there will no doubt be post-election shenanigans with the electoral vote and the courts, and maybe even violence. But if Miller’s work holds up, it would really be hard to see another protracted slow rolling coup attempt.

Some upbeat music for a Saturday. Watch and listen to Telemann’s  “Recorder Concerto in C major, TWV 51:C1, II. Allegro” played in 2020 by the Bremer Barockorchester:

Telemann is always a joy.

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Will The Protagonist Win?

The Daily Escape:

Let’s start with some definitions. According to Proofed, a writing tips blog:

“The protagonist is often (though not necessarily) referred to as the story’s “hero” or central character. At the other end of the spectrum is the antagonist, the character responsible for opposing the protagonist’s objectives.”

Marcy Wheeler, who writes as Emptywheel, had one of the most perceptive columns of the election cycle last week. Speaking about the debate and its aftermath Wheeler said: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…[what] the Vice President did with her animated, often mocking facial expressions….She kept the camera on her the entire time. And more often than not, even her facial expressions conveyed far more than Trump’s rants did.”

The media were surprised, since they had conceived of the debate almost exclusively about how Harris would react to whatever Trump would do. That’s the way they’ve treated Trump since 2015: As the protagonist in a global political drama.

But since the debate, something important happened to the media. Back to Wheeler: (brackets by Wrongo)

“And they left [ the debate] with the certainty that Vice President Kamala Harris was the protagonist of that story.”

Harris the protagonist. Harris, the main character, who’s actions drive the story forward. It wasn’t Trump giving the orders that got the press scurrying. They were marveling at Harris’s crowds, at her command of the issues, at her looking and sounding presidential. At the big energy in the big crowds at her rallies.

But a second possible assassination attempt could have delivered the role of protagonist up for grabs again. Does Wrongo have this right? The guy who was apprehended never had a line of sight on Trump and never shot his weapon. But somehow, Trump has become the victim of another assassination in the Mainstream Media.

It’s most probable that the second assassin is just another mentally ill person looking to give his life meaning. But regardless, Trump worked hard to get the protagonist role back. He tried to use the second attempt to return to being the protagonist. He’s alleged that Democrats have inspired the recent up tick of political violence by characterizing him as a risk to American democracy, as truthfully, he is.

There’s zero evidence that the would-be assassins were motivated or radicalized by Democrats.

The Springfield story is Trump’s second effort to return to being the protagonist. Since it’s predicated on a lie, he can run with it. If the tale of Haitian immigrants stealing people’s pets and eating them were true, then it would only have been a one-day affair. We’d see the police reports. Local and state governments would take some sort of action. The Harris campaign would formulate a response. The story would have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But then? We’d be back to talking about Harris.

But because it’s a lie, the story doesn’t end. It swirls and gathers strength. The media and local governments try to debunk it. Lots of people believe it anyway. The narrative progresses, trying to get Trump and Vance to admit that they’re lying. They refuse; or equivocate.

And there is no advantageous angle for the Harris campaign to take. If she engages, then it gets even better for Trump, because she becomes a supporting character in his story. And we go from having a conflict between Trump and objective truth to a conflict between Trump and Harris.

And Harris would be no longer talking about the future. She’d be stuck litigating the (obvious) lies of a madman. Just like everyone else has for the last nine years.

But a big lie doesn’t have to change things, no matter how many times Trump plays that card.

Since becoming the protagonist, Harris has leaped in the polls. The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch reported on the Morning Consult’s polling of 11,022 likely voters with a margin of error of +/-1 percentage point, taken Sept. 13-15 2024. They summarize:

“Harris leads Trump by a record-high 6 percentage points among likely voters, 51% to 45%, up from a 3-point advantage before their debate last week. Her 51% of support among likely voters, which is also at a record high, is driven largely by her best figures to date among Democrats, Biden 2020 voters, liberals, women, 18- to 34-year-olds and millennials.”

Here’s their chart:

And her image is better than ever: 53% of likely voters have a favorable view of Harris, the largest share they’ve measured this cycle. By comparison, just 44% of voters view Trump favorably.

