Category: Political Power of Women

Wednesday Wake Up Call – June 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Asheville morning, June 28, 2022 – iPhone photo by Wrongo. The log house we’re renting this week is at 4,000’ above sea level.

Wake up calls by the Wrongologist rarely happen on Wednesdays, but since the Roberts Court dismantled the line between church and state in public education with Justice Gorsuch’s decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District, on Monday, it seems right.

Voting 6-3, the Court declared that an Oregon public high school football coach’s post-game prayer sessions with students were Constitutional, whether the students wanted them or not. That made Monday part of a pretty good run for American theocracy:

“The decision came less than a week after the court ruled, by the same vote, that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.”

The line between church and state is being erased before our eyes. Gorsuch, cherry-picking the facts of the case, wrote that football coach Kennedy had sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer:

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head…”

Justice Sotomayor responded that the public nature of his prayers and his stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not. She gave a different account of the facts, taking account of a longer time period:

“Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student-athletes in prayer…”

In an unusual move, Sotomayor’s dissent included photographs showing Mr. Kennedy kneeling with players, which debunked Gorsuch’s selective use of facts.

Do you really think that this decision would have been the same if those prayers had been offered by a Muslim?

In the process of ruling for Mr. Kennedy, the majority overturned a major precedent on the First Amendment’s establishment clause, Lemon v. Kurtzman. That ruling was decided by an 8-0 vote under Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger. As an aside, John Dean (of Watergate fame) has said that during the Nixon administration, Burger threatened to resign from the Court if Nixon nominated a woman to it.

It came to be known as the Lemon test, which required courts to consider whether the challenged government practice had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and whether it fosters excessive government entanglement with religion.

Sotomayor acknowledged that while the Lemon test had been frequently criticized by various members of the court:

“The court now goes much further…overruling Lemon entirely and in all contexts.”

So, by tossing out Lemon and saying that Coach Kennedy was not speaking for the school because it was an extra-curricular activity, the barrier between prayer and secular school has been permanently breached.

In today’s America, outside money will fund your culture wars grievance in the courts. The longer you can keep your case moving up through the courts, the better chance you have of running into a conservative Christian judge who will find a precedent for the White people’s Jesus in the Bill of Rights.

Teachers will now feel empowered to “invite” a group to pray with them. A few kids will jump in right away, while others will look around uncomfortably and gradually agree to join in, because the social opprobrium that comes with refusing is huge for kids. And since the person inviting you to pray is an authority figure: a teacher, coach, or principal, you really risk a lot by having them decide you aren’t:  A.Good.Christian.

When given the choice between upholding traditional case law or creating de novo judicial principles, the Roberts Court is almost always going to favor the latter.

Wrongo isn’t a lawyer, but many lawyers are now pointing to the extraordinarily shoddy nature of the Court’s majority opinions, including all three of the precedent-shattering ones the Court has issued over the last week.

It’s time to wake up America! Why is it so hard for Christians in the United States to just practice their religion without involving the rest of us?

We’re getting very close to the establishment of a default Christian American religion. We know that there are many public school teachers who have been silent despite their sincere religious beliefs while at school. Now they will be actively pressured by their pastors to begin proselytizing while on the clock.

To help you wake up, let’s travel to the 2022 Glastonbury music festival, which always creates great live music. On June 25, Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen dedicated the latter’s song “Fuck You” repurposed to express anger at five of the six Conservative members of the court.

Rodrigo named the Justices one by one, while Allen raised alternating middle fingers to them:

These artists aren’t afraid of controversy. Millions of us now feel exactly the same.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 26, 2022

(New columns will be light and variable for the next week, since Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending grandson Conor’s wedding in NC. Regular programming will resume on July 6.)

We’re not talking about the Supreme Court or the J6 news this morning. We’ll leave that for the cartoons below. Instead, let’s focus on an enlightening article from Curbed: “Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right?”:

“Hoboken feels downright roomy. Wander down the wide, busy sidewalks of Washington Street, the city’s main strip…and one thing becomes clear….A pedestrian doesn’t have to play the…perilous game of New York City crosswalk chicken, where you squint through the windows of a massive metal box to catch a glimpse of another speeding metal box whose driver doesn’t see you.”

