Daily Escape – Page 2 – The Wrongologist

Happy Holidays

The Daily Escape:

Santa Run, Las Vegas, NV -December 2024

Just a short message that this is the last column for 2024. Here’s hoping you have a wonderful holiday regardless of how or what you celebrate at this time of the year! We are spending time with family and friends accompanied by food, laughter, and strong beverages! We’re also swapping presents on the theme that the gift should be a “personal guilty pleasure”. That means Wrongo’s contains chocolate covered coconut pieces for the lucky winner. They’re delicious with single malt scotch.

The Christmas holiday is a time for reflection, and our focus is gratitude for having a large family and a few close friends that care so much about us, are so willing to help when needed, and who do it with a hug and a smile. We’re also grateful for those who read the blog. Thank you for going out of your way to be a part of this effort.

The New Year is bound to bring us new challenges, certainly for Wrongo, and certainly politically. How is Trump spending the holiday? Trying to take back the Panama Canal.

See The Intelligencer, Trump Is Threatening to Take Back Canal. He lambasted the 1977 treaty Jimmy Carter signed ceding the Canal to Panama, and he claimed Panama was violating that treaty by allowing China to manage it. (China does not manage the Canal). Trump’s post drew a reprimand from Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino who noted that every inch of Panama is part of a sovereign nation.

Trump then upped the ante with an “oh yea?” by posting a photo of the Panama Canal under a US flag with the caption, “Welcome to the US Canal.”

It is beyond difficult to describe the idiocy of Trump’s suggestion to invade Panama in order to take back control of the Canal. Perhaps he’s engaging in a PR stunt to draw attention away from the fact that he’s lost some control of the GOP to Musk. From the AP:

“Since Panama is clearly not willing to give back the Canal — which the country has controlled since 1999 and spent billions of dollars to improve, and is a source of great national pride — pretty much the only way Trump could take control of the waterway would be for the US to invade Panama (again).”

“Also, Trump still wants Greenland. In his announcement on Sunday nominating tech investor Ken Howery as ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote that “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

It is tricky to ascribe rational motivations to Trump’s actions. His administration is shaping up to be one of fiasco, farce and fuck-ups. Prepare for much more of the same in 2025.

It’s going to be a crazy year, folks. All the best in your efforts to stay sane through it all!

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.

Democratic Party Messaging

The Daily Escape:

Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, CO – December 2024 photo by Monica Breckenridge.

The Democrats are meeting this week to decide on who will lead them into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 general election. Wrongo thinks it’s time for a revolution.

The key question is how do Democrats go back to winning presidential elections? And it may not be the way you think. From Jon V. Last:

“Since Trump’s emergence in 2016 the opposition has responded by acting as if it were still 2015. The Biden administration pursued a vigorous, bipartisan agenda filled with popular legislation designed to promote economic growth across the board. Biden spent money on infrastructure and manufacturing—much of it in red states and rural areas where Democrats had little support.

The Biden administration’s theory was that by governing from the center and focusing on employment and economic growth, Democrats could retain the support of the majority….”

But that theory didn’t work, and Trump won, running on zero ideas about growth, prosperity, or progress. His campaign was posited on the infliction of pain to outsiders. Trump didn’t promise to improve the lives of his voters. He promised to punish the people his voters wanted to hurt. That was the entirety of his electoral proposition, and none of it was subtext. Instead it was bold-face, ALL CAPS text.

Last says it worked because America has changed and the majority of voters are no longer motivated by wanting progress for themselves. Instead they’re motivated primarily by anger that out-groups—the people they do not like—might be succeeding or getting benefits they’re not getting.

If this is true, and at least some evidence suggests it is, how do Democrats persuade voters not to be quite so angry and to vote for them? From Brian Beutler: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…winning the next election will require Democrats to persuade some as-yet unpersuaded voters that they’re worth voting for. Whatever policies Democrats think are popular, whatever affects they associate with normalness and affability, if they can’t do the delicate work of changing a mind, they can’t get anywhere.”

“Democrats are about to have as little power as they’ve had at any time in the past two decades for a simple reason: Most Americans weren’t convinced that they’d be better off under Democratic rule. That’s it. And there’s no shortcut back to power that avoids the difficult task of convincing people to change their minds.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The Democrats need more and better communicators, and, crucially, it needs the people who don’t understand their potential to influence conventional wisdom and public opinion to get with the times. Most persuasion doesn’t happen person to person, it is mediated. When it does happen person to person, it is most often between people who already know each other, and usually one of those people is regurgitating ideas they picked up….And the ripest targets are no longer classic swing voters who are happy to talk politics with strangers….”

