Culture Wars – The Wrongologist

The Chaos Musk Go

Cartoon of the week:

Since the GOP won control of the House 2 years ago they have not passed a single appropriations package into law. That’s the primary job of the House of Representatives. Government has operated at funding levels set by Democrats two years ago via passing Continuing Resolutions every few months. This is not normal.

And it continued last week, just in a weirder way. From CNN:

“The House has voted to pass a stopgap funding bill just hours before a midnight deadline to avert a federal government shutdown. The Senate must next take up the bill. The vote was 366 to 34. Thirty-four Republicans voted against the bill, and one Democrat voted present. The bill would extend government funding into March and includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump has been demanding Republicans address.”

The Senate passed the measure as expected just after midnight. And Biden signed it.

But, just two days ago, Trump and Musk threatened to ensure a primary challenge for any House Republican who voted for a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase. On Friday, 170 of them took him up on just that.

Musk is now claiming that he’s really fine with all this. But back up two days to this from Robert Hubbell:

“Musk ordered Republicans not to pass “any bill” until Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. If Republicans follow Musk’s command, there will be no government funding for a month (at least)–from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Monday, January 20, 2025. If that happens, chaos will ensue.”

And it got worse. Co-President Trump remained on the sidelines of the budget debate until after Musk tweeted “This bill should not pass.” Trump then posted a curveball:

“Unless the Democrats terminate or substantially extend the Debt Ceiling now, I will fight ’till the end.”

The end happened way before the end, though. Increasing the debt ceiling is something that didn’t need to be done until June of 2025. But Trump didn’t want a debt ceiling increase to happen on his watch. The reason that Trump wanted to force a debt limit increase under Biden is that Trump needs that increase to pay for the proposed extensions of his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. From The Hill, Lawmakers caught off guard by Trump debt ceiling demand: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) accused Trump of wanting Democrats ‘to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.’….‘Shorter version: tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas,’ he added.”

The chaos caused by Musk foreshadows a second Trump administration with unelected, unaccountable billionaires mucking about in our politics. What could go wrong? With this kabuki, Hubbell thought this:

Trump looked like he is subordinate to Musk.
Musk has—for now—seized momentum from Trump as the dominant political force in the second Trump administration.
It is difficult to see how Mike Johnson survives as Speaker….Johnson has been humiliated and back-stabbed by Trump and Musk. Mike Johnson’s credibility with his own caucus and Democratic counterparts is non-existent. And some of that showed in the bill that was passed on Friday.

If you’re looking for a way to combat this, Democrats should publicly embarrass Trump about Musk. Call Musk the President-elect. Or the richer & smarter co-President; the one people really want to talk to. Trump will HATE it and might eventually ‘fire’ Musk. Remember, you can’t spell FELON without ELON.

We’re more than a decade now into the GOP’s performative politics of destruction. It gains power by touting its aim to break stuff and then runs into a brick wall when it’s forced to make the hard choices that come with holding power. Any GOP effort to govern at least temporarily is susceptible to being undermined by its many bomb throwers, now including Musk, who can exert leverage by striking a purer “blow it all up” posture than the rest of the GOP.

The events of the last week should give us hope that there are limits to the delusional, performative, grandiose claims and threats being peddled by Musk and Trump. They were losers in their first attempt of a smack-down with Congress. The lesson that the deficit hawks in the GOP should take from the tussle is that Trump and Musk are not as tough as they think.

In fact, it may signal the start of Trump’s “lame duck” presidency.

Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews accurately summed up the chaos we now find ourselves in. The question is whether non-elected officials should control funding the US government:

“The owner of a car company is controlling the House of Representatives from a social media app.”

What does it say about America that Elon Musk had to pay $44 billion to buy control of Twitter, but only $250 million in campaign contributions to Trump to buy control of the U.S. government?

This country is falling apart. Kind of like a Cybertruck.

Musk has to go.

Podcasts Turned The Tide

The Daily Escape:

Bear Trap Gap, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC – November 2024 photo by Mandy Gallimore

Wrongo had not heard of the Manosphere until the last weeks of the election. It’s an emerging term for disaffected young men who make up one of the voting blocks that carried Trump into office. From Wired:

”You’re going to hear a lot of people attribute Trump’s win to all kinds of reasons: inflation fatigue, immigration fearmongering, President Biden’s doomed determination to have one last rodeo. But he owes at least part of his victory to the manosphere, that amorphous assortment of influencers who are mostly young, exclusively male, and increasingly the drivers of whatever monoculture remains in an online society that’s long since been fragmented all to hell.”

From Professor Galloway:

“…this election gave us the opposite of the expected referendum on bodily autonomy; it was the Testosterone Election. The only thing I’m (fairly) certain of is what medium played a pivotal role, for the first time, in young people’s decision to violently pivot to Trump: podcasts.”

And that’s what this post is about. How Trump used the podcasting marketplace in a way that Harris didn’t. When a presidential candidate wins, their campaign staff, strategy, and tactics are paraded in the political press as genius. From Kyle Tharp:

“Despite billions of dollars spent each cycle, specific campaign tactics can only make a difference at the margins and in key moments. In such a noisy information environment, it’s difficult to say what, if any, tactics or strategies made the difference for Trump’s win. Politics isn’t science, and insidery persuasion ad testing can sometimes be just as useful as well, vibes.”

