The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the latest Social Security Administration (SSA) wage data. It shows the average American workers haven’t made much money since the 1970s:
âThe latest SSA data demonstrates how vastly unequal earnings growth has been between 1979 and 2022. Over that period, inflation-adjusted annual earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively, while earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.â
That’s 33% over 43 years, less than 1% per year. The largest share of total earnings in the US economy have accumulated at the top of the wage ladder. The EPI is describing  âlabor market earningsâ, the pay (including benefits) of the 80% of workers who are not managers or supervisors at work. For decades before 1980, these workersâ hourly pay largely tracked economy-wide productivity growth.
When productivity growth slowed significantly, hourly pay growth collapsed even faster, leading to a growing gap between these typical workersâ pay and overall growth. That difference in missing pay for typical workers went to workers at the top or to business owners.
The EPI study shows that if youâre in the bottom 90% of wage earners, youâve seen annual wage growth of less than 1% per year over the past 43 years. If youâre in the âupper middle classâ things were very different. Hereâs a chart from EPI:
Average wages in the 95th to 99th percentile have almost doubled, from $120K to $234K (all figures are in 2022 dollars). But this leaves out the real winners, the top 1%. Average wages for them went from $289K in 1979 to $786K in 2022. But even this huge growth is eclipsed by the wages of the top .1%, which increased an astounding 344%, going from $634K to $2.82 million.
Note that the data are for average annual wages which for the bottom 90% were $40,845 in 2022. Data on average wages are all thatâs available, but itâs misleading. The MEDIAN wage for all workers is around $34k. That means half the bottom 90% are making LESS than 34k. Also, median household income is around $76k; which is two people working in the same household.
The media and the rest of us really have no idea how little the average person is earning.
And this is just income from wages. People at or near the top of the pyramid own the vast majority of the equity capital in the US â the top 10% of households own 85% of the total corporate stock owned by households.
The economic debate in America since the 1880s has been between those in favor of lightly regulated heavily financialized consumer capitalism, with some very modest income redistribution, sufficient â barely â to keep the losers in that economy from starving or freezing to death.
The other side are the Republicans who think England in the Industrial Revolution, is a model for what America ought to look like today. And Chaseâs CEO Jamie Dimon says we should listen to Republicans more. Heâs specifically talking about NATO and immigration.
And this has been the GOPâs pitch forever:
Democrats need to address the negative impacts of US wage distribution as part of their 2024 pitch to keep the presidency, and return to controlling the House and Senate in November.
The Fields of Wrong are covered in snow, mostly due to temperatures being below freezing for the past several days. We had a tree fall into the road during the big windstorm last Sunday. Now it sits, snow-covered, on our property waiting for our next chain sawing event.
Itâs Saturday, and professional football will be all over the television for the rest of the weekend. Good luck to those of you who follow one of the remaining eight teams. Itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we  try to forget about the Red Sea, the New Hampshire primaries and funding the government, and instead try to calm ourselves for a few moments. Hopefully weâll be in better shape to launch into the roller coaster ride of next weekâs horrors.
Take a few minutes and grab a chair by a window. Now, watch and listen as John Williams is persuaded to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his “Imperial March” from Star Wars during a gala to celebrate his 90th Birthday.
There are many seriously talented people on the stage, including track star Florence Joyner, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Star Wars actor, Daisy Ridley. Williams is 91, still going strong, and an example to those who think young Biden is too old to run again. Bravo, Maestro:
âIf you aren’t paying attention to the courts, you aren’t paying attention to democracyâ. – Mark E. Elias
The Colorado Supreme Courtâs ruling that Trump is disqualified from appearing on the stateâs presidential primary ballot because he engaged in insurrection was a bombshell. The plaintiffs included four Republican voters and officials, and two Independents. The organization bringing and managing the lawsuit was CREW and its chief attorney, Marc Elias, quoted above.
Some people are saying that it doesnât seem right to toss him off of the ballot without a conviction. At issue is whether Trump is such a danger to the country that heâs ineligible to be a candidate at all, and the Colorado Courtâs reasoning for this seems very tight. Itâs not an interpretation about his rhetoric or an evaluation of his political extremism. Itâs solely a determination of whether he took an oath to protect the Constitution, and then fomented an insurrection against the government. And although the verdict was 4-3, all seven judges agreed that Trump had fomented insurrection.
The Court found that heâs ineligible. Regarding the âhe must be convicted to be ineligibleâ argument: The criminal cases against Trump that are wending their way through the courts are varied in their accusations. None of them were brought solely or even primarily to prevent Trump from being elected president, although the Colorado case was. The others charge real crimes. The importance of those cases transcends the individual who committed them. A failure to bring them would set a precedent that we as a country think these behaviors permissible by a future president.
As for letting the people decide about Trump, we did that already. Biden got seven million more votes than Trump. Yet Trumpâs still spouting the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Even after 60 court cases, Trump couldnât prove there was any election fraud. Conservative Judge Luttig says that the 14th Amendment isn’t about removing someone from qualifying for office. Rather it’s about meeting a baseline qualification in order to be considered a QUALIFIED candidate.
Thereâs also an argument on the Right that Trump shouldnât be in court at all. But we have a Justice system and in the Colorado case, the legal process was followed. The Court didnât take any shortcuts; no extraordinary maneuvers were made.
Jon V Last asks why Republicans were on one side of the law in 2020 and on a different side today: (brackets by Wrongo)
âSo ask yourself this: All throughout December 2020, everyone insisted that, no matter how foolish or baseless President Trumpâs claims might seem, he was entitled to pursue the legal process vigorously to its end.
Why is that not true in this case? Why is it that Trump…[in 2020 was] entitled to have his day in court, but the forces [today] looking to apply different laws to a different end are not?â
Last reminds us that many of the same people who insisted that Trump could pursue all available legal remedies in 2020 wanted a result that would keep him in power. Now, theyâre outraged that the people in state of Colorado also pursued legal remedies and won a result that might keep him from returning to power. Thereâs more from Jon Last. Those who are complaining about the result in Colorado are complaining not about the legal process, but the legal result:
âHave you ever noticed how, whenever Trump does something terrible, there is always an argument that holding him accountable can only help him?