More:

“Few drivers park next to crosswalks in Hoboken because they can’t. Those spots are blocked off with bike racks or planters or storm drains or extra sidewalk space for pedestrians or vertical plastic pylons that deter all but the boldest delivery-truck drivers. Stand at a corner, and you can see what is coming toward you, and drivers can see you too, and you don’t have to step out into the road and risk your life to do it.”

This concept is called Vision Zero, a strategy that municipalities across the US and abroad have adopted that seeks to alter traffic and engage pedestrians to lessen the severity of accidents. In total, Hoboken has had three traffic fatalities since 2015.

As Hoboken’s streets get safer, the rest of America is getting less safe. Traffic fatalities in NYC were up 44% percent in the first quarter of 2022. Hoboken has empowered it’s pedestrians and every corner makes it clear they have the right of way. Hoboken’s streak of zero fatalities could end at any time, and eventually will, but that’s no reason for other cities and towns not to enable similar change. On to cartoons.

Somebody should remind the Conservative ideologue Justices that America is a multi-belief country:

It’s on the ballot in November:

Clarence rewrites the 2nd Amendment:

Now concealed carry has multiple meanings:

The scales of justice get a Conservative makeover:

The J6 hearings have inspired criticism from Texas. The late Molly Ivins referred to Texas as the “national laboratory for bad government”:

Uvalde ,TX failures give new meaning to an old idea:

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Normalizing Violence Will End Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Nags Head, NC – June 2022 photo by Jordan Hill Photography

America’s in a dark period, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can come out of it.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way say:

“The Republican Party…has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the US constitutional order. The United States isn’t headed toward Russian – or Hungarian-style autocracy…but something else: a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.”

They say we’re heading into a period of protracted instability. They aren’t saying we face a civil war. It’s more subtle: a future of intermittent armed conflict, something like “The Troubles” in Ireland.

You’ve probably seen the campaign ad by Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens, where he struts into a home after some camo-clad associates have broken in, saying their purpose is “RINO hunting”. After the team busts into the house, Greitens walks in through a cloud of smoke and says:

“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Hunting down one’s political enemies with guns hasn’t been the American way, but it sure is becoming so now. It’s only a matter of time before racial, sexuality and politically-based violence occurs at scale in America. The Brennan Center found that 17% of America’s local election officials have been threatened during the 2020 election cycle. There’s a growing domestic terror threat to civil servants.

But it was only two weeks ago that Republicans found it easy to have moral clarity when authorities arrested a man and charged him with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The suspect turned himself in before anything happened. However, Republicans were outraged and questioned why Biden and other Democrats did not condemn what happened.

Candidates say outrageous things all the time in the heat of the moment and lately, hitting below the belt is often rewarded. But that is a far cry from a call to hunt down your political enemies in order to “save the country.”

The GOP is normalizing violence, and it became clear after the Republican response to J6. From Robert Hubbell:

“The Republican National Committee described the events of January 6th as ‘legitimate political discourse.’ Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde said that video of the attack on the Capitol looked like ‘a normal tourist visit.’ Mike Pence, whom rioters wanted to hang, said on Monday that Democrats were using the January 6th hearings ‘to distract attention.’”

Republicans try pretending that they have no idea what’s happening (“I haven’t seen the ad, so I cannot comment”). But the right thing is to take the risk that someone will yell at them on Facebook and Twitter and condemn it by saying loud and clear, “This isn’t the way for a candidate to conduct himself.”

Unless Republicans change their act, the normalization of violence will move toward its logical conclusion — election officials and politicians will be wounded or killed by someone who believes that violence is a legitimate political tool.

GOP candidates are posting ads about killing us in our homes. The Texas state GOP party wrote a campaign platform calling for the repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and seceding from the US, while saying that gay people should get back in the closet. They passed a resolution declaring that Biden’s election was illegitimate.

This is the platform of the governing party of the nation’s second largest state, and no non-Texas Republican has complained.

Pundits keep saying that Democrats have no chance in the 2022 mid-terms because of Biden’s low approval ratings. Wrongo has repeatedly said that there are “persuadable” voters who can be reached before the Fall. Proof of that is in the 6-point increase in public support for indicting Trump since the start of the J6 hearings.