Trump’s Blue State Rallies

The Daily Escape:

We’re now in the homestretch of the presidential campaign, but in an unorthodox move, Trump plans on holding rallies in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California, all of which are locks to vote for Harris. Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest margin. Colorado is the only one of those states to vote for a Republican nominee for president this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.

Trump will still be spending most of his political advertising funds in the handful of battleground states where the races appear extremely tight, but the expectation is that the media will dutifully cover these rallies, giving him free publicity since it’s unusual to campaign where you don’t expect to win.

In the case of New York, Trump apparently will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden (MSG). The New York Post first reported that the event will take place Oct. 27, a little more than a week before Election Day. Why rallies in Blue states? Trump’s idea is to campaign in places where Democrats have near-complete control of government, and to take the opportunity of free media to highlight their supposed failures. Another consideration is that control of the House could be decided by a few close races in New York and California.

But with the battleground state races seemingly so tight, it seems like a bit of a luxury for Trump to be focused on helping down-ticket candidates. Think about it: None of the states where Trump is holding rallies has a competitive Senate race, although there are a handful of competitive House races in a year where the House will likely be decided by a razor-thin margin. From NBC: (brackets by Wrongo)

“In California, House District 40 is represented by Republican Young Kim, and House District 41 is represented by Republican Ken Calvert, both of whom are in contested races in the Los Angeles media market along with Coachella [CA], where Trump will be holding his rally.

In New York, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito won Nassau County’s 4th district in 2022, but it is a seat that leans Democratic and was won by Joe Biden by 15 points in 2020. Flipping the seat played a big role in helping Republicans take the House majority in 2022.”

Will the rallies be useful? People are already voting, and the primary value of rallies is to energize your base to help get out the vote. The more people they can get to vote early, the easier the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort on Election Day becomes. So little boosts of enthusiasm and local press coverage can help drive your people to the polls.

Is a rally in Madison Square Garden really a good idea? NBC quotes Republican operative Matthew Bartlett:

“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote rich or swing vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes…”

Two of his stops, Coachella, CA and Aurora, CO seem to be simply for optics about immigration and crimes committed by immigrants. Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez, a Democrat, issued a statement blasting Trump:

“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community….He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella.”

At Trump’s stop in Aurora earlier this year, he spread debunked rumors about Venezuelan gangs overrunning the city, including taking over an apartment complex. Trump’s claims have been refuted by local police, and the Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, who called them “not accurate.”

The Chicago stop will feature both Trump and his VP candidate JD Vance, at a Bloomberg-hosted event at the Economic Club of Chicago.

But let’s focus on MSG. Holding a rally at MSG has long been on Trump’s wish list. For some Conservatives, it harkens back to when the “America First” rally was conducted at MSG in 1939. On its surface, it was simply a rally held by the German-American Bund at the old Madison Square Garden in Manhattan at a time when pro-Nazi feeling was high in the US.

The Bund (bund is German for “organization”), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organization’s goals were wider: To create a “socially just, white gentile-ruled United States” and a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”

He sounds nice.

Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, quotes from a Trump talk in Claremont, NH:

“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

The parallelism between a fascist speaking in MSG in 1939 and a would-be fascist speaking there 85 years later shouldn’t be lost on anyone who is sitting up and taking nourishment.

Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a wanna-be fascist, even if he’s too ignorant to label what he is. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.

Trump’s bringing fascism back to America one rally at a time, whether we call it by its name or not.

Political Advertising: How Effective Is It?

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo’s calendar says there’s just 29 days to go until Election Day. The campaigns are in high gear, but what are they saying? And is what they’re saying getting through to both their base voters as well as to those who are “persuadable” enough for them to get out to the polls and vote? Time is running out.

Timing is a point raised in this NBC story, which describes that, after having taken the last 76 days to introduce the Vice President to voters, the campaign now plans to ratchet up negative advertising about how unfit Trump is to be President (emphasis by Wrongo).

“Leaning more heavily into negative campaigning is a strategic shift for Harris. While she has routinely been critical of Trump since becoming a candidate in July….Harris campaign officials said they intend to continue laying out her policy positions, background and plans…But emphasizing what Harris campaign officials view as Trump’s major vulnerabilities is seen as possibly one of the only ways to finally win over some voters who haven’t made up their mind in a static race that Democrats want to push in their direction.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs suggests that Harris’ attacks on Trump’s brand of hyper-masculinity appear to be working. As the Daily Beast summarized the findings, respondents:

“…chose Harris 59% over Trump’s 57% when it came to which candidate they felt was tough enough to be president…and favored Harris 55 to 46 % on “which candidate would change the country for the better,” and by 54 to 43% on who “was more likely to fight for them.”

Harris also is micro targeting the message of Trump’s weakness. From the WaPo:

“For the millions of football fans who tuned in from home for Saturday night’s much anticipated matchup between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama, she also ran a new ad nationally on ABC that hammers home her point.”