Couple all of this with the problem of where people get their news, and you have Dems digging out of a ditch partially of their own making. What Democrats are missing more than anything is creative thinking about how to reach people who will never answer a telephone call from a number they don’t recognize, never answer the door for a canvasser, and never form lasting political beliefs by watching or reading professional newscasts (because they rarely, if ever do).

This time around, Democrats either need their leaders to adapt, or else they need new leaders.

Jon Last thinks what will win votes in this environment is a lefty demagogue akin to what Bernie Sanders has been selling for years with his “millionaires and billionaires” rants. Sanders’s pitches resonated with younger voters. He got quite a lot of traction in 2016, but Democratic Party primary voters were not ready for him.

Who should the Dems support to lead them into the next round of elections? It should be a group of people in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. And thank God there is at least some movement among “younger” Democrats on the Hill to challenge the party’s gerontocracy.

Billy Ray is a screenwriter. His Captain Phillips screenplay earned him an Oscar nomination. He thinks the Democrats’ storytelling ought to start with:

“Whoever is going to be our next presidential candidate needs to look to the American people and say, ‘You matter. Not me, not Trump. You matter. You matter to your family, you matter to your community, you matter to your country,’” he adds. “‘You matter to our collective future, and you matter to me. And what I’m going to do for the next four years is just work for working families. I’m going to do the things that made the Democratic Party your party for so long.’”

Working families. Who among the Democrats out there can build on and carry this message home?

Evolve or Die, Dems.

Implications Of Brian Thompson’s Assassination

The Daily Escape:

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

“If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”– Il Gattopardo

If you’re on social media, a concerning number of people seem to openly support gunning down a “corporate rich guy” in broad daylight. Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in what appears to be a targeted killing. And the comments about it on the internet underscore there is kind of a depravity circulating in too many Americans.

This, after two attempts to assassinate Trump during the campaign. Which stirred up similar, although more muted reaction on social media.

The killer left anti-insurance messages on the shell casings of the bullets that killed Thompson, using the words: “deny,” “defend” and “depose”. Those words are references to the ways insurance companies avoid paying for care.

An excellent summary by Bob Lefsetz:

“And we thought the revolution would arrive as a result of the red/blue divide. When in truth, it’s all about income inequality. Please don’t criticize me for having sympathy for those screwed by the insurance companies. If I were in charge, there’d be no guns at all, or a law akin to that in Australia. But one would posit that the shooter is pissed because the insurance company didn’t pay.

But that’s what insurance companies do, not pay. That’s their business model. Even assuming you can see the doctor of your choice, which is rare.”

Yes, not pay whenever possible is what insurance companies do.

To be clear, this is why advanced societies have tended to create broad publicly funded social safety net programs. It’s not because their bleeding heart politicians love giving away money. It’s because making sure people have humane standards of living keeps them from becoming desperate and doing stuff like this. During the Great Depression, capitalists agreed—grudgingly—to the New Deal because they were afraid otherwise the country would “go Communist”.

We have no clarity on the actual motive behind the killing, but all signs point to it being linked to dissatisfaction with our health insurance system. And we need to remember that Brian Thompson was a human being with a family. So calling his death justified is despicable.

It’s the health insurance payment system and healthcare pricing for goods and services that is despicable.

From STAT:

“The public’s dissatisfaction has never been higher. Recent polling data show the health care system is as unpopular now as it was before the Affordable Care Act went into effect 15 years ago — a time when insurers could decline to cover people if they had any number of pre-existing health conditions and nearly 49 million people lacked insurance. A survey from Gallup released Friday reveals that “Americans’ positive rating of the quality of health care in the U.S. is now at its lowest point” since 2001.”

“Roughly 25 million Americans remain uninsured. Tens of millions of others have health insurance but can’t afford their deductibles, coinsurance, or copays due to the high prices of tests, surgeries, and prescription drugs….These barriers aren’t just a nuisance — they can have real effects on patients’ health.”

The KFF foundation reports that 100 million Americans have medical debt, and its highly doubtful that they can afford to pay it down. Even people with platinum forms of coverage face long waits coordinating the complex and uncoordinated delivery of their health care, as Wrongo knows firsthand.