If pundits argue that Biden’s unpopularity will affect the 2022 races despite Biden’s absence from the ballot, they must also agree that other issues not on the ballot— the J6 conspiracy, the Supreme Court abortion decision, Texas secession, and yes inflation, will also affect the 2022 races.

The 2022 election (not the 2024) will determine our future. Will people vote this Fall based on the price of gas? Or the threat of a recession? Or, will they understand that there’s a real possibility that democracy as we know it in the US could vanish?

Democracy is what’s on the ballot in 2022. Inflation comes and goes. Recessions come and go. If we lose our democracy, it won’t be returning any time soon.

Americans understand democracy. They’ve fought and died for it. Dems can make voters see that democracy is on the ballot this year, while inflation and other issues sadly need to take a back seat.

Let’s not make the mistake of selling Americans short. Democracy is more important than our pocketbooks. People will vote for democracy.

The slogan should be “Vote Democratic And Save Democracy”.

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Which States Are The Best for Working Moms?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Columbia Hills, WA – May 2022 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

Each year, WalletHub ranks the best and worst states for working mothers. Below is an overview of their methodology and findings: Women make up nearly half of the US workforce, and nearly 68% of moms with children under age 18 were working in 2021.  That share of the workforce declined during Covid, dropping around 1.3% between Q3 2019 and Q3 2021 (compared to 1.1% for men).

We know that women face an uphill battle in the workplace, with their average hourly wage being just 84% of what men make. They face other non-financial problems as well. Parental leave policies and other childcare support systems vary by state, but the quality of infrastructure — from cost-effective day care to public schools, is far from uniform.

WalletHub compares state performance across 17 metrics to rank the best & worst states. They compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across three key dimensions: 1) Childcare, 2) Professional Opportunities and 3) Work-Life Balance:

“We evaluated those dimensions using 17 relevant metrics…with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for working moms. We then determined each state and the District’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.”

WalletHub’s weighted average for the three categories was as follows: Childcare = 40 possible points, Professional Opportunities = 30 possible points, and Work-Life Balance = 30 possible points, totaling 100 points available per state. That translates into the overall total score below. Here are the top 10 US states for working mothers with individual state rankings by category:

It’s very telling that America’s best score was 62.99 out of 100, meaning that all states have a long way to go to make us a nation that supports women and mothers. Wrongo is happy to note that Connecticut is #1 in job opportunities for women. Here are the bottom 10 states:

Note that only California of the bottom 10 states is an urban (and blue) state. It gets killed in the rankings because of its terrible performance on childcare. If you are interested in how your state ranked, you can see an interactive map of all the states here. WalletHub also compared the top and bottom five states across a few of their metrics. Here’s what those rankings show:

According to a recent report, more than 2.3 million American women have dropped out of the labor force since the start of the pandemic. Solving the problems that keep these women out of the workforce should be a focus for all of the states.

This is particularly true for service and front-line workers whose work scheduling can be unpredictable and for many jobs, there is limited flexibility. Companies should do more. They can create more flexible work environments, allowing parents to take short-term time off. They can strive to eliminate schedule unpredictability for hourly workers. Companies can also work to change their culture to better recognize work-life balance.

The biggest hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement and the Supreme Court’s apparent decision on abortion is that the Justices and the Republicans are willing to go to the mat to protect the unborn, but that commitment mysteriously vanishes once a child exits the womb.

In many cases, these same zealots are actively hostile to programs that would benefit children.

Parenthood is humankind’s most important job; but there’s no internship, no training program, no handbook. You dive into it and are expected to figure things out on your own. It’s true that parents should bear the responsibility and costs of raising a child, but, government intervention should be available, depending on local conditions and income levels. Some parents simply need help.

At a time when Republicans and the Supreme Court seem to be willing to discount the value of women in our society, it’s important that we battle their views on the economic front as well as on the political front.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 8, 2022

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell thinks the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe is a “toxic spectacle”. Chief Justice John Roberts calls it a “betrayal.” And Justice Thomas of Ginni said:

“We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want…We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like…”

So suck it up American women! They’re sure that the leak is worse for America than their outrageous decision, and nothing you say will change any Republican minds. It is likely to be a long time before this (anticipated) decision is reversed. We will be a nation divided between states where reproductive freedom is guaranteed and states without it.