The ad says:

“’Winners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it’s anytime, anyplace. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home,’ the narrator says at the start of the spot, over images of a football game and washed-out footage of Trump missing a golf putt. The 30-second ad ends with footage of Harris challenging him to another debate, with the words “When we fight, we win” hanging on a sign in the background.”

The money quote:

“Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,…

Harris also posted the ad on Trump’s Truth Social media platform.

Marcy Wheeler quotes CNN’s David Wright who tracks political spending by the candidates about where the money is headed in this final month as the ad wars intensify:

“You can see how each side is placing bets on their best path to 270 electoral votes. In the first week of October, the Harris campaign is spending the most in the critical trio of “Blue Wall” states – they’ve got more than $5 million booked in Pennsylvania, about $4 million booked in Michigan, plus about $2.7 million booked in Wisconsin. And that makes sense – if Harris wins all three of those states, plus Nebraska’s up-for-grabs electoral vote in the swingy second congressional district (where the campaign also has more than $300,000 in ad time this week), she’s the next president.”

Turning to Trump:

“…he’ s looking to the Sun Belt. This week, Trump’s campaign is spending the most on ads in Pennsylvania, $3.8 million – it’s really the linchpin to both sides’ strategies. But in addition to that, the campaign is also spending $3.4 million in North Carolina and nearly $3 million in Georgia, its other top targets, and if he wins those two states plus Pennsylvania, he’s heading back to the White House.”

The Electoral College will come down to which of the two campaigns potential voters consider more trustable, probably mostly on their personal economic situation and where that’s heading with each potential president. From the WaPo:

“Americans are finally starting to feel better about the economy, invigorating Vice President Kamala Harris’s pitch for the presidency as she narrows her Republican opponent’s longtime lead on an issue that is foremost on voters’ minds.”

“Although voters still favor former president Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy…”

But Trump’s only answers for the economy are lower taxes on the rich and more tariffs. Yet, like everything else, Trump has no idea what tariffs actually do.

However, a new survey by Data For Progress’s top line finds Harris leading Trump by 3 points among likely voters nationwide. Nearly half of voters (49%), including a plurality of Independents (46%), choose Harris, while 46% choose Trump.

On the all-important economy, Harris has a trust advantage on most of the economic measures tested, including: supporting small businesses (+10 points), taxes on middle class Americans (+9), increasing wages (+5), lowering housing costs (+5), handling labor union policy (5%), improving our infrastructure (+3), lowering grocery costs (+2), creating jobs (+1), and protecting domestic manufacturing jobs (+1).

That says her campaign messaging is getting through.

Also the survey finds Trump with just a +1-point trust advantage over Harris on “reducing inflation,” an issue that voters have consistently ranked as their most important when deciding whom to vote for. Here’s their chart:

They also surveyed candidate favorability, which now tilts towards Harris. Harris’ rating is +2, while Trump’s is -12:

Is this poll on the money? Difficult to tell. A shorter election season makes it harder for campaigns to assess where to place their bets. And which of their cohorts in the electorate demand the most attention. We’ve focused on Gen Z and younger voters as being primarily swayed by economics. Messaging to women is another important element. Harris can run ads attacking Trump’s hyper-masculinity, (which will help with women).

From The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“And Harris needs to focus there. In the Obama years the gap between young men and women identifying as liberals was just five percentage points, during the Trump-Biden years this has tripled to 15 points, according to Gallup. This change has been caused almost entirely by young women moving to the left, rather than young men tacking to the right. The fact that this generation’s formative years were during the #MeToo movement, the Trump years and the decision to overturn Roe v Wade helps explain it.”

In 2020 a majority of white women voted for Trump. He will be in the minority in 2024. Leading among women is a real advantage. Since the 1980s a greater share of women than men has turned out to vote. In 2020 women made up 54% of the electorate. A final indicator that Democrats might be winning this battle of the sexes: in battleground states, according to Target Smart, a data firm, between July and September, twice as many young Democratic women registered to vote than young Republican men.

Trump’s bet is that Harris is the one with the turnout problem. They think their base is more committed to their candidate than is Harris’s. But Marcy Wheeler points to Harris’s investment in the Dem ground game:

“The Harris campaign claimed in late September to have 330 offices and more than 2,400 staff. They completed 25,000 weekend volunteer shifts on the final weekend of last month, contacting over 1 million voters over three days and completed the 100,000th event of the campaign.”

BTW: Ms. Oh So Right got a postcard from Harris to vote early this week.

The Young Now Drive How We Win Elections

The Daily Escape:

First up, Wrongo discovered since his column about Thomas Miller, that AP/NORC, a respected mainstream polling organization is also asking the revolutionary question “Who do you think will win the election” rather than “Who are you going to vote for?”

It turns out that the answers were directionally similar to Miller’s:

“With two months remaining until the general election, a larger share of registered voters believe Kamala Harris will win compared to Donald Trump.”

The result was Harris, 38% vs. Trump 28%. The rest was split 34% between Don’t Know (14%) and Can’t choose (20%). The results aren’t earth-shaking, but It’s useful to see another organization ask the question.