After getting care, patients are inundated with medical bills they don’t understand — perplexed why their insurer isn’t advocating on their behalf, and fearful that hospitals and other providers will send them to collections or sue them.

It’s all part of a health care system that is projected to spend $5 trillion this year, eating further into workers’ wages. Those who feel most aggrieved often are the sickest. Most people are generally satisfied with their health insurance. However, people who have more health conditions and therefore need to get care more frequently don’t like their coverage nearly as much as healthier people, according to polling from KFF.

So, the more they know you, the more they dislike you. People are feeling a sense of helplessness in trying to address this mammoth commercial insurance industry that’s putting restraints on people’s ability to get care. When you feel that sense of helplessness is when you end up having situations like this. People don’t really know what else to do.

The murder of the CEO and the public’s reaction reveals that:

Americans are blindingly angry, and not just with the healthcare system.
Due process is no longer trusted. Have enough money and you’re likely to buy your way out of a bad situation. The FTC says Twitter must comply with the consent decree and Elon Musk just doesn’t do it. The government is no match for the rich. Money can insulate you from so much.
Vigilante justice has become a solution in some places because of the lack of due process.

We’re entering a period that is very similar to the Gilded Age of the 1880s and the 1930s.

Our social contract is in free fall. And the Trump administration’s proposed cabinet officers will make it worse.

What will happen in a country with 400 million guns and 320 million people? Things may go downhill quickly. Never forget, most change is fomented by individuals. A fruit vendor in Tunisia ignited the Arab Spring.

Is this the start of change in America? One person gunning down an insurance company executive?

Wrongo doesn’t condone the shooting. At this point we have no motive. But what we do know makes you think about our broken health care system and the overcompensation of the people who run it. They’re getting rich on our illnesses. They take our money and then, don’t pay.

Ain’t that America.

Hunter’s Pardon

The Daily Escape:

Eastham, MA mirror image, October 2024 photo by Bo Ericsson

Why are the media and the GOP so shocked and appalled at Hunter Biden’s pardon? It’s been called “the most consequential since Nixon”. Hunter was set to be sentenced and (probably) jailed this week. The seriousness of his likely sentence was disproportionately severe, largely because he was Joe Biden’s son.

Hunter lied on a form about being on drugs and he paid his taxes late. He entered into a plea deal in which he would admit guilt and get probation, a fair sentence. But the judge and the prosecution blew it up in court. He could have faced years in jail for crimes that someone not named Biden and who hadn’t also committed more serious crimes, would have ever been prosecuted.

On June 6, President Biden announced he would not pardon Hunter or commute any sentence he might receive for his gun-related conviction.

The President’s announcement in June was disappointing. While it was clear that felonies had been committed, the prosecution of Biden seemed motivated by something other than the pursuit of justice. And Hunter Biden was a recovering addict. His crimes, by his own admission, were the byproduct of his drug and alcohol abuse.

Biden has now pardoned Hunter and that was the right thing to do, because they brought the charges against Hunter to break Biden. As Biden said in the pardon statement:

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

The media and the GOP have reacted strongly.

On the one hand, people are concerned about a president issuing an unprecedented pardon for his child. But against the orgy of Trump pardons of family, friends, and advisers, Biden’s pardon of his son on minor charges pursued for political purposes seems like small potatoes to Wrongo. Biden’s reasons for pardoning his son are understandable. But Biden’s decision could be a precedent for future pardons—by presidents with flimsy or corrupt reasons for pardoning family members.

On the other hand, people have expressed the belief the Joe Biden did the right thing. Wrongo comes down closer to that side of that equation. The pardon process is supposed to be used to do justice. And this is justice. Hunter Biden would likely not have been charged on the facts if he was anyone else.

Biden exercised the pardon power; he hasn’t tried to pardon himself. He issued a pardon he was entitled to give. But it is a departure since he’s been so careful to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and said he would not pardon his son, to reverse course. That is reason to pause and reflect on this pardon.

Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, after he completed a sentence for trafficking cocaine.

Will pardoning Hunter “embolden” Trump to break more norms? No, he will break them anyway. Trump didn’t need any excuse to pardon his henchmen. He’s already pardoned Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Jared Kushner’s father whom he just named to be the Ambassador to France! He’s pardoned Dinesh D’Souza and Joe Arpaio! A list of friends, allies and family.