Major judicial errors in American history have been reversed before. The Constitutional amendment prohibiting alcohol was repealed in 14 years. The Supreme Court opinion upholding laws that criminalized gay sex was overturned after 17 years.

Women have many reasons for choosing abortion that have nothing to do with not wanting to be a parent. They may have medical needs; a fetus may carry genetic defects; the woman may be an underage child or a survivor of rape or incest. Adoption does not erase either the medical effects or the psychic scars that forcing a mother to term might inflict, and that may persist long after pregnancy is over.

And on this Mother’s Day, it is particularly ironic that they call themselves pro-life. Except, of course, for mothers. On to cartoons.

Who should be feeling violated?

Alito changes the rules:

Barrett shows she’s one of the boys:

More of the hypocrisy:

Oh, the places you will go:

Anybody else think Republicans are too controlling?

Mother’s Day 2022:

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What to Do When You’re Called “Pedophile”

The Daily Escape:

Western Rosebud, Red Rock National conservation area, NV – April 2022 photo by David Frederick

We’ve reached a point in our political discourse where Republicans are tossing around lies about their Democratic opponents, including saying the Democrats are pedophiles. And they’re doing it without fear of reprisal from the establishment Democrats.

One Democrat, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow was accused by Lana Theis, a Republican state senate colleague, of being a “groomer” of young children in a recent fundraising appeal. Theis also said McMorrow wanted to teach 8-year-olds that they are responsible for slavery. McMorrow didn’t stay silent after the accusations against her. She gave her Republican accuser a rhetorical bloody nose:

Her speech is inspiring. You should definitely watch it. Here’s a quote:

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense…No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history….we are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen or deny people their very right to exist.”

The Dem’s typical “that doesn’t deserve a response” is out of date. It doesn’t work on hateful Republican rhetoric. McMorrow shows us how it’s done.

We need to get used to this, because it’s going to be a main talking point for Republicans through the 2022 mid-terms and beyond. In response, it isn’t enough for Democrats to “just go high”. They need to start attacking Republicans for how weird and abnormal they are.

You probably saw the many humorous takes on Tucker Carlson’s weirdo testicle-tanning video. Really, these guys get to accuse others of sexual problems?

And there’s Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who may actually soon be a convicted pedophile. You remember Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct against the Ohio State wrestling team’s former team doctor. Or Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) then-future husband who was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley (she was present), and he was later arrested for domestic violence against her while they were dating.

These are the people who are screaming “pedophiles” at Dems.

Wrongo doesn’t often suggest paying attention to James Carville, but on MSNBC over the weekend he said: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[Republicans] have learned over a period of time it doesn’t matter” what they say or do, Carville complained. “[Democrats] are weak and all they’re gonna do is talk bad about each other.”

Carville pointed out how little pushback Democrats made against the pedophilia-obsessed GOP Senators during the Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

Charlie Pierce reminds us of how there is a straight line from the McMartin case in 1990 to where we are today. McMartin showed how hysteria over purported sexual abuse of children in schools can grip our society. Despite a complete lack of reputable evidence against the teachers and workers at McMartin Preschool, the McMartin trials took over six years and cost more than $13.5 million without a single guilty verdict resulting from the 208 charges.

Today these accusations are again rampant across the country, only with much more paranoia and way more firearms. America is on the cusp of a revolution, but it’s too early to see exactly what it is coming, or what it will become.

We now live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable for a politician to demonize those who don’t share their belief system. Someone can take to Twitter or send out a fundraising email and savage a person either to score cheap political points or add a few bucks to their political war chest.

The Republicans are essentially a new Party since its hostile takeover by Trump. Democrats have to look all the way back to FDR for a takeover model. He overthrew the old political order with the New Deal.

We’re seeing a well-organized, well-funded, (and effective in its way), Republican assault on democracy itself: They have willed into existence a Supreme Court supermajority that cares about its social agenda as much as it cares about the “law”. The GOP’s Senate and House ranks are filled with adherents to that same agenda.

Nearly half of America agrees with them because they promise revenge against people they despise. We face a risk in 2024 of Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta [House, Senate, White House] with a minority of the national vote.

We can no longer afford to “go high”. Everyone knows the stakes.

What will Democrats do to win?