Second, readers of the Wrongologist primarily skew older, so it is relatively easy for us to be oblivious to what’s going on in social media and the impact it has on our politics. Take for example, TikTok (“TT”). Despite what we think we know, TikTok is becoming the new TV.

Last month, Pew published a new report showing that:

“…about half of TikTok users under 30 say they use the app to keep up with politics and news.”

Here’s a chart:

In fact, the Harris campaign’s TikTok account, @kamalahq, has officially passed one billion views! It may sound absurd to crusty old political operatives, but if you want to reach the younger voter, TT seems to have surpassed TV as a place to look for them. From the FWIW Newsletter:

“Gen-Z media consumers use their phones to watch content exactly like it’s TV. These Americans aren’t ‘cord cutters.’ They never had a cord in the first place. Gen-Z spends less time watching traditional TV than any other age group, while Gen-Z TikTok users spend an average of 77 minutes per day on the app.”

“TikTok’s growing…share of Gen-Z attention is even coming for the big streamers like Netflix – more than 50% of Gen-Z have canceled a streaming service in the past 6 months, and 66% would prefer watching TikTok over streaming.”

So TikTok should be the preferred landing spot for political advertising if the candidate is trying to reach Gen-Z. Harris and Walz have gone on two of the most prominent TikTok shows, Subway Takes and Track Star. (Which we may not have heard of before.)

And the format was much like when they appear with Colbert or Kimmel.

Most Gen-Z consumers watch Colbert or Kimmel in the form of a clip on their phones or tablets, so TikToks function in the same way. The only differences are that TikTok shows are very short, averaging between 90 – 120 seconds of run time. They are optimized to play to the strength of the TT algorithm and go viral, and are produced at a fraction of the budget of traditional TV.

And there’s a huge difference between the Republicans, who in the most competitive Senate races, have made the decision to exclusively focus on old-school television ads, instead of online platforms where a majority of voters spend their time. FWIW found that in Michigan:

“…one prominent GOP Senate candidate had spent [less than] $10,000 online compared to his Democratic rival’s $2 million.”

There’s been a big shift to TikTok after Biden withdrew: Trump content was dominating TT, and had started accumulating many more views, likes, and followers than Biden. FWIW reports that using the social analytics platform Zelf to track sentiment of TikTok posts, pro-Harris content is now the norm on the app.

The growing disparity means that the Democrats are connecting with Gen-Z where they are, in a way that Republicans aren’t able to do by using traditional cable and television ads. While we know that TT has serious legal jeopardy, that won’t become a factor until after the election is decided.

So we’re seeing more about how social media and technology are eclipsing the old school ways of running presidential campaigns. Let’s hope we’re on the right side of this story!

Harris’s Chances This Fall

The Daily Escape:

Storm over Mt. Tom, Easthampton MA – July 2024 photo by Stef Michael

It’s sad that Biden is unable to carry the torch, but Wrongo’s never been happier with the Democratic Party. The leadership made an incredibly difficult decision to insist that despite winning the nomination of the Party, Biden shouldn’t accept it. The reality was that neither Biden nor the Party could responsibly argue that Biden would be fit to serve another four and a half years in office. Worse, the American people simply weren’t buying that he could.

So the past 30(ish) days constituted the best example in Wrongo’s lifetime of a political party doing what a political party is supposed to do, which is to put the interests of the Party, and by extension the interests of the country, ahead of the interests of any individual. Even if that person happens to be the president of the US.

This shows the central difference between the Democrats and the cult of personality we formerly called the Republican Party. It’s impossible to imagine the Republicans removing Trump as its presidential candidate.

By contrast, the Democrats gradually came to a collective conclusion after the June 27 debate that circumstances had changed enough to warrant bringing maximum institutional pressure on Biden to withdraw from the race. We will never know how well Biden would have done in the election compared to how Harris will do. The Party decided, and the Party made the right decision — as most critically, did Biden himself.

We’ve all seen the energy, enthusiasm, fresh hope, and tons of money that have poured into the Democrats’ coffers. But how realistic is Harris’s path to the White House?

It’s only day four, and Harris, the (very) likely Democratic presidential nominee, is still getting loads of positive press while Democrats are falling all over themselves to give her money and volunteer to work on the campaign. It may be early but it’s worth looking at Harris’s path to winning 270 Electoral College votes in order to keep the White House out of Trump’s hands.

The Harris campaign told Politico about how they see the Electoral College map:

“The Midwest is not where the opportunity is for her….The opportunity with her… is going to be Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania. And however those four states go, the rest of the country will follow.”

That thinking is based on the EC maps produced by 270towin.com. Here’s their current take:

Now Wrongo doesn’t think that PA and MI are currently toss-ups. He thinks that they lean Democratic, making the spread: Harris 260 vs. Trump at 251, with just 27 toss-up EC votes remaining. Wrongo is uncertain that Harris can win North Carolina, despite having a Democratic governor and both of its GOP senators having won last time by less than 2 percentage points. Mark Robinson, the NC Republican gubernatorial candidate is perhaps the worst in the US. Having said that it was acceptable to kill people on the left, and that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, he should be a real drag on the Trump vote.