You canât impeach him in 2020, because itâll just make him stronger.
You canât impeach him in 2021, because youâll turn him into a martyr.
You canât raid Mar-a-Lago to take back classified documents because youâll rile up his base.
/snip/
There is a…..helplessness to that thinking: A wicked man does immoral and illegal thingsâand societyâs reaction is to say that we must indulge his depredations, because if we tried to hold him accountable then he would become even worse.
Is there any other aspect of life in which Americans take that view?
Thatâs not how parents deal with children.
Itâs not how regulatory agencies deal with corporations.
And itâs not how the justice system deals with criminals.â
âEvery hesitation, reservation, and exhortation to âmake an exceptionâ because of potential violence or political chaos is an invitation to abandon the Constitution. We do so at our grave peril and possibly for the first, last, and only timeâbecause if we set our great charter aside once, there is no logical stopping point for setting it aside again when it serves the pleasure of a president who views the Constitution as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.â
The Colorado Supreme Courtâs decision to ban Donald Trump from the stateâs primary ballot for engaging in insurrection is probably on its way to the US Supreme Court. Wrongo isnât a lawyer, so you should look elsewhere for a discussion of the finer points of the law in this case, and he has no confidence that the Supremes will decide against Trump.
But Wrongo wants to address one item, the question of whether a candidate should be tried while running for office. Just the Mar-a-Lago charges of mishandling highly classified information and then obstructing their return makes it clear that he should be tried regardless of his candidacy. The government needed to secure the secret documents Trump had stashed all over his club. Trump thwarted those efforts. And the case was developed before Trump declared himself as a candidate for 2024.
A thought experiment: Letâs imagine that Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis had run for US president in 1868. Either of them could probably win a solid South and be competitive in several border states. Making sure that they didnât win at the ballot box what they couldnât on the battlefield is why Clause 3 was included in the 14th Amendment in July, 1868.
Would supporters of Lee or Davis have complained that they were ineligible for public office? Certainly! But, too bad. Insurrection and rebellion (still) have consequences. And nobody said that they had to be convicted before being ineligible.
When a president of the US loses an election and attempts to stay in power through violence, there really is no way to deal with it that doesnât have a political component. But that means nothing to the merits of the case. Should we prosecute it only to the point that the ex-president decides to run again, and then drop it?
The whole Republican “let the voters decide” talking point was trotted out after the Colorado decision. Itâs hilarious. We did that. We did let the voters decide. Biden won. And Trump refused to accept the results and sent a violent mob to overturn it. That’s the whole point of this case. We must apply the Constitution and the rule of law to Trump in the same way it would be applied to any other citizen.
Whatever lies ahead, letâs not underestimate the significance of the Colorado Court findings. They will figure prominently in the outcome in 2024. Our job is to fight for the soul of democracy and for a free and responsible government by popular consent.
Letâs close with a Christmas tune that is new to Wrongo: The Tractors perform their 2009 hit âThe Santa Claus Boogieâ, from their second album, âHave Yourself a Tractors Christmasâ. The band no longer exists, as several of the members have died:
There are plenty of newsworthy items as we end another week. You can read about them all over the internet. Wrongo wants to highlight just one: The Dow Jones index is up 29% since bottoming on Sept. 30, 2022, climbing to a new all-time high.
This is mostly due to the announcement by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that in all likelihood, there will be no more increases in interest rates, and that there may be as many as three interest rate reductions in 2024.
Professional investors arenât following the Dow, but it remains a mental benchmark that many Americans use to gauge the health of the stock market and the economy. So accept good news when it shows up.
Today we return to the topic of illegal immigration. As Wrongo writes this, there is still no deal on immigration, which is thought to be the hold-up on funding for Ukraine and Israel. From Semaphore:
âGOP negotiators said they believed they were making progress in securing a border policy package thatâs tilted toward conservative priorities….They also welcomed the…Democratic attacks on the negotiations…..âThere are several Democrats that have spoken against it,â GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC) told Semafor. âThat means weâre hitting the right sort of tone.ââ
Wrongo mentioned that it is very difficult to find facts from either side in the immigration debate. One constant refrain from the Right is that terrorists are slipping over the southern border, posing an existential threat to America, and itâs all Bidenâs fault. From CBS:
âRepublican lawmakers, GOP White House hopefuls and conservative media figures have argued that the Biden administration’s border policies have given terrorists an easier way to enter the US and harm Americans. On Monday…Trump claimed that the “same people” who killed or abducted more than 1,000 civilians in Israel are coming across the southern border separating the US and Mexico…â
âSince the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent bombing campaign in Gaza, Fox News has seized on the chaos in the Middle East to revive its relentless fearmongering campaign suggesting that migrants crossing into the US at the southern border are terrorists, this time from the Middle East. Foxâs toxic rhetoric follows âa spike in hate incidentsâ against Muslims in the US.â
There has been an increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of individuals who are on the US terror watchlist over the past two years. But they represent a tiny fraction of all migrants processed along the southern border. From the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFrom October last year to this September, officials at the southern border arrested 169 people whose names matched those on the watch list, compared with 98 during the previous fiscal year and 15 in 2021, according to government data. But that is a minuscule fraction of the total number of migrants who were apprehended at the border over the past year, more than two million.â
That fraction is less than 0.01% for those of us without calculators. Finding illegals who are on the terror watch list is far more common along the US-Canada border, despite much lower levels of unauthorized migration there. Hereâs a US Customs and Border Protection chart:
Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 430 watchlist hits along the northern border in fiscal year 2023, the vast majority of them at official ports of entry.
Still, there are concerns. In its homeland threat assessment for 2024, the intelligence branch of DHS said:
â…record encounters of migrants arriving from a growing number of countries have complicated border and immigration security…â
The assessment also said a recent increase in apprehensions of migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, while still significantly lower than those from the Western Hemisphere, has âexacerbated border security challengesâ because those individuals require more vetting and processing and because itâs more difficult to deport them.