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Saturday Soother – January 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Dawn, Zabriskie Point with Panamint Range in background, Death Valley CA – January 2022 photo by Rick Berk Photography

Various thoughts on a snowy Saturday in Connecticut.

First, in a turnaround from recent polls, a Marquette Law School nationwide survey of adults finds that Biden leads both Florida Gov. DeSantis and former President Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups:

“In a head-to-head matchup, DeSantis is supported by 33%, while Biden is supported by 41%. A substantial 18% say they would support someone else, and 8% say they would not vote.

In a Trump versus Biden rematch, Trump receives 33% to Biden’s 43%, with 16% preferring someone else and 6% saying they would not vote.”

The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-21, 2022. It surveyed 1000 adults nationwide and has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points. There are always a few outlier polls. Could this be accurate?

Second, even before Justice Breyer announced his retirement, Republicans already had their usual hissy fit over Biden’s decision to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, implying that she would be an “affirmative action” hire. Republicans on Twitter are prejudging any Black woman nominee as inherently inferior and underqualified.

Ilya Shapiro, a conservative lawyer who will soon teach at Georgetown Law, made it clear that he thinks being Black and a woman means the person is innately unqualified for the Supreme Court. In a since-deleted tweet, he lamented that since his preferred candidate for the job “doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get a lesser black woman.”

Shapiro is the same guy who wrote in 2009 that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination “confirmed that identity politics matter… more than merit,” showing that this is who he’s always been. Wrongo is appalled that my alma mater just gave this guy a job.

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley tweeted that Biden’s pick will cause uncomfortable moments on the Court because:

“…when the justices will hear arguments on the use of race in [college] admissions, one member will have been selected initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.”

He thinks it will cause uncomfortable moments for the White majority on the Court. This is from the same crowd that was fine with the White Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, who had never before been on the bench or even argued an appeal, being on the court.

Third, more about yesterday’s discussion on education, in which we said that the Right-wing is using the slogan of “parental control” to rationalize imposing changes in school curricula and libraries. A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously to ban “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from being taught in its classrooms because board members said the book contains material that was inappropriate for eighth grade students. Members also objected to a cartoon that featured a drawing of a “naked” mouse.

Wrongo has read “Maus” and recommends it to readers of all ages.

And there’s this gem from Indiana: HB 1362 mandates that teachers adopt a posture of impartiality in any conversation about controversial historical events. It goes on to state that in the run-up to a general election, students must be taught that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded. In addition, students must be instructed that if any of these political systems were to replace the current form of government, the government of the United States would be overthrown and existing freedoms under the Constitution of the United States would no longer exist. As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.”

We’re now seeing a deadly combination against public education: parents plus legislators following the marching orders of a Right-wing media complex that spews disinformation.

Time for us to kick back and enjoy our Saturday Soother.

If you live in the Northeast, you’re not going to be driving or working outside today, what with the 50+ mph winds and the 1-2+ ft of snow. So start by brewing up a cup of Pearl District Blend ($17.00/12 oz.) from Portland, Oregon’s Cycletown Coffee Roasters.

Now grab a seat by a window and listen to Giuseppe Verdi’s “Va, pensiero“, also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves“, from his 1842 opera “Nabucco”. It recollects the period of Babylonian captivity in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Here it’s performed outdoors in front of a large audience in Naples, Italy by the orchestras of the Theater of San Carlo, and the National Academy of Sainta Cecilia, in July 2009. It’s not totally on point for Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it’s beautiful:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 12, 2021

When Wrongo was a kid living in CT, he got a 3-speed English bike, a Humber. One day while riding on the road in front of our house, a truck forced me onto the road’s sandy shoulder. The sand immediately grabbed the bike’s front wheel, stopping it dead in its tracks. Wrongo went headfirst over the handlebars and got up with a displaced fracture of his left wrist.

While Wrongo saw the accident coming, he couldn’t do anything to avoid the sand.

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, is America being pushed onto the sandy shoulder of our road? We can still avoid a crash, but we’re facing quite a few threats that might push us off the road and into the gutter:

  • Losing our social cohesion
  • Continuing income inequality
  • Continuing racism
  • Increasing threats to the right to vote

Twenty years on, America is more at war with itself than with foreign terrorists. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed.