So one big challenge is for Harris to hold on as the protagonist in the political brawl of 2024. Something that Biden never did, nor have large groups of Trump wanna-be’s over the past nine years.

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What Comes After Trump?

The Daily Escape:

“A leader without followers is simply a guy taking a walk.” – John Boehner

Trump will lose in November and he will lose in January when the Electoral College has its say. Wrongo hasn’t concluded this via his mad polling skills, but Trump has jumped the shark. He needs to exceed 46.5% of the national vote to get near an Electoral College win. But even his most dedicated followers now routinely are walking out of his rallies, so he can forget about 47%.

From Politico:

“Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party.”

He won’t go quietly, he may go violently, but he’s going. So the question becomes who or what replaces Trump as head of the MAGA movement? Let me make the answer clear: JD Vance comes next.

Why? He’s quick witted, articulate, greedy for power, and completely shameless. Hypocrisy won’t stick since he has endless bullshit to spin without blinking his eyeliner.  All this makes him incredibly appealing to MAGAts. Vance is far more dangerous than Trump because he is exactly what the Silicon Valley tech bro Nazis and the extreme white Christian nationalists want.

Wrongo and Ms. Right were persuaded by Liberal friends to read Vance’s 2016 memoir. The pitch was that Vance explained why White Trump voters from southeastern Ohio and West Virginia wouldn’t vote for Hillary, or lean progressive in their politics.

The book is simply Vance pushing propaganda that fits the policy preferences of leading Republican policy groups. Vance’s stereotypes were shark bait for conservative policymakers who feed the mythology that the undeserving poor make bad choices and are personally to blame for their own poverty. So why waste taxpayer money on programs to help lift people out of poverty? After all, Vance got out of hillbilly Ohio without them.

It is depressing that liberals didn’t notice that Vance places so much blame on welfare rather than, on say, neoliberalism economics and corporatism. Those are the ideologies that moved jobs offshore, that got their companies leveraged, and later bankrupted while the jobs were never to come back.

Vance’s buddies are among the people who precipitated the economic holocaust in Middle America. He’s worked for money men Peter Thiel, Ted Leonsis, and Steve Case. In 2016, the gods of greed and hate had given him a mission.

So the question among Republicans is how best to push Trump’s exit to Mar-a-Lagos 19th Hole. That will be unquestionably assisted by Trump’s legal woes. If Harris is president, all of the cases go forward, and several result in convictions, accelerating Trump’s exit from the stage.

And who’s the leader in the club house? Sadly, the GOP is a Party driven by its base voters. That means the demands of the base will, at least for the foreseeable future, drive the leadership of the Party. That means the person who is shameless enough to feed them racist lies, someone shameless enough to admit they’re lies on CNN on Sunday. Ladies and gentlemen I give you JD Vance!

From CNN:

“Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Sunday defended false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

To support his claims, Vance pointed to what he said are firsthand accounts from constituents who have told him this is happening, though he didn’t provide evidence:

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,”

CNN’s Dana Bash replied, “You just said that this is a story that you created.”

JD Vance clearly isn’t ready for prime time, but as the leader of the ever-dwindling MAGA spud of the 2024’s GOP, he’ll do. Try to remember that this is a guy who went to Yale. Who’s gotten by on his resume rather than much of his actual achievements.

In the pantheon of shitty GOP politicians reflect on this:

“Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than Richard Nixon.
Ronald Reagan: Hold my beer.
Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than Ronald Reagan.
Newt Gingrich: Hold my beer.
Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than Newt Gingrich.
George W Bush: Hold my beer.
Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than George W Bush.
Sarah Palin: Hold my beer.
Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than Sarah Palin.
Donald Trump: Hold my beer.
Dems: I can’t imagine a worse politician than Donald Trump.
JD Vance: Hold my beer.
Dems today: I can’t imagine a worse politician than JD Vance.”

Ask Vance: Whose suffering does your lie draw attention to? The two plausible answers are “our country’s poor refugee population”, or “American pet owners, somehow.”

What a shameless, stupid, dangerous shit pile of a human.