But Harris may be able to take Georgia and Arizona as well as Pennsylvania and Michigan. Here’s that map:

In fact, in this scenario, Harris could lose either Georgia or Arizona, and still get to 270.

If you’re looking for an upside, Harris has more viable paths to 270 electoral votes than Biden did. However, Trump has more places (Virginia and Minnesota) to expand the map than does Harris (North Carolina). So the map STILL favors Trump, since he has more paths to 270.

So we’ve gone from no realistic path to victory to setting the stage for victory. We shouldn’t forget that Trump essentially has a ceiling. Politico has reported a 700% increase in voter registration at Voter.com in the last 48 hours. The higher the turnout, the better for Harris.

When Biden was running, many people said, “It’s hopeless, Trump will win.” And now, they’re feeling energized. OTOH, some are thinking that “Harris is raising so much money, maybe I don’t need to do anything.”

We can’t be lazy or passive, the stakes are too high. There’s an organization, Focus4Democracy, a group of smart people with decades of experience crafting effective campaign messages. They do a zoom every 2 weeks. The next one is Sunday, July 28 @ 8:00 pm EST. You can register at bit.ly/F4D28July . Their Zooms explain how they test and refine messages that generate more Democratic votes, particularly in battleground states. And they track the results. They also need donations.

Speaking of messaging, Harris’s first appearance as the Democratic nominee in Milwaukee was promising. At the strategic level, here’s what she did:

Highlighted her time as a prosecutor and tied that to Trump’s crimes.
Positioned her campaign as focused on middle-class, kitchen-table issues.
Framed the choice as “striding into the future” vs. “being dragged into the past.”

Here’s some things she did not do:

Describe Trump as a threat to democracy.
Reference the historic nature of her campaign as a black woman.
Reach out to the left.

The things she didn’t do were very smart. She didn’t give any policy details. In a 100-day campaign, she needs to be as light on details and as long on ideas as possible. At some point she’ll need to come up with a couple of concrete proposals.

There was no “democracy” talk. While most Democrats view this election in terms of democratic backsliding, polls consistently show that “democracy” isn’t something voters care much about. To the extent Harris gestured toward democracy, it was to frame the choice as:

“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and the rule of law? Or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?”

Branding Trump as “chaos” while framing her agenda as “freedom” seems more effective than talking about “saving democracy,” the way most Dems prefer.

There was no talk of identity politics. Everything about Harris’s nomination is historic. She’s the first Black woman to be nominated for president by a major party. She’s the first Democrat to run against an insurrectionist. The first person to be swapped into a presidential nomination at the final hour. But these firsts are all out there. So unlike Hillary, she doesn’t need to talk about them. And maybe not talking about the historic nature of her candidacy makes it even more powerful in the minds of voters.

Wrongo likes Harris’s energy and focus on the future! In the immortal words of Tom Brady, “Let’s goooo!”

About That Debate

The Daily Escape:

Rainstorm, Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC – June 2024 photo by David R. Robinson

It’s a new day and we’re trying to pick up the pieces after what happened in last night’s debate between Trump and Biden. Here’s a recap by Rick Wilson, Lincoln Project co-founder:

“It’s late June, and Joe Biden went on stage with a felon who tore down America, told 500 sundry lies, bragged about ending Roe v. Wade, defended January 6th, denied having sex with a porn star, and promised to betray Ukraine. And Joe Biden had a bad, bad night.”

Biden stumbled over his words, and Trump’s barrage of lies went unchecked. On Twitter and on cable news, the political pundit class had a collective freakout. From political journalist John Nichols:

“CNN is illustrating how a ‘debate’ when the moderators reject the basic responsibility of fact-checking in real time, and refuse to challenge blatantly false statements, is not a debate. It’s…chaos where lies are given equal footing with the truth.”

When Wrongo heard that CNN wouldn’t be doing any real time fact-checking on Thursday afternoon, it was clear how the debate would go. Only now, the Democrats and Biden can’t tell people they didn’t see what they saw.

A lot of media people are SHOCKED at Biden’s performance. Dem consultants see that there is blood in the water and the sharks are circling. So many senior Dems are saying that Biden should step aside. The options are pretty simple:

Convince Biden to drop out of the race.
Stick with Biden and hope his debate performance doesn’t turn many voters away.

There are LOTS of Dems who want option #1. But it will be impossible to get Biden to drop out if he doesn’t want to do it. And there are NO signs that he wants to it.

Any plan to ease Biden out would likely require the involvement of Jill Biden and Barack Obama, along with assembling a pre-fab, pre-convention ticket acceptable to the Party’s delegates.

Otherwise, it would be a free-for-all. Even with Biden and Obama’s backing, that’s a huge undertaking with a 10 out of 10 degree of difficulty. It also entails massive risk with the convention delegates, the public, along with the challenges of spinning up a presidential campaign from a standing start. No Democrat on the sidelines today has the national organization in place to make a credible presidential run. They would have to take over the Biden campaign’s assets and move on from there.