Think about the Delta variant. One Party thinks that people should be free to acquire and transmit to others a deadly and extremely communicable virus. They also think it’s morally wrong for the government to engage in even the mildest coercion to push people to get vaccinated, because that coercion interferes with an individual’s liberty.

They think personal liberty is the highest social value in all circumstances except abortion. On to cartoons.

Our continuing learning disability:

9/11 aftermath:

Texas has only one star in its flag. That’s also its Yelp review:

New rodeo event in Texas:

America’s right wing is constantly sore about everything:

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Saturday Soother – September 26, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Fall, Polebridge, MT – 2020 photo by Drew Silvers

There are just 38 days to go until the election, and another 78 days after that until the inauguration, almost a lifetime in Trump years. Today, we’ll jump among a few unbelievable news items.

First, the nation’s leading newspaper’s story about the US president refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election appeared on page 15. How can it be page one in everyone’s mind, but on page 15 of the NYT? And what political story did the NYT find space for on Thursday’s front page? An article about how Trump is running well in the virtually all-white suburbs north of Milwaukee. But we all know there’s a liberal bias in the news.

Even if the media tries to do it, we can’t normalize Trump.

Second, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s coffin was in the US Capitol rotunda on Friday. She was the first American woman so honored. But, even that brought more naked politics: Although they were invited, neither of the top Republicans, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, nor House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attended.

Third, Wrongo keeps saying that Trump’s willful failure to deal with the COVID pandemic is by far the largest story of the year, and the issue that should decide the election. Another 885 Americans died from COVID-19 yesterday, and 45,178 more were infected, according to The NYT COVID-19 map and case count.

Cases are rising in 29 states and Puerto Rico. Deaths are increasing in 12 states. Think about how difficult it will be to tell COVID from the flu now that we’re starting the flu season. Some perspective:

  • During World War II, an average of 220 US soldiers died per day.
  • During the Civil War, an average of 540 soldiers died per day.
  • So far during this pandemic, an average of 946 Americans have died per day.
  • New cases are trending up again, with the 14-day average up 17%.

Finally, turnout on November 3: The Cook Political Report has introduced an interactive page that lets you tinker with turnout levels for various demographic groups. It’s based on 2016 numbers, and without the 6% third-party vote, Joe Biden wins 307-231, very similar to Trump’s win of 306-232.

But if turnout is lower or much higher, it wouldn’t take much for Biden to lose. For example, if 2016’s turnout of white non-college voters goes from 55% to 60%, Biden wins the popular vote by more than 3 million, but loses the electoral vote 306-232.

And if there was a 4-point shift in the Black vote, with Trump going from 8% to 12%, Biden would win the popular vote by more than four million, but lose the electoral vote 276-262. Biden would pick up PA and WI, but Trump keeps FL, MI, and AZ. A combination of a 10% Trump Black vote, and a 2% drop in Black turnout also leads to electoral loss for Biden.

On the upside, if Biden’s share of white college voters goes up just three points from 54% in 2016 to 57%, he wins Georgia, NC, and Florida and he rolls in the Electoral College, 350-188. The same would happen if he does 3 points better with non-college white voters, winning 34% instead of Hillary’s 31%.

If somehow, he was able to do both, Biden would keep the same electoral margin, but he wins the popular vote by almost 12 million.

Some history: In 2004, 122 million people voted. In 2008, the number was 130 million. We had 129 million votes in 2016, and that’s the baseline for all of the current modeling. The big question about 2020 is whether turnout rises or falls by a crazy number? Crazy would be say, 150 million on the high side, or 110 million on the low side.

While there’s both upside and downside to think about, turnout is everything. Do whatever you can to help improve turnout over 2016.

On to the weekend. Indian Summer seems to be upon us in Connecticut, along with continuing near-drought conditions. Looking ahead to winter, Teresa Hanafin of the Boston Globe offers this: “The Old Farmer’s Almanac says chionophobia is the fear of snow. Mitchophobia is the fear of snow jobs.”

Saturday coffee is taking a break this week, so settle into a space outdoors and listen through your Bluetooth head set to Gerald Finzi’s “Introit for Solo Violin & Small Orchestra – Op. 6 (Molto Sereno)”. The piece was written in the mid-1920s. Here it is performed by the Northern Sinfonia, conducted by Howard Griffiths with violin solo by Lesley Hatfield:

 

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