The true successor to the GOP leadership will turn out to be yet another scary Ivy scholar (Harvard) with service in the US military, Sen. Tom Cotton  (R-AK). Unlike Vance, Cotton is ready for political prime time.

For the next few years, we will watch these two scary Republicans duke it out to see if either is the flavor for the MAGA base. We will also watch to see whether the GOP can once again become a Party led by its senior leadership or simply by its rabble.

OK, that’s Wrongo’s opus for this week. Let’s leave you to ponder a piece of soothing music to start the week. Here is “Solveig’s Song” from Edvard Greig’s “Peer Gynt Suite Op 2 No 55” played by the by Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra:

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State Of The Race: What Polling Tells Us And What It Does Not

(Welcome to another of Wrongo’s occasional thoughts about the election. He wants to thank you for your concern as he travels through Chemo land.)

The Daily Escape:

Polling isn’t all that we want it to be or think it can be. But the recent trends support growing confidence that Harris is succeeding Biden. For example, a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll (highly rated in the 538’s curation of polls), shows an eight or nine-point swing in favor of Harris, relative to the survey it took at the end of June, after the disastrous Biden debate:

“Democrat Kamala Harris has surged ahead of Republican Donald Trump, 48%-43%, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found….The findings reflect an eight-point turnaround in the presidential race from late June, when Trump had led President Joe Biden in the survey by nearly four points.

The vice president’s small lead was fueled by big shifts among some key demographic groups traditionally crucial for Democrats, including Hispanic and Black voters and young people. Among those with annual incomes of less than $20,000, in the biggest change, a three-point Trump edge over Biden in June has become a 23-point Harris advantage over Trump in August.”

The poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken by landline and cell phone Sunday through Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. With the election approaching, the survey is now measuring likely voters; previous polls were of registered voters.”

It’s a tiny sample that needs more supportive data. Sunday’s ABC News/Ipsos poll showed Harris leading 52%-46% among likely voters, a six-point lead. But the race is much closer in swing states. This means that the whole ball game is going to come down to turnout and enthusiasm. There are very few real swing voters left in America today, because the kind of person who has trouble choosing between the Democrats and the Republicans is somebody who probably couldn’t decide which country is directly north of the USA.

Two factors in turnout are the changes in voter enthusiasm and spending by the Parties. Here’s Gallup on changes in enthusiasm:

We should remember that enthusiasm for Harris is driven by hope, while enthusiasm for Trump is driven by fear. One is easier to stoke than the other.

Second, Ad Impact Politics, a firm that tracks political spending, says that between Labor Day and Election Day, 96 different markets are set to see at least $1M in political ad spending on TV. Twenty- eight markets are set to see over $20M, and Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Las Vegas are all set to see over $110M! Here’s how that breaks down by TV time slot reservations:

The Trump campaign is only going to be competitive in Pennsylvania and Georgia. The other swing states are apparently being left to their own devices. Their strategy seems to be if they can hold all their 2020 states they can put all their money on picking up those two states which will bring them to exactly 270. If they lose either one (or NC) that’s the ballgame.

A subtext is that their real strategy is the coming post-election legal challenge in any or all of those states, claiming that the Democrats stole the election. They’re clearly doing that in Pennsylvania and Georgia where they are already plotting with local officials.

Overall, Harris is now in a far better position than Biden was in late July. Harris, by contrast, has probably become a slight favorite.

Second, Harris’s improved position has essentially nothing to do with peeling off persuadable Trump voters. What has changed is that people who would vote for the Democrat if they were to vote at all are now much more likely to vote than they were when Biden was the candidate. This is reflected in the responses of potential voters in key Democratic constituencies — especially young people, and blacks and Latinos — to Harris’s entry into the race.

Third, motivating supporters to actually vote is going to be far more important than persuading swing voters. Swing voters remain important because the race is so close, and likely to remain so. Such voters might represent only one or two percent of the electorate in the seven states that will almost certainly decide the election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and one or two percent could easily be the decisive margin in all of these places. This is where the enthusiasm for Harris in the Democratic base has proven to be so critical to this point.