It’s nonsense to think that pardoning Hunter changes anything when it comes to Trump.

Until the media uses the same yardstick to measure the actions by Biden against the actions by Trump, Wrongo is cheering for Joe. Trump’s actions are treated as somehow acceptable while incumbent GOP-ers clutch their pearls, or taking umbrage, at Biden. Democrats are being held to a totally different standard. It’s journalistic hypocrisy at its finest. And it does not serve democracy or America.

This ISN’T a two wrongs make a right situation. That Hunter Biden is not an admirable person in general has exactly nothing to do with any of this.

Let’s compare and contrast:

Hunter Biden was prosecuted mostly because his father is POTUS, and for actions that nobody else is ever been criminally prosecuted for. His plea bargain was rejected only because his father is POTUS. That is the very definition of political persecution.
OTOH, Trump was charged with extremely serious crimes: theft of secret documents and a failed coup d’etat are the most serious crimes anybody can commit against the body politic. And he is the only person to have been so charged, because no one else has ever committed such crimes.
Charging him wasn’t political persecution, despite Trump’s moaning that it was. While the Republicans spent the last six years trying to make Hunter a political albatross for Biden.

While Trump “whataboutism” is an exhausting game, the hypocrisy of the Republicans and the double standard of the media is galling. Those who supported Trump’s pardons of his political cronies for crimes that involved his own campaign, should have no critique of Biden’s pardon.

The Dems have to stop being the pearl clutching Party. Most voters do not care about Hunter Biden. We should remain on the high moral ground, and firmly assert and argue that the Biden pardon of his son was the moral thing to do despite the hand wringing from the press and others.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Daily Escape:

Turkeys on the fields of Wrong – November 2018 photo by Wrongo

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are taking a break. He’s completed eight rounds of chemo with at least two more to go. Most days, he feels happy to be here and engaged in the task that is the Wrongologist. His deepest gratitude is for Ms. Right who’s been by his side throughout his fight. Regular readers will know that much of what follows has appeared on the blog before.)

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual” — Thoreau

Thanksgiving is Wrongo’s favorite because as a secular holiday, no one commands you to do or say anything. Celebration is subdued, and at least around here, it focuses on gratitude. Wrongo always thinks that despite America’s current problems, we should be grateful that we live in this wonderful country of ours, and how grateful we are for all of our country’s gifts.

We’re lucky to live in a land of plenty: Most of us have employment, most have access to healthcare. Most of us have a warm place to sleep at night, most have hope, at least until now, for their kids’ futures. While this is true for “most”, the fight continues for the rest of us to see such fundamental security in our lives.

Here’s Wrongo’s thanks to the readers of the Wrongologist. Special thanks go to everyone who reads this crummy blog, particularly those who have stuck around since the beginning: Monty, Fred, David, Marguerite, Pat, JES, Kelly, and Terry. Thanks to those who comment and send me private emails saying the equivalent of “What’s wrong with Wrongo?”.

I am grateful that you all stick with it, and with me.

We started this adventure in 2011, without a real plan. Wrongo knew he wanted to write and talk about politics and government, but wasn’t sure if people would read it. Since then, this is the 2,864^th post. The company that hosts the Wrongologist says that in the past 12 months, we’ve had 1.2 million page views. Most readers (43.7%) use a desktop machine, and Chrome (48.2%) is the preferred browser.

Wrongo is grateful every day for this journey he’s on with you. Sometimes, it seems like cynicism and despair is all we have left, that we will have to fight for everything we want. But resistance isn’t futile, and we will make gains up to and through the 2026 midterm elections.

On the big day, we’ll have a kitchen filled with good smells, “Alice’s Restaurant” playing in a semi-continuous loop, along with good thoughts about the great country that we’re privileged to live in.

We’re thankful to those who came before us, and to our family members and friends who can’t be with us today. We’re thankful to those who are on the front lines in military service, or here at home in our hospitals, schools, firehouses, and police stations.

P.S. Don’t fight with your MAGA uncle. You’re only giving him what he wants.

Here’s a seasonal tune Wrongo had never heard. “The Thanksgiving Song” from 2020 by Ben Rector. Schmaltzy and nice. Try it you’ll like it:

The Youth Vote Is Reached By Influencers

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo’s writing about how to Resist the Trump administration has focused on how in 2024 we didn’t target our messaging at the family or at workers. Those lessons give insight into how to persuade voters in 2026 and beyond when Trump promises to be deeply unpopular. A third lesson is how Harris failed to hold on to the youth vote after a promising start.

One of the biggest stories of the 2024 election was Trump’s gains with young voters, particularly young men. To understand the youth vote, we turn to John Della Volpe (JDV), the director of polling at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and one of the leading experts on the youth vote in America.

From JDV in the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Democratic Party leaders did not listen deeply to and earn the trust of young voters, who could have helped her prevail in Michigan and other swing states. As a pollster who focuses on the hopes and worries of these Americans, losing to Donald Trump — not once but twice — represents a profound failure. Ms. Harris’s campaign needed to shift about one percentage point of voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to secure the presidency, but instead struggled in college towns like Ann Arbor, Mich., and other blue places. Think about that: Flipping just one in every hundred voters would have stopped the likelihood of mass deportations, tax cuts for the wealthy, rollbacks of L.G.B.T.Q. protections and the reversal of climate regulations.”

The story from the last six presidential elections is simple: When Democrats capture 60% of the youth vote, like Biden did in 2020 and Obama in 2008 and 2012, they win the White House. Harris garnered just 54%. Looking at CNN’s exit polls, Biden’s 24-point average margin among young voters in the seven battleground states collapsed to just 13 points under Harris, failing to hold 2020 margins among both young men and women.

The most dramatic shift came among the youngest voters (18-24), who swung 22 points to the Right from 2020, while their slightly older peers (25-29) showed more stability.

Wrongo has written before about how to reach the young voter. Reaching them required using different media than reaching the older generations. The young are largely on social media.

From NBC:

“…a new Pew Research Center survey reveals just how impactful so-called news influencers are in the current information ecosystem. About 21% of U.S. adults are turning to news influencers for information, with most saying creators “helped them better understand current events and civic issues,…”

Here’s a chart that breaks down how many people get news from influencers:

The number was highest among young adults, with 37% of people ages 18 to 29 saying they turn to influencers for news.

(Pew surveyed 10,000 adults and analyzed 500 news influencers, which it defined as individuals who regularly post about current events and have over 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube).

The gap in Harris’s youth strategy was a failure to address the 37% where they get their news. And to provide persuasive messaging that resonated with their interests.

At the end of the 2024 campaign, nearly all of Trump’s media interactions were with Right-leaning podcasters with massive social media followings. The GOP has actively tried to support their influencers with interviews and attention. While Kamala Harris did appear on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast, most Democrats kept podcasters and news influencers at arm’s length.

From JDV:

“The youth vote that emerged in 2024 defied every partisan prediction and stereotype – it was something entirely new. Generation Z maintained progressive positions on social issues while showing deep skepticism of foreign intervention. They combined concerns about economic inequality with support for free trade. They rated Trump higher on pure leadership while backing Harris overall.”

The vote shift from blue to red in college towns like Ann Arbor was staggering; in some University of Michigan precincts, the vote shifted 20 points toward Mr. Trump in just four years.

From Dan Peiffer:

“Democrats must radically reshape how we think about reaching the public. During the careers of powerful Democratic Party members (especially President Biden and some folks in the Senate), the press was the best way to reach the public….That world is gone, but too many folks in our party still run to CNN or the New York Times when they have news to make.’

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“We need to widen the aperture when we think of the media. We must include folks who don’t have a White House press pass. We must learn to reach the voters who don’t pay attention to traditional news. We have to aggressively support the nascent progressive media ecosystem. Most importantly, we have to recognize that politics in 2024 is information warfare, and we are getting our asses kicked.”

In the campaign’s final weeks, Trump pulled out of interviews with CNBC and NBC News. He turned down a prime-time CNN town hall. In fact, Trump didn’t do a single interview with a traditional news outlet in the campaign’s final stretch. No national broadcast interviews, no sit-downs with local TV anchors or newspapers journalists.

The winning candidate ignored the traditional media, focusing instead on partisan media outlets and politics-adjacent podcasts. While this change isn’t new, it seems clear that 2024 was a pivot point for the role of the legacy media in politics.

The biggest lesson is that the youth vote is reached by influencers. Our older-than-dirt politicians need to give way to the younger pols who can survive on social media. We need a generational shift in who communicates. A younger generation of elected Democrats who prefer to fight back instead of curling into a ball and hope Republicans leave them alone.

Think Josh Shapiro, AOC, Fetterman, Katie Porter, Gretchen Whitmer, Abigail Spanberger and Chris Murphy. There are a hundred others but Harris wasn’t one of them.

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.”

Women Hold The Key To The Future

The Daily Escape:

If you’re looking for some hope going into the weekend, The Bulwark’s Dan McGraw has an incisive piece about how important the gender gap is for the 2024 election. He thinks as in 2022, there’s a strong case that women could give Harris a significant turnout advantage:

“More women than men have voted in every presidential election going back to 1964 and the current gap between them (between 5 million and 10 million votes per election) has been stable since 2004.”

Here’s a chart demonstrating the difference:

Trump has not historically done well with women voters. In 2016, Trump was -15 with women. He gained ground in 2020, losing women by -11. These losses were partially offset by his poorer margins with men: He was +11 in 2016 and +2 in 2020.

So that’s his baseline. Here’s one big question about 2024: Will the difference in turnout between women and men be higher, lower, or the same as it was in 2016 and 2020?

From McGraw:

“If I had to bet, I’d guess that the delta increases. Why? Because the vote gap has been fairly stable going back to 2004 and Trump has intentionally antagonized women this cycle. Negative polarity is currently the greatest motivating force in our politics… I do not expect increases in men’s turnout to keep pace with increases in women’s turnout.”

In 2016 Trump only got 39% of the women’s vote. It is not inconceivable that he could go lower. Indeed, for the last few days it’s looked like he’s trying to go lower. Starting in October, Trump thought it’d be a good idea to present himself as a “protector” who would save women from fear and unhappiness. As October ends, he said the following which probably won’t do his campaign any favors. From NBC News : (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would “protect” women “whether the women like it or not,” a comment the Harris campaign immediately pounced on. Trump said at his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that his “people” previously told him they did not think he should say that he wanted to “protect the women of our country,” comments he has previously made on the campaign trail.”

That’s some creepy paternalism right there.

This election looks very close, making either outcome relatively high-probability. It’s possible that everything will be too close to call and we’ll end the week with six different states at Florida’s 2000 contested level:

And there are signs in the polling that Harris has more support among women than Trump has among men this cycle. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll has Trump winning men by 51-45%, (+6) while Harris is at 56-42% (+14) with women (all likely voters).

And the Harris margin is being repeated in swing states:

“A CNN poll released showed similar trends. It had Harris +8 with women and running even with men in Michigan. It had her running +19 with women with Trump +12 with men in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania a Quinnipiac University poll of the commonwealth released the same day showed men backing Trump by 57-37%, while women backed Harris 55-39%.”

Off topic, but Trump seems to also be having issues with Seniors (+65) in PA. According to a Fox News poll of Pennsylvania, Trump is running 5 percentage points behind Harris among voters ages 65 and over, down from the previous month, when he and Harris were tied with Seniors. It’s a major shift from 2020, when Trump carried 53 percent of the senior vote in Pennsylvania and lost the state.

This could be big since the senior vote is particularly important in five of the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. According to US Census data, these states have more residents over the age of 65 than the national average. According to modeling data across the Blue Wall states, Democratic voters over the age of 65 are running 10 to 20% ahead of their Republican counterparts with respect to registered turnout.

The conclusion? Nothing is definitive:

If women are more likely to vote than men, and if women are more supportive of Harris than men are of Trump—especially in key swing states—then Harris should win.
It’s possible that Harris will underperform, Trump will overperform, and he’ll get a solid, clean Electoral College win.
But it is also possible that Harris blows the doors off with women voters. That she both (1) increases that 10-million-vote advantage in women’s turnout and (2) explodes the gender gap. If that happens, she wins comfortably. Maybe even comfortably enough that we know it by late Tuesday night.

One way this could go is that Harris picks up a handful of points with white women, the single largest demographic group in the election. She could also boost the overall turnout of black and Hispanic women.

Try to get into a relaxing head space for the weekend. This may be Wrongo’s last column before Tuesday, so the battle is on hold until we see results.

Give any spare change to your local Congressional candidate. That’s where the hope is. It’s not quite a heat wave in Connecticut, but sitting outdoors and watching the leaves fall while listening to the Telemann’s “Concerto for 4 Violins No.2 in D Major” performed live by Hoing Kim in 2023 will tie the hopium for Harris together with the beautiful weather:

Taking Out The Garbage

The Daily Escape:

We’ve said since 2015 that some epithet or statement by Trump would eventually be the last straw disqualifying him from holding political office. But none qualified as “disqualifying” enough. In fact, the sum of all of them wasn’t sufficient to send him to the sidelines.

But, a noxious statement about Puerto Rico by a comedian no one has ever hear of may do the trick that “rapists” and “shithole countries” and/or “grab them by the pussy” couldn’t do: Deny Trump just enough votes that Harris wins in Pennsylvania.

That comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”. He talked about black people carving watermelons for Halloween. He made a ribald joke about Hispanic fertility. His act became the dominant news story about the rally, obscuring whatever message Trump might have hoped to close with.

Now, Puerto Rican activists in Pennsylvania (the state with the third-largest Puerto Rican population, after Florida and New York) seem convinced the flap is going to do real damage to Trump there. This would be a real problem for him since his strategy to flip Biden 2020 states relies heavily on improving his performance with non-white voters.

This is proof why candidates don’t close out their campaigns with edgy insult comics.

The racism and fascism Trump’s MAGA Republicans displayed at Madison Square Garden (MSG) is usually restricted to their media bubble, where it’s just normal conversation. The backlash against it among people in the real world appears to have shocked the Trump campaign so much that the candidate is running away from his own closing argument. That happened on Monday when Trump told an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.”

Harris’s closing argument was different: She delivered an address on the Ellipse at the National Mall on Tuesday—the site of Trump’s speech inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. By choosing the Ellipse as the location for her “closing argument,” Harris helped to reclaim it as a sacred ground of our democracy.

Much of her speech was familiar to those of us who have followed the campaign. Her indictment of Donald Trump was crisp and direct, and her list of policy objectives was meticulous and thorough. But she was also obviously making a pitch to any swing voters who are still on the fence. A sample of her speech:

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people.
We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.
Look, we know who Donald Trump is: He is the person who stood at this very spot, nearly four years ago, and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election. An election that he knew he lost.
Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. But here’s what I promise you: I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me.
I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America.
So, America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love. And in 7 days, we have the power to turn the page, and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

As Harris was rising to the occasion for her closing argument, Trump was reprising the greatest hits from his MSG hate-fest closing argument during a Monday speech at Mar-a-Lago:

“The love in that room, it was breathtaking. There’s never been an event that beautiful. It was a love fest. It was love for our country.”

He said MSG held 100,000 when it holds 20,000. He then repeated all of his usual lies. So much for his closing argument.

Let’s talk about how we get through the next few days: You should avoid screens to the extent possible as we’ve entered peak Psychological Warfare time. There are Right Wing malign actors attempting to influence you and others. Their advertising money is flowing to the seven states like via a firehose. Avoid it if you can.

You should accept that so far, you’ve done all that you can do to see good triumph over evil in the 2024 elections. That with one week to go, the outcome should be very nearly sealed, but it isn’t.

The question is how to accept the outcome if it doesn’t go the way you’re hoping it will go. For that Wrongo has no answer. Many are wrongly saying that at least it will be all over next Tuesday, and we’ll “know”. But we won’t, the final battle will be fought for at least the two months after that.

So we need to prepare ourselves for an ongoing fight. Trump is already claiming the vote in Pennsylvania is fraudulent (That he’s already crying foul is good news for Harris). It could not be more obvious that he won’t accept a loss next Tuesday, no matter what the final margin looks like. Although of course his claims will be much harder to deal with if the election actually is as close as the polls suggest it is today.

The hard reality is that one of the two major Parties will never accept defeat in the presidential election.

This in turn means that in the wake of a Trump defeat on November 5, another battle is going to have to be fought, between then and when the outcome is certified by Congress on January 6.

This is a fight that won’t end Tuesday night. So we need to be financially and emotionally prepared to continue funding the fight to win the Electoral College post-November. That means giving money to Mark E. Elias who is taking on Republicans across the country that are attempting to enforce anti-democratic voting laws, along with his firm, Democracy Docket.

Here’s a bonus cartoon:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Daily Escape

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Podcasts Turned The Tide

Taking Out The Garbage