Thereâs also the question of migrants who arenât apprehended. The Border Patrol estimates more than 1 million individuals have entered the country surreptitiously over the past two years.
Republicans in Congress now talk about the southern border primarily as a national security issue rather than largely as a collective fear of the âgreat replacementâ. If hundreds of thousands of migrants are evading apprehension, these national security fears have merit. But since terror watch list apprehensions are tiny and a lot higher along our northern border, that border most likely poses an equal threat to national security, if not more, since the security along the northern border is lax. We donât really have any idea how many evade apprehension by crossing it.
Despite the constant hammering by Fox and the Right, since 1975 no one has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the US that involved someone who came across the border illegally. Whenever Congress gets around to dealing with illegal immigration, the solution will require more manpower both for the border patrol and immigration services.
Immigrants will keep on coming. Migration is a part of human nature. Europeans came to North America before America was a country. The peoples of the UK are not the peoples that were there 5,000 years ago. The vast majority of UK citizens have little DNA from the original peoples of those islands. That is also true in the US.
History shows that trying to stop immigration all together is a foolâs errand.
Regardless of how successful we are at controlling immigration, the US demographics of the past 250 years will look VERY different from the US demographics of 100 years from now. That doesnât mean we should give up on controlling the process as much as possible. Part of that is to increase the costs of crossing the border, which we are doing today with instant expulsion and denial of asylum claims.
And once people are here, we must do all we can to get them integrated into US society.
Instead of a soothing Saturday, Wrongo has decided to wade into the hot steaming pile that is the controversy over whether the presidents of various prestige universities are sufficiently anti-genocide. What they said at the House hearings has raised a chorus of voices who think that the leadership at Harvard, MIT and UPenn just arenât anti-genocide enough.
âThe lowlight of the House hearings on campus antisemitism…came when Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania whether it would be bullying and harassment if someone on campus called for a genocide of Jews. The presidentsâ answers â that it depended on context â landed about as badly as it could have. Stefanik, a Trumpist Republican election denier, browbeat them and called it âunacceptable.â
Feldman is a law professor at Harvard. He went on to say:
âThe core idea of First Amendment freedom is that the expression of ideas should not be punished because doing so would make it harder, not easier, to find the truth. That freedom extends to the most hateful ideas imaginable, including advocacy of racism, antisemitism, and yes, genocide.â
Wrongo isnât a lawyer and this isnât a court or a classroom, so what follows is his take on this matter.
Can speech be constrained? In 1969, the Supreme Court protected a Ku Klux Klan member’s speech and created the “imminent danger” test to determine on what grounds speech can be limited, saying in Brandenburg v. Ohio that:
“The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Speech promoting violation of the law may only be restricted when it poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action, and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of that speech.
In 2017, the Court affirmed this in a unanimous decision on Matal v. Tam. The issue was about government prohibiting the registration of trademarks that are “racially disparaging”. Effectively, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that there is no âhate speechâ exception to the First Amendment. Such speech can be prohibited when the very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
âIn the 1980s and 1990s, more than 350…universities adopted “speech codes” regulating discriminatory speech by faculty and students. These codes have not fared well in the courts, where they are frequently overturned as violations of the First Amendment.â
So, while University presidents may sound lawyer-like when asked if âcalling for genocide of Jewsâ should be prohibited, think about the long history of case law that says there are few limits on hate speech that do not result in action intended to produce harm. Also think about the losing streak these universities have been on when they have tried to restrict speech in the past.
As it happens, the three presidents were accurately describing their universitiesâ rules, which do depend on context. Yascha Mounk in The Atlantichad this to say:
âIn a narrow, technical sense, the three presidents were correct to state that their current policies would probably not penalize offensive political speech. In a more substantive sense, universities should defend a very broad definition of academic freedom, one that shields students and faculty members from punishment for expressing a political opinion, no matter how abhorrent.â
Mounk goes on to say that the university presidents were disingenuous when they claimed that their response to anti-Semitism on campus was hamstrung by a commitment to free speech. Recent history at all three institutions shows that their rules about free speech are unevenly applied. So the problem with their answers wasnât about making a judgement call about calls for genocide.
Weâre stepping into muddy waters here. When students say: “From the river to the sea. Palestine will soon be free” theyâre using a political slogan that on its face is aspirational. While some may hear that and say it implies genocide of Jews, it should be protected speech. It’s stupid and ignorant, but 100% protected. Widening out our view, blaming all Jews for Netanyahuâs excesses or blaming all Palestinians for the atrocities of Hamas is wrong but itâs still protected speech.
People like Stefanik are too high on their own agenda to appreciate the distinction.
Still, itâs true that many (most? all?) universities have become hypocritical. There are plenty of examples of professors being expelled, or outside speakers being cancelled because the administration doesnât care for the viewpoints being expressed.
The question of exactly when political/hate speech becomes sufficiently threatening and specific toward a given individual or groups so as to constitute legally (and by extension administratively) a violation of a universityâs code of conduct is, not surprisingly, a massive gray area. On Thursday a man saying “Free Palestine” fired shots at a synagogue near Albany NY. Thankfully, nobody was harmed. He wasn’t on campus and he did back his words with a serious threat, so he was arrested.
The university presidents failed to be clear. The US case law and the schoolâs codes of conduct are sufficiently difficult to adjudicate on a hypothetical basis. These three presidents should learn that first, the US Congress isnât the academy. Second, they should admit they are fuzzy thinkers about free speech at their institutions. Third, they should develop better codes of conduct.
Letâs give the last word to Feldman:
âFree-speech nuance is something to be proud of, not something to condemn.â
A final thought. Stefanikâs gotcha game with yes/no answers to complex questions shouldnât be the way the game is played, but for now it is. Many Republicans think that colleges and universities deserve specific blame for the liberal political views of young Americans. It has become an article of faith on the right despite little supporting evidence that colleges are turning young people into liberals. Stefanik is a willing tool of this viewpoint.
