Democrats Disfunction – The Wrongologist

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.

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.

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.

Where 2024 Went Wrong

The Daily Escape:

If you’re planning on being a part of the resistance, you need to start from having a few ideas about what went wrong and why in 2024.

Plenty of people have ideas about what we should be doing next. Rachael Bitecofer’s latest “Identity Politics and Microtargeting Killed The Party’s Brand” raises a great concern expressed by many Democrats, that the Party no longer identifies with the working class, and the working class isn’t who it used to be. It’s much bigger and much more diverse.

Bitecofer’s big idea is that the culture wars were the prime driver of the 2024 election. The culture wars were created after the era of Individual Freedom that arose in the 1950s and 1960s. The Democratic Party had morphed into an alliance, merging a Party of liberal Whites and racist White Southerners into one big coalition that by staying together, dominated Congress for decades.

By the 1960s, the activism of MLK. Jr and thousands of other civil rights activists forced the Democratic Party to choose: Either preserve their large coalition or end segregation. After the assassination of JFK, LBJ sided with civil rights for Blacks signing both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965. In doing so, this set off the realignment that would lead to total domination of the South by the Republican Party a few decades later.

Nixon’s Southern Strategy recognized that white Southern conservatives were there for the taking, and they took them. Meanwhile, the Democrats began to absorb liberal Republicans, predominantly in the North East and West Coast. Ideological liberals became Democrats and ideological conservatives became Republicans. And the today’s 270 Electoral College map dominated by the handful of swing states became the norm for success in American presidential elections.

From Bitecofer:

“In building their new multi-racial coalition Democrats…turned to something called identity politics. Identity politics is…based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class….as the new Democratic Party became a multi-racial coalition hyper-focused on gaining civil rights for marginalized groups…”

This chart represents the outcome of Democrats following a microtargeting strategy for the past 30+ years:

This one graph tells us exactly why Democrats lost. First and foremost, it tells us that the Democratic Party is a brand “that stands up for marginalized groups.”

Let’s focus on the time window on the graph. As you can see, the Democrats used to have a massive advantage with the working class which began to erode around the time of the Reagan Revolution and round two of Nixon’s Southern strategy. Please keep in mind, the erosion also corresponds with the diversification of America both in terms of ethnicity and gender and reflects in part the backlash to civil rights.

From Bitecofer about the working class:

“Donald Trump just accomplished the same thing by focusing most of his ads on scary trans people and the data don’t lie, millions of ads repeating the sex changes for prisoners broke through.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Now, that’s a great brand to have if you’re…an ideological liberal who cares deeply about the rights of the powerless!! The issue is just about a quarter of the electorate is liberal and psychologically predisposed to care about marginalized groups. The rest of the electorate doesn’t get the warm fuzzies we get from marginalized groups, because most humans are hardwired to prefer in groups over out groups and Republican strategists have exploited this expertly.”

Bitecofer argues that what matters for marginalized groups is policy, and that policy only comes from power. The way to represent marginalized groups is by wielding the power to represent them in majorities, not by identity politics in campaigns.

Bitecofer’s central point is that working class voters no longer primarily vote on economics. They did at one time, but those days were done as soon as cultural issues emerged and segregation was ended by the federal government. Here’s how the working class has grown and diversified over the last few decades:

Can the GOP, a Party financed by industry and bankers, permanently “represent the working class”? Maybe so, if the GOP can keep them distracted enough from the economic warfare they are conducting against them by leveraging grievance politics as a backlash to the Dem’s identity politics strategy.

Bitecofer closes with this:

“If we are lucky enough to get another election in this country, the messaging must focus on telling America the story of what happened to all their money, their rural communities, their paychecks, and their health under Republican Party governance.”

A prime part of the coming resistance is to return the GOP Party back to being at war with working America.

Resist, No Matter What

The Daily Escape:

We’ve got to stop awfulizing. That is, reacting to every Trump move as if it is the worst thing he’s come up with yet and then jumping on social media to scream about it. We need to take a step back and remind ourselves that it has only been 12 days since the election, even though it feels like a lifetime. People have zero patience: their reserves are running low and it’s easy to lash out at the latest Trump outrage. We need to continue to take some time to process what’s happened.

We need to plan our resistance carefully. Not all battles are winnable or even worth the many calories it takes to pursue the fight.

America is different now than it was in 2015 at the dawn of the Trump era. Trump didn’t just win politically; he’s won culturally. We need to reckon with that. There’s no way around it: the results of this presidential election sucked. But when you look at some the other races and questions that were on voters’ ballots, the picture looks at least a little brighter. There were some good things that Democrats scored on Election Day:

Voters protected abortion access via ballot measures in seven states. And in Florida, it won a majority of the vote but just fell short of the 60% needed for passage.
Alaska and Missouri raised the minimum wage via ballot measure, while Missouri also implemented paid sick leave. Pro-worker policies are popular across the country, and Democrats who run on them can win even in red areas.
Swing state Democrats performed well. In North Carolina, Democrats won five statewide races and broke the GOP’s supermajority in the legislature. In Pennsylvania, Democrats retained their majorities.