Get a grip: One candidate on the stage lied from start to finish. And no one is suggesting that he drop out.

The media has been on the verge of burying Biden because of his age for months. That was never more true than on CNN on Thursday night, where their coifed pundit-moderators ignored the elephants in the room – that one of the two men standing at the podiums was a convicted felon, the leader of a coup attempt, an alleged thief of national security documents, who was earlier this year found liable in a civil court for rape, and has promised to usher in a vengeful authoritarian regime if he returns to office.

Instead, they launched the debate with their usual dead horse: the deficit and taxes. More from Wilson:

“History is replete with bad debate performances: Clinton’s first outing in 1992, George W. Bush’s Boston groaner (I was there, and it was awful), and Obama’s first showing against John McCain. Debates matter until they don’t, but they matter most to the chattering and online classes.”

All of those debaters won the presidency.

Biden is still overwhelmingly likely to run for reelection; he’s still is in a position to be re-elected. Biden, even diminished, is more right than wrong, that at this point he represents the Party’s best chance to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.

Biden did the best he could with an opponent who is unconstrained by the truth and moderators perfectly willing to allow Trump to lie. Unfortunately while Biden started weak, he finished stronger, while Trump started strong, he finished weak.

But Wrongo assumes that many people stopped watching after the first break.

So while some Democrats are in a panic about Joe Biden’s debate performance, we need to get a clue and check in with reality. It was probable that Biden was unwell and fatigued. Imagine how well you’d perform under the same conditions, regardless of your age.

Swallow your panic and get to work, doing whatever you can. Because for many Americans, this is personal. Your guy had a bad night. But the sun is out today. Move forward. Stop being afraid of your own shadow. We’re running against an insurrectionist and a felon. Biden is old. Stop being afraid of it.

We’re having our Saturday Soother on Friday this week, for the obvious reason that it’s necessary. On the Fields of Wrong, a very large tree fell across the long driveway of two of our neighbors. It says a lot that five or so of the men in the neighborhood worked together over two days to reopen the road. It did require borrowed and rented capital equipment: a scoop loader, a tractor and a wood chipper.

It’s going to be a cooler and drier Friday and Saturday in Connecticut. So let’s grab a seat in the shade and do our best not to think about the Supreme Court’s continuing efforts to end democracy as we used to know it. Try instead to take a few moments to gather ourselves for the slings and arrows of the week to come.

Start by listening to “Uncle John’s Band” by the Grateful Dead. It started appearing in their concerts in1969. The band recorded it for their 1970 album “Workingman’s Dead”. It was written by guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter. The tune was played more than 330 times by the Dead and the lyrics seem to Wrongo to be valuable today:

Sample Lyrics:

Well, the first days are the hardest days
Don’t you worry anymore
‘Cause when life looks like Easy Street
There is danger at your door
Think this through with me
Let me know your mind
Woah, oh, what I want to know
Is are you kind?

Goddamn, well, I declare
Have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs
Their motto is “don’t tread on me”

Come hear Uncle John’s band
Playing to the tide
Come with me, or go alone
He’s come to take his children home

We Can’t Sit Back. We Must Become Activists

The Daily Escape:

Doll House, Bears Ears National Monument, UT – June 2024 photo by Robert Villegas

Over the weekend, Wrongo and Ms. Right along with friends of the blog Gloria R., Pat M. and David P. saw the play “Suffs” on Broadway, NYC.

The plot is that it’s 1913 and the women’s movement is trying to get women the right to vote. They are organized by the suffragists, not suffragettes (they call themselves “Suffs”). “Suffs” traces their heroic and occasionally dangerous campaign from 1913 through ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. There’s a schism in the movement between the conservative old-line establishment Suffs, and a youthful breakaway group who want to emulate a similar movement in England, led in the US by Alice Paul who briefly spent time in the UK.

Paul and her group confront then-president Woodrow Wilson, who, after jailing the Paul group and allowing them to nearly die in a hunger strike, eventually tumbles to supporting the Suffs’ cause.

So much has changed since the passing of the 19th Amendment over a century ago, and yet this musical reminds us that we sometimes need to look back, in order to march into the future.

It was a sold out crowd. The audience was enthusiastic, and predominantly women. “Suffs” is a fantastic show that should be seen by anyone who loves Broadway, loves musicals, and needs a breath of hope in this bleak world. Like “Hamilton“, it invites us to learn something about the history of America. It’s a good show and it’s good for the world. Wrongo was emotional, remembering his time as an activist in the Civil Rights movement.

The show sets the stage early with the song, “Find A Way”:

How will we do it when it’s never been done?
How will we find the way where there isn’t one?

“Suffs” also makes us think about where we are today in America, along with what we can do to make it better. My lunch with the Broadway friends underlined that Democrats think it’s a scary time. Dan Pfeiffer wrote about how “Democrats are in a full-blown freakout over Biden”. Wrongo was the only one at lunch who thought that Biden has an excellent chance of winning in November. To paraphrase a line in the New Yorker by Lore Segal:

“The current situation is like two Democrats who are fighting a duel. On the count of ten, they turn and each shoots themselves in the foot”.