Pundits say “It all comes down to PA”. That may be true if your only concern is the presidential race. But control of the Senate and the House are just as important. That means hacking a path to at least 50 Senate seats in a world where MT and OH could both flip to the GOP. It means flipping the House. Neither path runs through PA. And reproductive liberty is on the ballot in 11 states and indirectly on the ballot in all fifty states via Project 2025’s plan to ban abortion nationally. How does that factor into polling? It doesn’t.

Another example: the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top Trump volunteer with the Trump campaign telling other volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back”.

Not all is bright. Dan Pfeiffer notes Harris isn’t doing well with GEN Z men:

Peiffer notes that what’s alarming is that Harris’s entry into race excited young women, but not men. When Biden was the nominee, Trump was up with young men by 11. In national polling, the gap still exists, but Trump does less well with men under 30. Trump’s campaign is targeting these younger men. That’s why his convention featured a wife beating MMA fighter introducing him and he entered the stage to the tune of “It’s a man’s world.”

Peiffer says that if Trump maintains these numbers with Gen Z men, he might win the election:

“To put a finer point on it, Biden won voters under 30 by 24 points. According to the NBC News poll, Harris is up only 16 points with this cohort.”

So many bros…so few brains!

To deal with the rapid changes, polling organization 538 has changed its presidential prediction model from one based on “fundamentals” to one based on changes to polls. Which acknowledges that the old “fundamentals” no longer work.

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Cartoons Of The Week – August 4, 2024

On Friday, Kamala Harris secured enough votes in the DNC’s “virtual roll call” of delegates to secure the Democratic nomination for President. She’s was only a candidate for ten days in July, but she raised $310 million, the largest single fundraising month for any presidential candidate ever. Importantly, two million donors gave for the first time to the presidential race.

And Harris dominated the news cycle for two weeks, something that hasn’t happened for Democrats in a long time. That is, until Trump played the race card against Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, saying in his tone-deaf way that she turned “Black”. That will haunt him throughout the election cycle.

But Harris returned to a prominent place in the news cycle with the prisoner exchange with Russia. That deal was brought together by multiple countries over two years. The WSJ has a detailed story.

It’s interesting that on the very Sunday Biden announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for President and endorsing Harris, the negotiations on the prisoner swap were coming to a head. We won’t know exactly how involved Biden was for several years, but we do know that Kamala Harris also played a part. She made the final pitch to Germany’s Olaf Schultz to release his prisoner, a Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov, who was jailed in Germany, and without whom, the deal would have fallen apart. She also briefed the Slovenian officials regarding the deal at the Munich Security Conference.

Overall, prisoners from the US, Germany, Slovenia, Norway, and Poland were sent to Russia. The deal’s done, and Trump is grumpy. This is a huge improvement over where we were before Biden pulled out of the race. On to cartoons.

There’s good news and bad news for the Russians heading home:

The “Weirdo” charge seems to be sticking:

Orange is the new weird:

Painting a happy face on the Trump train is about all that’s possible:

Their words show the disconnect from the rest of us:

MAGA has been reduced to a fairy tale:

Finally, an interesting piece of music played on an instrument that is rarely heard. Take a few minutes to watch and listen to Brandon Acker performing the early 17th-century piece “Canario” by G.G. Kapsberger (1580-1651). The instrument is called the Theorbo, a type of lute:

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Cartoons Of The Week – July 28, 2024

Mark it down as something Wrongo never thought he would see: Snoop Dogg as a commentator for the Olympics. The rapper helped host the opening ceremony with NBC Today’s Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie, NBC’s Mike Tirico, singer and talk show host Kelly Clarkson, and former NFL player Peyton Manning.

Those who watched the opening ceremony saw Snoop carry the Olympic torch like it was a giant marijuana joint, chat with Simone Biles’ family, and set the mood for the 2024 Olympic Games by busting out dance moves while wearing his Olympic outfit:

This edition of the Olympic torch looks very blunt-y. There were a few cartoons that referenced the Olympics, along with many that documented the state of play in the US presidential election. On to cartoons.