On to our Saturday Soother. Weâve had snow overnight for the past two days on the Fields of Wrong. Still, itâs expected to be around 60° on Sunday. Given our uneven weather, the arborist isnât coming here until the middle of February.
Letâs get comfortable in a big chair near a window. Now, try to let go of the arguments about the âpeople we hate and I want to talk about themâ and empty our minds of complicated ideas, even if they are foundational to our democratic experiment.
Letâs listen to the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble perform Maurice Ravelâs âIntroduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartetâ. He composed this work in 1905 and it was first performed in 1907.
 Camden, ME – November 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner. Note the star: It’s on top of nearby Mt.Battie.
Kissinger may have changed the world, but that isnât always a good thing. The media are calling his legacy âcomplicatedâ. For Wrongo, it isnât complicated. He may have gotten Nixon to China and negotiated (?) the end of the war in Vietnam, but his time on our foreign policy stage is strewn with death and destruction. Think about the carpet bombing of Cambodia that led to the demonstrations against the war in May 1970 and to the murders at Kent State and Jackson State University. Think about the coup in Chile that overthrew Salvador Allende.
Now, Nixonâs entire Cabinet is dead.
Kissingerâs philosophy was to look at âthe big pictureâ. He was gladdened by how his China diplomacy rattled the Soviets. Most of Wrongoâs current thinking about Kissinger comes from reading Christopher Hitchensâ 2001 book, âThe Trial of Henry Kissingerâ. Hitchens talks about Kissinger’s role in the destruction of Chilean democracy in favor of the Pinochet dictatorship. And when Pinochet ordered the assassination of dissenter and former U.S. ambassador Orlando Letelier on US soil by blowing up his car in Washington, Kissinger was fine with that.
He was responsible for the prolongation of the Vietnam War through the sabotage of Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 Vietnam peace talks along with the civilian deaths from the US’ bombing in Laos and Cambodia, helping to usher in the Khmer Rouge, while also not doing anything positive to win the Vietnam war. Kissinger then became supportive of the Khmer Rouge. He saw its leader, Pol Pot as a counterweight against North Vietnam. He asked Thailandâs foreign minister to tell the Khmer Rouge: âWe will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we wonât let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them.â
That was Kissingerâs moral philosophy.
Kissinger was behind the Greek military junta’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and the Pakistani army’s crimes against humanity in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). And we shouldnât forget the Indonesian invasion and subsequent destruction of East Timor.
Quite the record for a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Late in life. Kissinger continued supporting authoritarians including Putin. Kissinger intervened in Putinâs imperialist war in Ukraine in 2022 to support the idea that the West should bully Zelensky into giving up territory to the Russians. He was also on the board of Theranos helping to facilitate the fraud while lining his pockets.
Wrongo wrote earlier this year about how he started out as a Kissinger fanboy, having read his 1957 book âNuclear Weapons and Foreign Policyâ while in high school. It criticized the Eisenhower Administrationâs âmassive retaliationâ nuclear doctrine. It proposed the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to help win wars. By the time that Wrongo was running a tactical nuclear missile base in the mid-1960s, he was no longer a fan. From Wrongo:
âWrongo met Kissinger in the mid-1980s at an event hosted by David Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. HK was walking his dog, a particularly obstreperous Golden Retriever. Wrongo asked âWhatâs the dogâs name?â Kissinger replied: âMadmanâ. Could there be a more perfect name for a Kissinger family pet?â
Here are a few headlines announcing Kissingerâs death:
Kissingerâs legacy is defined by his role in the USâs resumption of ties with China. He did the groundwork for Nixonâs 1972 visit to China and made more than 100 trips to the country over the years. The WaPo noted that the China state broadcaster labeled Kissinger an âold friend of the Chinese people.â
Letâs close with another possibly apocryphal story about Kissinger by Corey Robin:
Letâs hope that Henry the K is having a really hot time in his new condo.
Cholla Cactus at sunrise, Joshua Tree NP – November 2023 photo by Michelle Strong
Yesterdayâs column described how confusing current polling data is with less than a year to go before the 2024 presidential election. We can easily overdose on polls, but in general, they seem to be pointing toward a very difficult re-election for Biden.
At the risk of contributing to the OD, hereâs another example of terrible poll for Biden. It comes from Democratic stalwarts Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg:
âPresident Biden trails Donald Trump by 5 points in the battleground states and loses at least another point when we include the independent candidates who get 17% of the vote. Biden is trying to win these states where three quarters believe the country is on the wrong track and 48% say, âI will never vote for Biden.â
What to make of all this? Wrongo thinks itâs time to take a different approach to the Democratâs messaging. Letâs start with a quick look at the NYTâs David Leonhardtâs new book, âOurs Was the Shining Futureâ. Leonhardtâs most striking contention is based on a study of census and income tax data by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty: Where once the great majority of Americans could hope to earn more than their parents, now only half are likely to. From The Atlantic:
âOf Americans born in 1940, 92% went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50% did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.â
As we said yesterday, the American Dream is fading. Leonhardt says that the Democrats have largely abandoned fighting for basic economic improvements for the working class. Some of the defining progressive triumphs of the 20th century, from labor victories by unions and Social Security under FDR to the Great Society programs of LBJ, were milestones in securing a voting majority. More from The Atlantic:
âRonald Reagan took office promising to restore growth by paring back government, slashing taxes on the rich and corporations…gutting business regulations and antitrust enforcement. The idea…was that a rising tide would lift all boats. Instead, inequality soared while living standards stagnated and life expectancy fell behind…peer countries.â
Today, a child born in Norway or the UK has a far better chance of out-earning their parents than one born in the US. More context from The Atlantic: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFrom the 1930s until the late â60s, Democrats dominated national politics. They used their power to pass…progressive legislation that transformed the American economy. But their coalition, which included southern Dixiecrats as well as northern liberals, fractured after…Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Richard Nixonâs âsouthern strategyâ exploited that rift and changed the electoral map. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote.â
The Atlantic makes another great point: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âThe civil-rights revolution also changed white Americansâ economic attitudes. In 1956, 65% of white people said they believed the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and to provide a minimum standard of living. By 1964, that number had sunk to 35%.â
Americaâs mid-century economy could have created growth and equality, but racial suppression and racial progress led to where we remain today.