Can You Sell Just Five Percent Of Your Soul To Satan?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Duck, NC – June 2024 photo by Nate Waddell

This should be a trivial story, except it isn’t. The WaPo reported this week that two former law enforcement officers who defended the US Capitol from rioters on Jan. 6 were jeered on Wednesday by state GOP lawmakers during a visit to the Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives:

“Former US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and former sergeant Aquilino Gonell were introduced on the floor Wednesday as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D) for having “bravely defended democracy in the United States Capitol against rioters and insurrection on January 6. As the two men — both of whom were injured by rioters on Jan. 6 — were introduced, the House floor descended into chaos. According to Democratic lawmakers, several GOP lawmakers hissed and booed, with a number of Republicans walking out of the chamber in protest.”

In this specific instance of MAGA misbehavior, two things are significant. First, the Pennsylvania House has 203 members split between 102 Democrats and 101 Republicans. This is very similar to the polarizing political split in the US House. Second, MAGAs acting out underscores just how polarizing the Jan. 6 insurrection has become with Republicans.

Once again, we’re seeing that MAGA Republican politicians support very few of the historical guardrails of our politics. Wrongo used to think that most Republicans were sincere in their beliefs in a certain moral standard; in fiscal responsibility, in honoring those who served in the military, and respecting police officers and other authority. But over time, every one of those supposed standards has been trampled, and while Trump has been the single biggest perpetrator, all of today’s the loudmouth grifters on the Right also share in this ignominy. It’s doubtful that any argument they make is in good faith.

The irony is that the MAGA Republicans readily abandoned their long-standing heritage of freedom, of democratic rule, of the fundamentals of law dating from the Magna Carta, and of British common law. They’ve replaced it all with the Ethos of Trump. Their patriotism, like Trump’s business prowess, is a sham. Its disposable if political advantage is on the line. See Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) opinions on Ukraine if you doubt this.

And commitment to the principle of equal justice under law? That has been replaced with the saying: “For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law.”

It’s nothing short of amazing how otherwise principled Republican politicians have flocked to Trump’s side. Their moves started slowly, but picked up steam during his presidency. Now they’re fully espousing whatever Trump says. And since his conviction in NY for fraud, it seems revenge is what’s driving them. Their willingness to shrug off a jury’s ruling and characterize it as illegitimate isn’t a new demonstration of their disregard for the rule of law. We’ve already seen this disregard in two impeachment trials, and in their disavowing any importance to the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection.

The MAGA movement has become a full-blown fascist enterprise before our eyes. The response we’re seeing to Trump’s conviction is bringing it more out in the open. Despite all of Trump’s bankruptcies, his greatest achievement in bankruptcy is in his completing the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party. But Republicans still hope to re-elect their convicted leader to the White House. Now a felon, Trump cannot possess a gun, but they want to hand him the US military and nuclear arsenal.

Republicans ought to know that there’s no such thing as selling five percent of your soul to Satan. More likely, the Devil is in a Rent-to-Own relationship with the GOP.

Some decent news for your Saturday. Post the Trump verdict, the NYT resurveyed the participants in its last poll of 2,000 people. They found a perceptible shift toward Biden. It was only a couple of points but what’s meaningful about it is who shifted. Nate Cohn wrote:

“Perhaps not surprisingly, the swings were relatively pronounced among young, nonwhite, less engaged and low-turnout voters. In fact, 20% of Mr. Trump’s previous supporters who are Black now say they back Mr. Biden.”

Overall, Mr. Trump retained 93% of voters who told the NYT that they backed him in a previous survey. But in a close election, losing 7% of your supporters could be decisive. More:

“A potentially crucial sliver of Mr. Trump’s former supporters — 3% — now told us they’ll back Mr. Biden, while another 4% say they’re now undecided.”

Also, Trump only leads Biden by 4 points in Florida in the latest poll of the state by Fox News:

Biden is just outside the margin of error, but both of them have slipped slightly since the 2020 election. It should give some faint hope to Democrats, since Florida also has a November ballot initiative that would restore abortion rights. If the Florida initiative passes, abortion will be legalized up to 24 weeks. If it gets anywhere near the 60% required to become law, Biden has a chance in Florida. Trump doesn’t have a path to 270 electoral votes without Florida!

All we have to do is vote.

As usual, we’re heading into the weekend with mostly bad and a smattering of good news. It’s now time for our Saturday Soother, where we unplug from the social media that’s trying to murder our brains, and instead, spend a few moments of relaxation. Here on the Fields of Wrong, we’re attempting to turn a ½ acre patch of our lawn into a meadow that will attract pollinators. So far, the grass is very tall, and there are occasional flowers in bloom. Wrongo planted a few more this week, disturbing the bluebirds in one of our nest boxes in the process.