We live in a world of two torches:

Some think of the Olympics as a moment of unity:

Trump overestimates his base:

Kamala changes GOP strategy:

Harris strikes fear:

It really is this easy:

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Biden’s Passing Of The Torch

The Daily Escape:

Mountain goats, Hidden Lake Overlook, Glacier NP, MT – July 2024 photo by Jennifer Pardee Caruso

Today Wrongo wants all of us to think about Biden’s address from the Oval Office last Wednesday. He focused on the challenges facing the country, in particular if Trump were to succeed him. He also said that he was passing the torch to a new generation: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing, can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That’s the best way to unite our nation. You know, there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. But there’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”

There’s the echo of JFK’s 1961 inaugural speech when Biden talks about passing the torch: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

A big idea and a smaller one leap out of the Biden speech. As Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the big idea:

“….Biden followed the example of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who declined to run for a third term to demonstrate that the United States of America would not have a king, and of its second president, John Adams, who handed the power of the presidency over to his rival Thomas Jefferson and thus established the nation’s tradition of the peaceful transition of power. Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy.”

If you want to know what kind of person someone truly is, watch them do The One Thing In The World They Do Not Want To Do. The most difficult thing, the thing that takes every fiber of their will to accomplish. It’s the ultimate character test, one which Trump could never pass. More from Biden:

“I revere this office, but I love my country more….”

He thus showed us that he had the most crucial qualification for the office of president.

JV Last observed a small thing about Biden’s speech that in reality is a big thing: the watch that he wore on Wednesday night. Wrongo didn’t know that Biden is a watch guy. From JV Last:

 “For the watch guy, your watch means something. You’re not throwing on a timepiece. You’re choosing a companion, a wingman, a talisman. Last night, Biden wore a Rolex Datejust 41 with a smooth bezel and blue sunburst dial. It’s the most classic and low-key watch imaginable. Elegant, yet wholly unobtrusive. More important, though, is the watch’s provenance. Biden’s Datejust was a gift from his wife. He wore it first on January 20, 2021, at his inauguration.”

More:

“It is a lock that Biden chose his Datejust…because he understood he was bookending his presidency. Bookending his professional life….In such a moment, a watch guy would want the watch that means the most to him because it was given to him by the most important person in his world.”

Kinda makes you want to tear up a little bit. You can get a more detailed look at Biden’s watches here.

Since this is our Saturday Soother, where we try to let go of the possibility that Trump will dump Vance for Nikki Haley, let’s close with some music that’s appropriate to Biden’s speech. You may remember when in 2015, the cast of Hamilton performed at the White House. At that time, Christopher Jackson (who played George Washington) sang “One Last Time” along with Lin Manuel Miranda. That night, the audience included Joe Biden. Here’s the video of that performance:

It’s impossible to watch this with all we know now, without wondering what Biden was thinking when he watched George Washington’s farewell from Hamilton.

Let’s leave the final words to JV Last:

“The first Baby Boomer president decided that the presidency was all about him….Bill Clinton was a successful president. But along the way he disgraced the office and clung to power with…self-importance that progressed from unseemly, to destructive, to pathological.

He set a standard that other politicians would soon follow—the ne plus ultra being Donald Trump, whose desire to cling to power progressed from pathological, to criminal, to treasonous.

The lesson the Baby Boomer presidents taught us is that you must never give up. You should brazen it out. You can weather the storm. Any collateral damage caused by your refusal to yield power is just the price of doing business. Power, once grasped, should never be willingly surrendered.”

For what it’s worth, Biden, like Wrongo, is a member of the Silent Generation. He’s not a Boomer. Biden has returned America to a better path. He reminded us that there is honor in letting go. That the true patriot yearns to see his country move beyond him.

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Now What?

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Harpswell, ME – July 2024 photo by Jeffery Scott Smith Photography

Is it possible to appreciate just how bad July 2024 has been? Wrongo counts July as beginning on June 27, the date of the first presidential debate. Start with Trump v. US and then go on to Biden’s debate debacle, and now to Biden’s decision to end his campaign for another term.

Every day of this month has moved us beyond anything Wrongo ever imagined as possible, even though he’s become politically pretty jaded over the years. We’ve never seen people so tense; feeling so helpless. And no one really knows what’s next: We’re staring into uncertainty. Despite that, Wrongo’s relieved Biden is quitting the race. Good on him for admitting, despite every instinct that got him here in the first place, that it was time to go.

Let’s hope that on this Monday morning we’re ready to fight for the one thing that matters: Electing Kamala Harris in November.  Because despite what Republicans like to say, Biden was the best president of the last 50 years, and we can build on that legacy by getting Kamala Harris elected. Also, let’s flip the script and start talking about presidential candidates being old and demented, without the worry that we’re also describing our own selves. Don’t you wonder if the press will notice?

Biden’s done this the best way possible. He made it clear he’s capable of doing the job and intends to do it until January. He endorsed Harris, and immediately pivoted to the importance of beating Trump. And now the Democratic Party is lining up behind Harris.

And imagine how delicious it will be for Harris to preside over the Electoral College vote that elects her president!

Turning to the choice for VP? Wrongo has three suggestions. He wrote about picking PA governor Josh Shapiro a few weeks ago. PA is a crucial swing state that the Dems have to win to keep Trump out of the White House. A January Quinnipiac University poll showed Shapiro had a 59% job approval rating. Shapiro also is a good social media warrior and would be great on the campaign trail.

Sen. Mark Kelly of AZ would also be an interesting choice. He’s also from a swing state that has a Democratic governor to fill his seat until a special election. It’s important to remember that Kelly is a prodigious funds raiser, who was an astronaut. He is completely qualified to talk about gun violence and its impact on families.

Third, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan would also deliver a swing state to the Democratic column. She flipped control of the MI state legislature to the Dems in the 2022 midterm elections. When Whitmer ran for reelection in 2022, she won by nearly 11 points, reflective of her broad appeal in a state where the margins are rarely so big (Biden won MI by 2.8% in 2020). And think about how Trump would try to attack a team of two women. It wouldn’t be easy, given how Trump prefers to demonize and stereotype his opponents!

Time to wake up America! We’re in that crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second! But the political landscape just shifted under your feet. A team of young Democrats could change the conversation, adding stories about women, young people, people of color, and critically, how Americans have had to adjust in the face of change and disruption. Voters would rally to that story.

To help you wake up watch and listen to the Marsh Family perform a parody about JD Vance to the Abba tune “Dancing Queen”. They’re a family of six from Kent in the UK  who say:

“…here’s our less-than-impressed profile of yet another populist politician with highly flexible morality, worrying contempt for democratic process and discourse, but big funding and a big mouth who’s happy to tap into ordinary people’s fears while claiming to be an example of their dreams.”

Apparently Vance made an ill-advised splash by pretending concern about nuclear proliferation and half-jokingly describing the UK as an “Islamist country”:

The video is terrific!

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Saturday Soother + Cartoons Of The Week, July 21, 2024

The Daily Escape:

View from the Rancho Nicasio roadhouse, Marin County, CA – July 2024 photo by Dave Alvin

Did Wrongo miss anything? From here, it seems worth noting that the attempted assassination of Trump has landed like a rock in a pond; it made a big splash and then sank to the bottom. Even the press seem to be realizing “wait, nobody cares? For real?” It’s largely in the rear view mirror, if Trump could leave it there.

The shooter has given the press and Republicans nothing to chew on (no manifesto, nothing on social media, no obvious radical affiliations, nothing more than a party registration and an old donation). Perhaps we’ve become so normalized to the lone shooter in America that we’re at the point where we say, “oh yeah, some dude just took a shot at Trump.” And people say: “OK, makes sense“, like saying “stranger things have happened“.

And JD Vance as the GOP VP candidate also makes sense, because Republicans always buy into bad stereotypes about poor White people. Vance capitalized on the fact that White people, especially suburban, rich ones who buy books, are mostly out of touch with the realities of rural, poor White folks and are disdainful towards them. He sold White America a story of helplessness/failure to “bootstrap” that spoke directly to their stereotypes.

His book asserts that because one person made it out of “broken” Appalachia, everyone should be able to do the same. Its primary argument is that poor people suffer because they don’t know any better. From NY Mag:

“Vance says he is fighting a class war on behalf of workers, but his record suggests otherwise. When he does intervene in matters of class, it’s often on the side of the elites. He showed up to a UAW picket line in Ohio, but opposes the PRO Act, which would shore up collective bargaining rights for millions of workers….”

And what have Vance and the GOP actually done for rural folk? They cut off their healthcare. They eliminate government services, and refuse to pay for their educations. They now want to force them to have babies against their will. What else will Vance’s “help” do for them if he’s elected?

And did Trump’s acceptance speech help him? It doesn’t help when you have the longest recorded acceptance speech by a major Party nominee in our history. His chat wound up being more than 12,000 words and clocked in at an interminable 92 minutes. It broke the record for longest acceptance speech in history by 18 minutes. But that shouldn’t have been a complete surprise since the second and third longest acceptance speeches in history are Trump’s from 2016 and 2020.

The WaPo reported that toward the end of his speech a woman sitting with the Illinois delegation was heard saying, “Wrap it up, Don!” The only real surprise is that he gave a MAGA rally speech at a moment that should have been tailored to a bigger and less unhinged target audience.

From Jonathan Alter, who said Trump’s bad speech gave life to the Dems:

“Theodore Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee, just a mile from where the GOP Convention took place. The assassin’s bullet went through Roosevelt’s eyeglass case and the text of a 50-page speech (TR was long-winded, too…) and lodged in his chest. Because he didn’t cough up blood, the former president finished his speech before receiving medical attention.

Roosevelt, too, was attempting a comeback four years after he left the presidency….He was the popular candidate of the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party, and many of his supporters believed his life had been spared by divine providence.

Here’s how the story ends: The shooting took place less than three weeks before the election. By the time Americans went to the polls, it was old news, and Roosevelt finished 14 points behind the winner, Woodrow Wilson.”

Finally, Kamala Harris. CNN has a piece today that says the Democrats are actually coming to a consensus that Kamala Harris has to be the nominee if Biden steps aside:

“No one quite knows what the process of picking a new nominee would be if Joe Biden did step aside – but many Democrats say that any process is likelier than ever to quickly end with Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.”

How and if that happens is still (weeks later) dependent upon Biden deciding to step aside. But as Tom Sullivan says:

“Admit it. You’d love to see the Democratic former district attorney debate the helmet-kissing, multiply convicted, sex-offending, Republican presidential candidate currently out on bail in three jurisdictions.”

As the NY Intelligencer reports:

“Republicans are bracing for the fact that Harris will be a more effective campaigner than Biden and certainly a better debater. And they think that should Harris ultimately become the nominee, she will be awash in positive media coverage from outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which Republicans believe have been on a crusade to replace Biden. The positive media coverage will likely result in a modest polling bump for Harris — but Republicans believe it will only be a temporary one.”

Trump’s proclivity for spouting racially coded and misogynist comments would be on full display daily if Harris became the nominee, further turning off college-educated voters and women.

On to cartoons. Another terrible display of hive thinking by America’s cartoonists, but here’s the best: Still the state of play for Democrats:

Judge Cannon is on the case:

Trump and Vance have something in common:

Tech billionaires rush to help the GOP:

On to the weekend! With the Republican convention behind us, we can get back to picking tomatoes from our backyard garden. Not only did the Trump fever break, but the weather has turned cooler here on the Fields of Wrong. So grab a chair outdoors in the shade.

Since we’re going to war for the soul of our democracy, watch and listen to Richard Wagner’s “Die Walkure – The Ride of the Valkyries” performed here in 2016 by Jaap Van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

The “Ride of the Valkyries “refers to the beginning of Act 3 of Die Walküre, the second of the four epic music dramas constituting Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen.

But surely, music isn’t politics, it’s simply art! Wrongo is of an age that when he hears this played, he sees Huey gunships and Robert DuVall assaulting a Vietnamese village:

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