Leonhardt argues that what Thomas Piketty called the âBrahmin leftâ must stop demonizing working-class people who do not share its views on cultural issues such as abortion, immigration, affirmative action and patriotism. From Leonhardt:
âA less self-righteous and more tolerant left could build what successfully increased access to the American Dream in the past: a broad grass-roots movement focused on core economic issues such as strengthening unions, improving wages and working conditions, raising corporate taxes, and decreasing corporate concentration.â
Can the Dems adapt both their priorities and messaging to meet people where they are today?
The priorities must change first. What would it take to establish the right priorities for the future? Stripping away the wedge issues that confuse and divide us, Americaâs priorities should be Health, Education, Retirement and Environment (âHEREâ). Itâs an acronym that sells itself: âVote Hereâ.
(hat tip to friend of the blog, Rene S. for the HERE concept.)
Wrongo hears from young family members and others that all of the HERE elements are causing very real concerns. Affordable health care coverage still falls short. Regarding education, college costs barely seem to be worth shouldering the huge debt burdens that come with it.
Most young people think that they have no real way to save for retirement early in their careers when thereâs the most bang for the buck. They also feel that Social Security wonât be there for them. From the NYT:
âIn a Nationwide Retirement Institute survey, 45% of adults younger than 27 said they didnât believe they would receive any money from the program.â
Today, only about 10% of Americans working in the private sector participate in a defined-benefit pension plan, while roughly 50% contribute to 401(k)-type, defined-contribution plans.
Finally, people today feel that their elders have created an existential environmental threat that will be tossed into their laps. A problem for which there may not be a solution.
As Leonhardt argues, these HERE problems should have always been priorities for Democrats. But for decades, the Party hasnât been willing to pay todayâs political price for a long term gain in voter loyalty. That is, until Biden started working on them in 2020.
But every media outlet continues to harp on inflation and the national debt. Much of what would be helpful in creating a HERE focus as a priority for Democrats depends at least somewhat on government spending. No one can argue that our national debt is high. It is arguable whether it can safely go higher or if it must be reigned in at current levels.
To help you think about that, we collected $4.5 trillion in taxes in 2022, down half a $trillion vs. what we collected in 2021. Estimates are that the Trump tax cuts cost about $350 billion in lost revenue/year.
Looking at tax collections as a percentage of GDP, itâs less than 17% in the US, well below our historical average of 19.5%. There are arguments to keep taxes low, but if you compare the US percentage to other nations, Germany has a ratio of 24%, while the UKâs is 27% and Australiaâs is 30%.
If we raised our tax revenue to 24% of GDP, which is where Germany is now, we would eliminate the US deficit.
Thereâs a great deal of tension in the electorate between perception and reality. And itâs not caused by partisanship: Democrats and independents are also exhibiting a disconnect, too.
Democrats have to return to being the party of FDR and LBJ. They need to adopt the HERE priorities and build programs around them.
Since we couldnât have a Saturday Soother, Wrongo wants to complain a bit today. But first, it was a bad week for cartoons. Here are the best:
Itâs clear that many Americans canât hold two thoughts simultaneously:
Biden sees through the turkey:
Complaint #1: Weâre faced with a choice between our aging president and his aging contender for the job. Biden did quite well in his meeting with Chinaâs president Xi. He seemingly met all of the American objectives for the meeting. In the press conference afterwards, he looked in command, walking across a minefield of questions, even with the gotcha question about whether Xi was a dictator, without any missteps.
But the press still talks about how old Biden looks. From Kevin Drum: (brackets by Wrongo)
â…having now listened to a number of Biden’s recent speaking gigs, there’s really no question that this [his age] is solely about his physical appearance. Cognitively, Biden is perfectly normal. The worst he ever does is the occasional verbal flub, a longtime Biden habit. Agree with him or not, he says what he means to say….He thinks Xi Jinping is a dictator and has repeated this [even] through the grimaces of his Secretary of State.â
Contrast that with Trump who doesn’t appear to be as old, but can barely remember who the president is, or how many world wars we’ve had. America will either elect a charade of an active former president with a deteriorating mind, or we can keep an active president with a strong mind but obvious physical limitations.
Which would you rather have?
Complaint #2: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Speaking on CNBCâs Squawk Box, he told Americans on Tuesday that our time-honored concept of separation of church and state, a founding principle of the country is a âmisunderstandingâ, that what the founders really wanted was to stop government interfering with religion, not the other way around:
âThe separation of church and state is a misnomer….People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. Itâs not in the Constitution.â
Johnson was referring to Jeffersonâs 1802 letters to the Danbury Baptists Association of Connecticut. In the letters, Jefferson makes clear that the founding fathers subscribed to a powerful separation of church and state, which they enshrined in the establishment clause of the First Amendment (even Johnson knows while the Amendments are technically ânotâ part of the Constitution, they really are).
Itâs no surprise that the same people that believe the Constitution should be strictly interpreted are also trying to force an interpretation of it that allows them to make the bible integral to it. Integration of religion into politics has historically been something that fascists and authoritarians have used to get what they wanted.
â…a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism…â
More:
âThe flag is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase âAn Appeal to Heavenâ at the top….this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts.â
The quote âAn Appeal to Heavenâ was taken from John Locke. In the past decade, this flag has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America. Still more:
â…if you look closely at the…videos and pictures of the Capitol insurrection, Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them…[in]…the crowd…â
An example from Jan. 6:
Rolling Stone has spent months researching this corner of Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). They use the same flag hanging outside Johnsonâs office, and itâs a key part of their symbology.