But we should also take note of the apathy of the American public. Approximately 245 million people were eligible to vote this year; approximately 90 million of them didn’t. That is a plurality of Americans who didn’t vote.

In five of the last seven presidential elections, the change candidate has won. At least one Congressional chamber has flipped in the last four elections. We need to think deeply about what went wrong in the last election:

Democrats rarely talked about a vision for improving family life. Instead we ceded that to Republicans.
We rarely talked about how poor the economy was for the average person.
We couldn’t make inroads into the male voting population. In fact, we lost ground with Black and Hispanic men.

According to the AP, Harris had an advantage among women, winning 53% to Trump’s 46%, but that margin was narrower than Biden’s in 2020. In 2020, Biden won 55% of women, while 43% went for Trump. Women under 30 voted for Harris over Trump, but it was a somewhat smaller majority supporting her, at 58%, than Biden in 2020, at 65%. About 9 in 10 Black women and 6 in 10 Latina women backed Harris.

Just under half of white women supported the vice president.

Wrongo’s having a hard time figuring out why women voters did not turn out in bigger numbers in this election for Harris. That women’s rights were part of the stakes this year made it seem obvious that women voters would drive this election. And yet, 46% of women cast a vote for Trump.

We elect women governors, for both Parties, currently the ratio is 8 Dem to 4 GOP. But why not elect them to the presidency, when in many other western countries it’s considered completely routine to elect both women or men to the top spot? What is different about the US?

We’ve tried twice to elect a woman without success. There’s no one reason why Harris did not win. But inflation, which was as big a problem of this magnitude when Jimmy Carter was President, had a lot to do with it. Along with deeply ingrained racism and the framing of our elections as just another form of consumerism, i.e. who you would rather have a beer with.

Republicans now control all three branches of government. They’ve become responsible for everything people hate about politics. Our top political priority is to try to become credible change agents. It’s the first step to winning back the voters we’ve lost.

Wrongo’s late brother Kevin always signed off his emails with “Resist, no matter what”. He was a libertarian, but it works for liberals as well.

David Remnick in the New Yorker spoke about Vaclav Havel and how he resisted:

“During the long Soviet domination of his country, Havel fought valiantly for liberal democracy, inspiring in others acts of resilience and protest. He was imprisoned for that. Then came a time when things changed, when Havel was elected President….Together with a people challenged by years of autocracy, he helped lead his country out of a long, dark time. Our time is now dark, but that, too, can change. It happened elsewhere. It can happen here.

The key question is can we resist like Havel?

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

The Daily Escape:

Bobbing for Cranberries? Or just beaks under water? Wellfleet, MA – October 2024 photo by Greg Anderson

Like it or not, Trump is set to become one of the US’s most consequential leaders. Wrongo understands that for many Americans, including he and Ms. Right, the guy is repulsive beyond any need to speak about it. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case for most of our countrymen, who find him acceptable and preferable to a Democrat, despite all the criminality and the coarseness.

How did Wrongo and the Democrats get it so wrong? What about Trump’s skill set and capabilities did he and the Dems miss that 51+% of the voters clearly perceived as strengths? As important, how will Democrats get through the next four years? That’s hard to say. What have Democrats learned that they can carry forward to a better day down the road?

In a way, time will pass quickly. It surprised Wrongo that Trump’s first term passed by as quickly as it did. That was in part because of Covid and the myriad other problems that kept us distracted, from debating the next outrage that Trump laid on the table.

That is how the next four years will go by too. But the question is, does the country survive as a unified entity? Wrongo isn’t optimistic about the next four years. In fact, he’s filled with sadness about what might have been. Sitting here today, he’s unable to see a way forward.

But we have to start by admitting that the Dems have a huge marketing problem. Our ideas were rejected, our view of the future was rejected and our candidates were rejected as well. It’s a bit like the board of directors of the now mostly defunct Howard Johnson restaurant chain, looking out of the board room window across the street at a new McDonald’s and saying, “those golden arches will never replace our orange roofs.”

But they did. Quickly.

We have to admit that whatever Trump is, that’s what the American people want; even if it comes with his personal dominance of whatever the issue, the specific person, or the rest of us.

So Dems have a marketing problem. Too few people want what we have on offer. Here’s an illustration of how bad it really is: This chart from the Financial Times shows how Trump improved his margin from 2020 to 2024 in all US states but 2:

The data are preliminary, but unlikely to change. Yes, you are reading that right: Trump improved on his 2020 showing in 48 of the 50 states. And in many strongly Democratic states: In California, New York, and Illinois, Trump improved by very large numbers.