It’s going to be sunny and warm in the Northeast, so grab a seat under a tree. Now, watch and listen to the late, great Jeff Beck perform “Nessun Dorma”, on the Fender guitar. It’s the wildly popular aria from Puccini’s opera “Turandot” played here at the Crossroads Blues festival in February 2010. Beck also performed “Nessun Dorma” on many other stages. Beck died in January 2023. At the time, a fellow musician said…”If you haven’t heard this version of Nessun Dorma you need to because it can move you to tears.” Strongly recommended:

The Pro-Abortion Political Movement

The Daily Escape:

Artichoke blossom, Imperial County, CA – June 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon

The repealing of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision has helped create a dynamic new political movement: A revolt of millions of Americans (predominantly women) who think government has no business inserting itself into a woman’s personal decisions. This is going to be an important factor in the 2024 elections as it was in 2022.

The Economist says that only:

“….ten thousand women eligible to vote in this November’s elections were born before women won the right to vote. In the century since then, American women have steadily accumulated rights. In the 1960s the contraceptive pill let women choose how many children they had. In the 1970s no-fault divorce laws and Roe v Wade gave women more choices that had been denied to their mothers. This progress seemed irreversible, and was often taken for granted.”

Then it was time for the Trump-appointed Conservative Supreme Court majority to do what it had been hired to do: Overturn a woman’s right to an abortion. More from The Economist:

“A third of American women aged 15-49 now live in states where abortion is either illegal or impossibly restricted.”

These people are leading the biggest voter rebellion since the Tea Party movement in 2009.

Surprisingly, the number of abortions in the US has risen slightly since the Court’s decision, mostly due to the availability of the drug Mifepristone, which can be prescribed by mail. Medication abortions now account for about 63 percent of pregnancy terminations nationwide. The legality of Mifepristone is also currently under review by the same six Conservative justices. That decision could come down as early as today, and certainly by early July.

What a country! Americans have grown used to the idea that every spring, we wait for 9 unelected government officials with lifetime jobs to tell us what kind of country we’re going to live in. Elections should serve this purpose, and we the people should be doing the telling.

But that revolution remains in our future. What is part of our present is an attempt by House Democrats to force a vote on codifying the right to birth control access nationwide. From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo):

“The [Democrat’s] maneuver, through a procedural move known as a discharge petition, is all but certain to fail for lack of Republican support, but that is by design. It is part of a broad election-year push by Democrats to highlight Republicans’ record of opposing abortion rights and other reproductive health choices that voters fear will be stripped away following the fall of Roe v. Wade.”

The Senate Democrats also plan to force a vote on an identical contraceptive access bill, which once again, Republicans are expected to block. This coordinated push shows that Democrats regard access to abortion and contraception options as a key issue that will show a contrast with Republicans this fall.

We’ve seen that the Dobbs decision caused an immediate political reaction. Six states have held referendums on abortion, and in all six, the abortion rights side prevailed. A potential problem for anti-abortion Republicans is that referendums to legalize abortion could be on the ballot in up to 16 more states.

Abortion rights campaigners already have enough signatures to get on the ballot in a few states, including Florida. That state is crucial because it was the abortion destination for many women in the South until May 1st, when it outlawed most abortions after six weeks. If the Florida initiative passes, abortion will be legalized up to the point of viability, roughly 24 weeks. Democrats vainly hope the issue has put Florida in play in the presidential election, although it must pass by 60% to become law. It can easily impact the elections in Arizona and other states. More:

“In only two of the six states that have held referendums, California and Vermont, did the abortion-rights side get such a large share. When Michigan held its referendum in 2022, 57% voted in favor of protecting abortion even though 63% broadly supported the procedure, a rate similar to Floridians.”

That means we’re in the middle of a vast political battle that parallels the presidential battle. Outside groups are pouring tens of millions of dollars into competitive House districts to amplify the message. The main super PAC supporting House Democrats last month announced a new $100 million fund focusing on abortion rights in swing districts.

And the group Americans for Contraception plans to spend more than $7 million on television and digital ads, targeting Republicans in the Senate who vote against the bill and House members who do not sign the petition.

A few voters could be pulled away from the Republicans. More from The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo):

“The midterm elections in 2022 hinted at that….Although only 14% of registered Republican voters were upset about the Dobbs ruling, a quarter of that group voted for a Democrat in their House district…. Republicans and independents who saw abortion as an important issue were more likely to vote for Democrats in 2022 than two years earlier.”

That equals 3.5% of Republicans, and may be among the reasons a predicted “red wave” lifting Republican candidates failed to appear in 2022.

Republicans are in a bind on reproductive rights. They can’t reconcile their Party’s hard-line policies on women’s health and they’re out of step with the vast majority of the country. Despite that, they continue to try to tuck anti-abortion policies into pending legislation.

However the 2024 elections pan out, the anti-Dobbs movement represents something different in US politics. Unlike the Republicans, it isn’t a group of keyboard warriors vying for attention or grift online. Instead it’s people giving up their weekends and evenings to try to persuade their neighbors about an idea they hold deeply.

And it isn’t simply a political cause about a single issue. It’s many issues: The right to live, the right to privacy for medical procedures, the right to not be forced by the state to undergo unnecessary physical or mental injury.

Like most successful revolutions, it’s participatory and local. It is how democracy in America was designed to work. Help it succeed in November!

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Culture Wars

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