The NAR was formed in the 1990s around an evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. This is a nondenominational network that believes they are the vanguard of a Christian revolution. In the mid-2000s, these NAR networks embraced a theological paradigm called the âSeven Mountain Mandate,â a prophecy that divides society into seven arenas â religion, family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and business.
The âMandate,â as they understand it, is for Christians to âtake dominionâ and âconquerâ all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society.
Follow along for another minute: One of Wagnerâs key disciples is Dutch Sheets. In 2013, Sheets was given an Appeal to Heaven flag. A friend told him that, because it predated the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that âhad flown over our nation at its birthing.â Sheets saw the flag as a symbol of the spiritual warfare-driven Christian nationalist revolution he hoped to bring about in American politics.
Sheets endorsed Trumpâs candidacy and over the course of the 2016 campaign, the Appeal to Heaven flag and the NARâs vision of a Christianity-dominated America became entwined with Trump.
Why does Johnson fly this symbol of Christian warfare at the House Speakerâs office when it is clear that the spiritual-warfare appropriation of it connotes an aggressive form of Christian nationalism. The Rolling Stone closes by saying:
âIt is simply untenable to think that Johnson is unaware of what the Appeal to Heaven flag signals today. It represents an aggressive, spiritual-warfare style of Christian nationalism, and Johnson is a legal insurrectionist who has deeply tied himself into networks of Christian extremists whose rhetoric, leadership, and warfare theology fueled a literal insurrection.â
We The People cannot let the Mike Johnsons of the world take over our country.
When theocrats and fascists tell us who they are, believe them.
Sunset, Thumpertown Beach, Eastham, MA – November 2023 iPhone photo by friend of the blog, KO.
We keep looking for good news that will buoy Bidenâs polling numbers, and on Tuesday we learned that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was flat in October. From Axios:
âOverall prices rose 3.2% in the 12 months through October, slowing from the 3.7% in September and well-below the peak levels reached last year. Core CPI rose 4%, compared to 4.1% the prior month.â
Among the good news was that last month, prices for gasoline and used cars and trucks fell outright, helping cool over inflation. Meanwhile, shelter costs rose at a much slower pace last month, possibly signaling that inflation could be ending in the next few months.
That gave investors reason to pile back into the stock market, since it may be a sign that the Fed wonât continue to raise interest rates.
But as always, analysis of the economic news could show why Biden polls so badly on the economy, and in particular why he hasnât consolidated support among younger voters. Letâs take a different look at how some important economic indicators have performed under Biden.
âBelow is a graph in which I compare average hourly earnings (nominal, not real) for non-supervisory workers (in red) vs. house prices (dark blue) and mortgage payments (light blue).â
It is important to note that Bonddad has set all of the values to 100 as of January 2021 so that weâre looking only at what has happened during Bidenâs Administration. Bonddad compares the changes in average hourly earnings to the rate of fixed price mortgages and the price of homes. These are nominal rates:
Average wages have increased 16% since Biden took office, but existing house prices have increased by 32%, and monthly mortgage payments for new buyers have increased 279% (!), from roughly 3% to roughly 8%. Housing is close to unaffordable for many in America.
Turning to cars, new car prices have increased by 20%, and used car prices by 23%, compared to that 16% for wages. And new car loan payments (dotted line below) have increased almost 70% (from about 5% to 8.3%):
Houses and cars are the two biggest purchases that most average people make. And sorry to say, affording them has gotten much harder since Biden took office.
Finally, letâs look at the cost of two things people see every day: groceries and gas. First, grocery prices are up 29% since Biden took office in January 2021 (again, vs. 16% for average wages):
And gas prices, although they have come back down recently, are still up 55% since January 2021:
Looking at the economic data this way, would you be more likely to vote for or against Biden? This is a big Biden problem with voters who live paycheck to paycheck.
Itâs hard to overstate the importance of viewing the Biden economic performance like Bonddad does above. Much of the blame for these specific price increases belongs to corporations who took advantage of the breakdown in the global supply chain to raise their prices. Some belongs to the Biden administration’s pumping money into the economy.
Bonddad provides a ton of perspective regarding how the Democrats shouldnât be talking to voters about how fantastic the economy has become under Biden. Dems canât simply talk about the aggregate economic numbers, since many will not fully believe them.
At the risk of piling on, Wrongo recently saw this October Experian survey which asked:
âI suffer or have suffered from financial traumaâ
A staggering 68% of US adults replied that they had. You can view the survey here. The stress was felt more strongly by younger generations, namely Gen Z adults and millennials, with 73% of Gen Z’ers and 77% of millennials experiencing negative thoughts and/or anxiety about money.
The idea of âfinancial traumaâ goes beyond mere stress. Americaâs seeing multiple social crises afflict it. Friendships are cratering, loneliness is soaring, deaths of despair are skyrocketing. Half of American young people say they feel âpersistently hopeless.â
Now tie this to how the majority of voters are saying that America is on the wrong track. The prevailing attitude in America is that our systems are rigged against working people. If you work hard, play by the rules, try to be an honest, decent and productive person, but the reward is that you get financially, socially, emotionally traumatized, well, maybe youâd be pessimistic, too.
The result is that most Americans feel they are living precarious lives. When asked, they say they need north of $230K to feel âcomfortableâ while the average yearly income for a full-time worker is about $75,000 today. That means feeling stable and secure is completely out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.
Most of this happened over time and surely wasnât caused by Biden, or the Democrats. And little of it can be fixed by him.
Thereâs some good news in the fact that history shows us that voters generally focus on how the economy has performed during the last 6 to 9 months before the election. In 2012, the economy improved a lot, and when the unemployment rate finally fell below 8% one month before the election, it helped Obama to get reelected.
On the flip side, the economy was weakening as we closed in on the presidential election in 2016. GDP growth and wage and job gains were weak. Strong stock market gains were a positive. Adding the pluses and minuses suggested that the economy was weak, and the insurgent Trump won the election.
Better news on inflation in 2024, particularly for groceries and gas, will mean Bidenâs polling on the economy will be much better.