New Jersey is the most shocking: In 2020, Trump lost the Garden State by 16 points (57%-41%) to Joe Biden. On Tuesday Trump came within 5 points of beating Harris (51.5%-46.5%). An 11-point improvement in four years!

The hot takes about the election including mine, aren’t worth much today. This election seems so inexplicable that maybe there’s something bigger behind this than normal politics.

It remains to be seen whether or not reports of this country’s demise are greatly exaggerated. On the demise side, a majority of Americans on Tuesday chose Trump. They handed unchecked power to a narcissistic criminal demagogue because the price of bacon and milk increased.

They may also, in fact, have surrendered their sovereignty without firing a shot.

Democrats need time to make sense of what happened and to try to figure out what it will take to offer people what they need in four years. And 2024 was going to be a very difficult election to win no matter what. And in 2024 so far, nobody across the ideological spectrum has been able to crack the “voters hate inflation” code. At least, that’s one sure takeaway from the election results. No matter what policies and promises were made, lies told, or insults and threats, people couldn’t get over paying $7.00 for a gallon of milk when it cost $3.50 five years ago.

It didn’t matter that wages kept pace with inflation. It didn’t matter…And what will matter over the next four years?

This is a difficult time, and many may not want to hear about the future. Stop for a breath and take your time in returning to the fight.

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

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the NY Intelligencer reports:

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

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

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

Judge Cannon is on the case:

Trump and Vance have something in common:

Tech billionaires rush to help the GOP:

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

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

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

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

Cartoons Of The Week

Every cartoonist tried to pile on the “Biden’s too old” story this week. Some were ok, most were obvious and mean-spirited, including many depicting the First Lady as the power behind the throne, manipulating a doddering Biden.

Yesterday, Wrongo said that since the election will be determined by turnout of a very few votes in a very few states. He likes this question from Robert Kuttner: Do the Democrats have the energy to turn out enough voters for down ballot races? Will those voters also vote for the top of the ticket?:

“Think of it as reverse coattails. One impressive feat, especially since Trump’s election in 2016, has been a massive effort to increase the size and turnout of potential Democratic voters. Most of this has been done outside the institutional Democratic Party, though in a few states such as Wisconsin the party has been a major force.”

Better turnout on the Democratic side, especially among “low-propensity” groups, such as young people and voters of color, far more than trying to win over swing voters, was key to helping Biden win in 2020. It also allowed Democrats to do better than expected in the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022. It can work again.

On to cartoons. The last convention that Chicago hosted wasn’t a win for the Dems:

The fundamental question still isn’t resolved:

Memory problems exist my friends:

Heritage takes aim at you and me:

The only book Republicans won’t ban:

The one candidate with a mugshot:

The real question for November:

Biden For The Win?

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, North Fork Reservoir from Mt. Mitchell, NC – July 2024 photo by Mandy Gallimore. Mt. Mitchell is the highest mountain in the Eastern US.

More thoughts about Biden’s press conference: While Wrongo thinks that Biden’s claim to the nomination has been strengthened, that hasn’t quieted the naysayers in the Democratic Party, and many in the press remain focused on his gaffe about Harris. Still, Wrongo is going to assume that Biden will remain at the top of the ticket. The question becomes how to shift the discourse to describing the consequences of a second Trump administration? Wrongo might say:

“Do you want a country run by an old felon who has bankrupted every business he’s owned and filled his administration with phony religious zealots at every level who are only loyal to him? Or do you want an older competent leader with years of government experience surrounded by good people with the best interest of the country?

Do you want chaos and turmoil or competence and compassion? If you’re still undecided think about the consequences of your decision for your children and grandchildren. It’s your choice.”

Wrongo was struck by data from this recent NPR Marist poll:

“With just days to go before the start of the Republican National Convention…Biden and former President…Trump continue to be closely matched among registered voters in both a head-to-head matchup and a multicandidate field….Biden’s support remains relatively unchanged from last month despite the view of many Americans that he lacks the mental fitness to serve as president.

The poll also found that Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Gretchen Whitmer do not improve the Democrats’ chances against Trump. Harris receives support from 50% of registered voters to 49% for Trump. Newsom garners 50% to 48% for Trump. Whitmer receives 49% of the vote to 49% for Trump.

Here’s the top line results:

There are only 2% undecided, which means winning the election is dependent on turnout.

The poll also says that Biden outperforms Trump on which candidate has the character to be president. By more than two to one, Americans are more concerned about a president who lies than they are about someone who is too old to serve:

“Americans are overwhelmingly more concerned about a president who plays fast and loose with the facts than someone who is too old to serve. Nearly seven in ten Americans (68%) think it is more concerning if a president does not tell the truth. Nearly one in three (32%) think it is more concerning if someone is too old to serve. Democrats (85%), independents (66%), and a slim majority of Republicans (51%) agree that dishonesty is of greater concern over advanced age.”

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Democrats Disfunction

Podcasts Turned The Tide

Trump

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

Cartoons Of The Week

Biden For The Win?