Sometimes a friend, a family member or a neighbor asks you to help them solve a problem. You go along, thinking that youâll be able to help out, only to suddenly find youâre deeply involved in something that could easily become either a reputation killer, or possibly even life-threatening to you.
And after five weeks of intense bombing, this is where America sits with the Israel/Hamas war. Our friend has caused us to get badly stuck in something and itâs become very difficult to see how to get out of it.
First, all right-minded people should agree that what Hamas did on Oct. 7 was a war crime. And the taking of non-combatant Israeli hostages is also a violation of international law, as is Hamas using Palestinians as human shields.
Second, it is possible to be committed to Israel and to its right to defend itself while at the same time being critical of its response in Gaza and sympathetic to the Palestinianâs plight.
Third, (and what is the focus of this column), is how Israelâs war against Hamas in Gaza has become close to violating the rules of war. Israel has launched near-continuous airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. According to Barronâs since the onset of the war, Israeli attacks on targets within Gaza have destroyed or damaged 45% of all housing units in the Palestinian territory.
In addition, the Times of Israelacknowledges that a lot of Gazans have died since the October 7 terrorist attacks. It cites the âHamas-run health ministry in Gaza,â while arguing that the numbers cannot be confirmed and likely include Hamas fighters and victims of misfired Hamas rockets. They still put the number of dead north of 11,000. But thereâs also allegedly 26,000 who have been injured and more than 3,000 that are missing. That adds up to 40,000.
The CIA estimates that Gaza began 2023 with a population of 2,098,389, so the total casualties (including the missing) in Gaza are about 2% of the population. And nearly a million people have had their homes damaged or destroyed so far. And the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that 70% have been displaced from their homes.
The systematic bombardment of housing and infrastructure is prohibited under international law. You canât destroy 45% of the housing units of a population of 2 million people in five weeks and argue that you are doing all you can to avoid harming civilians.
Indiscriminate bombing of cities became an issue before WWII. Concern about âruthless bombing of civiliansâ began with the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1932, and the bombing of Barcelona and Guernica in Spain by Italian and German fascists in 1937-38.
An important review of the historical background to the law against bombing cities is in the late Daniel Ellsworthâs excellent 2017 book, âThe Doomsday Machineâ (TDM). Ellsworth says that the need for rule-making became clear after the German Blitz of London in 1940. That led to the US and Britain secretly adopting Hitlerâs tactics. The actions of the three belligerents obliterated the distinction between bombing combatants and civilians for the rest of WWII.
Citizens in the opponentâs country were considered legitimate targets because they were contributing in some way to their countryâs war effort. This led to the moral justification that it was better to kill civilians in order to get the war over quickly. After that, bomber attacks exclusively aimed at exterminating German population centers was accepted by Churchill: (TDM, p.239)
âThis is the way to pay them back; itâs legitimate for us to do so, and in fact itâs virtually obligatory for us to do so….â
The near-exact words were spoken by Biden, Blinken and Netanyahu after Oct. 7. But even in WWII, there wasnât true proportionality. From TDM: (pg. 245)
âFor every ton of bombs dropped on England in the nine months of the Blitz, England and the US…dropped a hundred tons of bombs on German cities…â
And more than 500,000 Germans were killed.
In 1949, a series of treaties governing the laws of war were adopted. The Geneva Conventions and specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention attempted to create legal defenses for civilians in war, but it wasnât explicit about bombardment.
In 1977, Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the deliberate or indiscriminate attack on civilians, even if the area contained military targets. But Protocol I also says that locating military objectives near civilians “shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians“.
This has always been honored in the breach.
Aerial operations are supposed to comply with the principles of: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality. Â An attack or action must be intended to aid the military defeat of the enemy. It must be an attack on a military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. But proportionality doesnât hinge only on absolute casualty counts but on how harm to civilian lives and infrastructure is weighed against expected military gains.
That means theoretically, a lot of suffering is permissible.
Under the law of war, Israelâs proportionality calculation must take account of the civilian casualties its air strikes and ground invasion are causing. But Israel has in the past interpreted the rules to exclude damage to apartment buildings if terrorists occupy them.
Israel and America also believe that civilians who voluntarily serve as human shields are participants, not bystanders. But, how to tell the difference? Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters are embedded within Gazaâs population and store weapons in and under civilian sites. They also say itâs impossible to defeat its enemy without killing innocents â a lesson that Americans learned at Hiroshima, Falluja and Mosul.
The NYT reports that during Blinkenâs visits to Israel after Oct. 7, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They quoted Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman:
âIn any combat situation, like when the US was leading a coalition to get ISIS out of Mosul, there were civilian casualties….[and] that Israelâs âratioâ of Hamas fighters to civilians killed âcompares very well to NATO and other Western forcesâ in past military campaignsâ.
When all you have for an argument is that your friend has done worse, youâre in serious trouble. Regevâs statement is also impossible to verify. US military officials have discussed the lessons learned from the battles in Iraq and in Raqqa, (the ISIS headquarters in Syria) with Israel.
Israel isnât exempt from learning from the past and applying the lessons to their current urban warfare. And this is coming from an ally that receives $ billions in US aid every year. Israel is obviously willing to use any justification to continue its destruction in Gaza.
Itâs clear that Israel is following a deliberate policy of wrecking Gazaâs infrastructure and buildings. Netanyahu said on October 7 that the IDF would turn parts of Gazaâs densely populated urban centers âinto rubble.â On October 10, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the Israeli Armyâs coordinator of government activities in the territories, stated  âThere will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.â
That gives context to the fact that almost half of the housing in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed since October 7.
Gaza is now well beyond a long and expensive reconstruction process. Itâs approaching the point where Gaza is becoming a place where human beings will find it difficult to exist. Itâs true that Hamas is also culpable; theyâve brought this upon their own people. They continue to hold the hostages, and that provides Israel with justification for fighting in the heart of Gaza, including near its hospitals.
If Hamas cared about their own people, they would do something to stop it.
The point is that these disproportionate attacks should make it clear that the US needs to find a way to stop blindly taking Israelâs side. We should not be making excuses for Israelâs targeting of civilian populations. Figuring out what we should be doing is urgent, since our current posture isnât benefiting the US, while it is benefiting our many adversaries in the ME.
The world thinks that the US has leverage over Israel, but as this war shows, we do not. Weâre joined at the hip, and no other two countries have had a closer relationship. And when the war broke out on October 7, Biden made it very clear we would give Israel whatever aid it needed, that we would support Israel to the hilt. And weâve done that.
But, Israel rebuffed Bidenâs efforts to talk Israel into arranging âhumanitarian pausesâ until world opinion started to turn against Netanyahu. CNN and others reported that Israel has finally agreed to move forward with four-hour pauses of military operations in Northern Gaza. Weâll see how that goes.
But should America sacrifice any more of what shreds remain of our moral standing in the world to cooperate with Israel in what seems about to become massive civilian slaughter? Even if Israelâs war efforts are justifiable, their actions are making Gaza uninhabitable.
And when the smoke clears, and much of Gazaâs population has moved south, will Israel allow them return to sit amongst the rubble that remains?
Finally, Israel may be doing exactly what Hamas hoped. It is radicalizing many Palestinians. It isnât difficult to imagine that if you lived in Gaza and saw Israelâs bombs kill most of your family, you might be willing to walk a bomb into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv after a ceasefire. If youâre going to live like a dog for the rest of your life, at least you could gain a modicum of revenge by taking a few Israelis along with you.
Time to wake up America! Israel is telling the world that it will stop at nothing to re-establish the security of its borders, even down to the last Palestinian. While the IDF tells us it is following the laws of war, Netanyahu is showing us that his strategy is to make his Middle East adversaries think that no one can out crazy Israel. Israelâs willing to do this even if it has to defy the rest of the world and even if it doesnât have a plan for returning Gaza to the Palestinians on the morning after the war.
To help you wake up, watch and listen to U2âs 2001 hit âStuck In A Moment That You Canât Get Out Ofâ. Bono wrote the lyrics about the suicide of his close friend Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the band INXS. The song is an argument against suicide in which Bono tries to convince Hutchence of the act’s foolishness.
We also should see the foolishness of total war even against a terrible enemy. It could turn out to be suicide:
(This is Wrongoâs longest column ever. If youâve read this far, thank you for your interest!)
Letâs look at the election: You probably know that the Dems had a very good night. If polls and pundits didnât exist, the narrative would be about how Republicans are in total disarray after six consecutive years of election losses and embarrassing nonperformance. Thatâs reality.
âJoe Biden is old. Own it. Iâll take old and accomplished over old and evil every time. I donât pity Joe Biden because heâs old. I honor him for still doing the work that has broken younger and stronger men…..For me, he is still the candidate.
He is still the man we need as President, taking on the fight to preserve America at home and abroad and taking on the world with faint-hearted support from his own party and an avalanche of vitriol from the GOP…â
You donât need Wrongo to tell you who won/lost on Tuesday, but hereâs some context: Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections than the GOP, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history.
In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, their best showing over 4 elections since FDR.
Democrats only received more than 50.1% of the vote ONCE from 1948 all the way to 2004. That was in 1964, the year after JFKâs assassination.
That Dems have been above 51% in 3 of our last 4 presidential elections is pretty remarkable.
In the 2008 race, Obama managed 52.9%
In 2012 Obama got 51.1%
And in 2020 Biden received 51.3%
The flaw is that with the Electoral College, where you win is more important than how many you win by.
Still, Dems continue to outperform expectations. In 2022, the so-called âred waveâ year, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key states: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. They picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat, although they lost the US House.
In 2023, the Dems have outperformed again. From winning big in about 40 special elections earlier this year to winning contested elections on Tuesday in KY, VA, NH, PA and OH, weâve seen very encouraging results. The Dems also added a new Congressperson in RI, and far Right school board candidates got defeated all over the country.
Also, Democrats elected mayors in five cities in Indiana. And Democrats picked up seats in the New Jersey legislature.
In Texas, the legislature has now defeated Gov. Abbottâs school voucher plan three times this year after building an alliance between Democrats and conservative rural House members who represent small school districts. The Dems adopted âVouchers Kill Friday Night Lightsâ as a slogan in those places. In addition, Prop 9, to give retired public school teachers a pay raise, passed yesterday by 86% to 14%, the largest margin of any of the propositions. That shows real enthusiasm in Texas for public schools.
Wrongo is looking forward to how the NYT and CNN can explain that this is actually bad news for Biden. The WaPo, however, has already beaten the Times on the “itâs bad news for Biden” beat: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“As for how much solace this night provides a year before the 2024 election? Thereâs a real question about whether Republicans just donât turn out when Trump isnât on the ballot. Beshear was an incumbent. Virginia leans blue. And even if Democrats as a whole are well-poised, that doesnât necessarily mean Biden, with his various liabilities, will be able to take advantage.”
But looking at the big picture, does it make sense after everything we’ve seen in this weekâs elections that Trump is going to have his best election ever in 2024 by doing better than any Republican since GHW Bush in 1988?
What series of events do the pollsters think will cause that to happen? Can the GOP in a presidential election year get the turnout they’d need to cause that to happen? Wouldnât that mean polls and pundits have to forecast yet another red wave like they forecasted in 2022, which didnât materialize then, but will for certain materialize now?
Or are we supposed to think that 2024 is going to see a huge wave of pro-Trump âyoungâ voters along with pro-Trump âblackâ voters who just didnât show up in this weekâs election?
Right now, nothing is at stake, and nothing will be at stake politically until 11 months from now. At that point, people who are polled today will have to make a choice. Until then they are free to be annoyed at Biden or anyone else. But when the implications of casting their ballots are clear, it will be a different story.
But until then, donât expect the media to abandon its hyping of the âBiden in troubleâ narrative.
The pundits are quick to report and slow to learn.
Biden sees through the turkey:
