US Constitution Under Threat – The Wrongologist

Murkowski Fears Republicans

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo wrote here about Republican politicians behaving with deference to power in their Party and a fear of standing out:

“Standing up to Trump would mean risking access to donors, media cycles, committee power, and the favor of a political ecosystem that now functions more like a loyalty marketplace than a deliberative body.”

Finally a Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said on-camera what many elected officials have said off camera and off the record: They’re afraid of MAGA retaliation:

“We are all afraid,…I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

Trump’s Threat To The Constitution

The Daily Escape:

From Steve Inskeep, speaking about the legal plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who Trump says he can’t get back from El Salvador:

“If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”

There is a lot of stuff happening. Trump has tested all sorts of limits, including defying a 9-0 Supreme Court order in the case of Abrego Garcia’s extradition to El Salvador mentioned in Steve Inskeep comment above. He has turned the US economy into a giant guessing game by toggling tariffs on and off.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“….everyone is focused on Trump’s tariff policy. How could you not be? The stock market has been crashing, the bond market is freaking out, and worries about inflation and recession are mounting. When watching your retirement account drop like a rock, it’s hard to focus on anything else.

But we are also amid an emerging Constitutional crisis that could fundamentally reshape democracy.”

Last month, Trump deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he is being held in a notorious prison known for torturing and starving inmates. Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador and was in this country illegally. But a judge had ruled that he could not be sent home because the gangs there posed a threat to his life.

After Abrego Garcia’s illegal deportation, the case went to the US Supreme Court where the Trump Administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador in error, but they have refused to do anything to bring him back to the US. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared:

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

In a bit of a coincidence, Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, was in Washington Monday for a previously scheduled meeting with Trump, where Bukele said he refused to return Abrego Garcia to the US.

Moreover, in the single most disturbing display since he was reelected, Trump asked Bukele to build several more Terrorism Confinement Centers to house US citizens. Trump also told reporters that he was open to deporting US citizens if they had committed violent, criminal acts. Trump said:

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem….We’re studying the laws right now. Pam [Bondi, the attorney general] is studying. If we can do that, that’s good.”

But, US citizens cannot legally be deported.

The only exception is if a US citizen is credibly accused of committing a crime in another country and the government decides to honor an extradition request.

The administration’s position is that they can remove people in error or in defiance of court orders, and once deported, they cannot be compelled to engage in any specific act of diplomacy or foreign policy since those are the exclusive powers of the Executive Branch.

What this all means is that Trump will most likely escalate to deporting US citizens. The courts can try to stop this by, for example, holding executive branch officials including the president in contempt. That is highly unlikely since the Supreme Court ruled last year that the office of the presidency cannot commit a crime if it is done in the pursuit of normal job responsibilities, which would include foreign affairs.

It seems that Trump may not be held legally accountable even for deporting US citizens.

There is nothing to stop him unless the Republicans in Congress decide to stop him. He could be impeached and removed from office, of course, But the Republicans have taken a pass twice already on that option, despite airtight cases against him.

Republican politicians are behaving with deference to power and a fear of standing out. From Kyla Scanlon:

“As Umberto Eco warned in Ur-Fascism , authoritarian systems don’t return with parades and uniforms. They return in a culture where obedience masquerades as patriotism – or as economic strategy.

When disagreement becomes disloyalty, when nuance is dismissed as weakness, when conformity becomes civic virtue, we’re no longer living in a democracy. We’re participating in the performance of one.”

Congress could stop him. They have the authority, but they do nothing. This paralysis is what Umberto Eco described as a “fear of difference” where dissent is dangerous, alternative views are threatening, and deviation is punished.

What we get is a legislative body that performs democracy, but no longer willingly exercises its Constitutional powers.

Standing up to Trump would mean risking access to donors, media cycles, committee power, and the favor of a political ecosystem that now functions more like a loyalty marketplace than a deliberative body. So they completely ignore the Constitution at great costs to their constituents.

At this point, the Democrats can no longer treat Trump with any deference. The entire House Democratic Caucus should draw up articles of impeachment and seek to introduce them. The Senate Democrats should put a hold on everything until hearings are granted. Everything must stop until this is resolved.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“This is the moment. We are at a crossroads. It’s time to speak up. Corporations have bent the knee; law firms are submitting to Trump; Congress is ceding its authority, and corporate media is making excuses. The courts are trying to stop Trump’s worst offenses, but he ignores their dictates.”

This is the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

First They Came For The Communists

The Daily Escape:

Provincetown, MA, March 2025 photo by Marty Cowden

Wrongo hasn’t written since January, and there are two primary reasons. First, his overwhelming feeling of helplessness when the Democrats lost both Houses of Congress along with returning Trump to the White House. Truly, the Dems can’t be forgiven for their meek performance since November.

Second, chemotherapy and radiation can ruin your attention span: It is difficult to read anything long-form, much less write connected sentences. On the other hand, I’m having more good days than bad right now.

But today let’s gear up to talk about the arrest by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and green card holder, over his participation in protests at Columbia against Israel’s bombing of Gaza.

On Saturday Khalil was arrested by ICE agents in New York City and swiftly moved to a detention facility in Louisiana while the government attempts to deport him.

The NYT reported: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security…said in a statement on Sunday night that Mr. Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”

‘Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization…’

Aligned”? So, Khalil was arrested for wrong-think. Charlie Pierce asks in Esquire:

“So we’re disappearing people now? Nice to know…Are we now allowing the rendition of legal residents to black sites in the United States?”

The Youth Vote Is Reached By Influencers

The Daily Escape:

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

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

From JDV in the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)

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

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

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

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

From NBC:

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

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

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

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

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

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

From JDV:

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

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

From Dan Peiffer:

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

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

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

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

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

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

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

Resist, No Matter What

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just under half of white women supported the vice president.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The key question is can we resist like Havel?

Trump

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they did. Quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women Hold The Key To The Future

The Daily Escape:

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

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

Here’s a chart demonstrating the difference:

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

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

From McGraw:

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

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

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

That’s some creepy paternalism right there.

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

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

And the Harris margin is being repeated in swing states:

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

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

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

The conclusion? Nothing is definitive:

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

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

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

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

Taking Out The Garbage

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a bonus cartoon:

Harris’s Closing Argument

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo has no idea if Harris’s campaigning on a “Constitution over Party” pitch with Liz Cheney to Niki Haley voters is working, but he doubts it’ll be enough to win the election. Wrongo doesn’t know if Harris would have been better served by engaging with Muslim and Arab voters, assuming that she couldn’t have done both, and chose not to.

As I’ve spoken to friends who support Harris, the big question is when does she take the focus off Trump and begin her “closing argument”? Wrongo thinks she should focus on the “cost of living”. There’s no getting around that it’s high, that it’s higher than it should be, and that it’s a primary concern for most Americans.

In an NBC News poll, three in 10 voters under 30 years old said that inflation and the cost of living is the most important problem currently facing the country, three times more than the share calling “threats to democracy” their most important issue, which was the next highest issue among young voters. Abortion is the third most selected issue at 9%, followed by the Israel-Hamas war and “crime and safety” — both of which were selected by only 8% of young voters.

At the same time, new polling by AARP shows Harris leads Trump with women over the age of 50 by more than any presidential candidate since 2016. The survey shows that 54% favor Harris vs. just 42% for Trump (+12 points). It’s a huge improvement from Biden, who in January, led Trump by three points with women over 50. Harris’s numbers are also better than Clinton’s numbers in 2016, when she polled 48%-40% over Trump: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Overwhelmingly, women over 50 say that the economy and affordability are their biggest issue. Only a third of those surveyed say the economy is working well for them on a personal level, with 62% saying it isn’t. Another 41% of older women have confidence that in one year, they will be financially better off, as opposed to 49% saying they’re not confident of that.

Cost of living is the most important issue to 46% of those surveyed, with immigration in second at 30%…”

AARP believes that women over 50 can potentially sway the election, so Harris should take heed. Showing empathy with Gen Z and older women should be at the top of Harris’s closing argument. Speaking generally about some of her policies and contrasting with Trump’s “all tariffs all the time” tax on Americans should be an easy sell.

In a sense, the campaigns disagree on who the final persuadable voters are:

Trump is after low-propensity Republicans who don’t mind his crassness and authoritarian personality.
Democrats see small pockets of persuadables grouped by issues across the political spectrum, anchored by the idea that the next president has to ensure that prices come down.

Ultimately, this campaign is likely to come down to whether Trump’s character is too distasteful to GOP-leaning suburban women and to enough Latino and Black voters that they hold their noses and support Harris. Harris is clearly putting a ton of effort into these voting subgroups.

If you want insight into what Harris is delivering every day out on the campaign trail, read this transcription by Marcy Wheeler of Harris’s session with Maria Shriver. She asked Harris how she copes with the stress. After admitting she wakes up most nights these days, she gave this impromptu speech against despair:

“Let me just speak to what people are feeling. We cannot despair. We cannot despair. You know, the nature of a democracy is such that I think there’s a duality. On the one hand, there’s an incredible strength when our democracy is intact. An incredible strength in what it does to protect the freedoms and rights of its people.

Oh there’s great strength in that.

And, it is very fragile. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. And so that’s the moment we’re in. And I say do not despair because in a democracy, as long as we can keep it, in our democracy, the people — every individual — has the power to make a decision about what this will be.

And so let’s not feel powerless.

Let’s not let the — and I get it, overwhelming nature of this all make us feel powerless. Because then we have been defeated. And that’s not our character as the American people. We are not one to be defeated. We rise to a moment. And we stand on broad shoulders of people who have fought this fight before for our country. And in many ways then, let us look at the challenge that we have been presented and not be overwhelmed by it.

The baton is now in our hands, to fight for, not against, but for this country that we love. That’s what we have the power to do.

So let’s own that? Dare I say be joyful in what we will do in the process of owning that which is knowing that we can and will build community and coalitions and remind people that we’re all in this together.

Let’s not let the overwhelming nature of this strip us of our strength.”

Everyone should read that.

Wrongo thinks that there are legions of enraged women who are not being polled but ARE heading to the polls. That there are legions of young people who see Trump and the GOP for what they are and want none of it.

As someone who supported Harris in 2020 and was extremely disappointed in her at the time, I was pretty worried about how strong a campaigner she would be, and how well organized a campaign she was going to run. So far, so good.

Most Dems are doing more than they ever have to try and help win this.

And yes, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.

Red, Wavy And Ridiculous

The Daily Escape:

Time is short, and we have little reason to think that we know who will win the presidency, or which Party will carry the House or the Senate. All we are working with now are “vibes”: We either grasp at the latest poll or reject it if it doesn’t conform to our thinking.

From Robert Hubbell:

“The MAGA disinformation machine is dropping low-quality polls at a hectic pace, Elon Musk is offering cash incentives to Pennsylvanians who have registered to vote (probably illegal), a Musk-funded PAC is sending texts claiming to be from the Harris-Walz campaign, Trump is staging mock campaign events that media outlets are reporting as real, and Trump is telling vulgar stories…that would terminate the bid of any other candidate.”

From Simon Rosenberg:

“As of last Wednesday 538’s national poll average was actually higher than for Harris than it been a week earlier. There were no signs of slippage or erosion…”

Then came the red wave of polls. More from Rosenberg:

“Then, last Wednesday, the Rs turned a switch on and dumped a lot of polls into the national polling averages. We saw polls form Emerson, Fox News, Quantas, RMG, and the right-wing firm TIPP launched a daily tracker, adding 4 more polls. Senate Republicans even joined the party, dropping a favorable national poll, as did ActiVote and Atlas….538 moved from 2.6 Harris on Wednesday to 1.8 Harris this morning, and many polling averages and forecasters tipped to Trump over the weekend.”

This has lots of Dems worried about a Trump victory despite all of our money and efforts to elect Harris. However, this should be seen as another “Red Wave” like in 2022 rather than an authentic movement in the race. As Rosenberg says, “Welcome to red wave 2024”.

Rosenberg provides some details. The red wave 2024 campaign is far bigger this time, and has started far earlier:

They’ve released 70+ polls into the averages, with 31 Republican-aligned groups having released polls since August. These polls are consistently 1-5 points more Republican than the independent polls, as was the case in 2022.
A majority of recent polls in NC and PA are Right-aligned.
While their focus has been on the states, last week they really leaned into the national polling average and moved it and other forecasts this weekend
The launching of a new daily national tracking poll by TIPP, a far right institution, is an escalation that will be putting downward pressure on the national average every day until the election.

TIPP is notable. It’s corporate slogan is “talent loaned from God” – Rush Limbaugh’s catchphrase. It offers a steady stream of commentary that would be at home at Fox News or the RNC site. Some recent examples:

Harris’s Fiery Campaign of Rage Exposes Her Unpresidential Temperament
The Left Is Still Obsessed With 2020 Election Deniers
S. Government Pushing Climate Lies On Schoolchildren
Night And Day: Trump’s Command Of Economy Exposes Harris’s Novice Approach

Clearly impartial, no?

Contrast that with the WaPo poll released yesterday that tends to support where the non-Red Wave polls had the race last week – Harris leading, and more likely to win. It was done in conjunction with the Schar School of George Mason University:

From the WaPo:

“Among these key-state voters, Harris runs strongest in Georgia, where she has an advantage of six percentage points among registered voters and four points among likely voters, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Harris also is slightly stronger than Trump in the three most contested northern states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but by percentages within the margin of error.

The seventh battleground state, Nevada, is tied among likely voters though Harris is three points stronger than Trump among registered voters.”

Looking at North Carolina, Harris needs help with rural voters. She hired Rural Organizing to help with that. From their substack:

“In one of the biggest developments this week, the Harris/Walz campaign unveiled their Plan for Rural Communities….the plan “marks a concerted effort by the Democratic campaign to make a dent in the historically Trump-leaning voting bloc in the closing three weeks before Election Day. Trump carried rural voters by a nearly two-to-one margin in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. In the closely contested race, both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out beyond their historic bases in hopes of winning over a sliver of voters that could ultimately prove decisive.”

Rural America is more diverse than the MAGA stereotype, and shaving GOP margins there can be margins of victory both for local and statewide candidates. “We are bigger than just agriculture issues….“Reverse coattails” or “closing the margins” or “lose less:” However it’s described, it’s an important strategy for Harris to be pushing right now.

The 2024 election is just a little over two weeks away, and most Democrats are down to chewing their last fingernail with worry. This is nothing new, of course. That’s just the way Dems roll.

Republicans meanwhile are ready to open the champagne saying they have no need to worry. That’s how they roll. Both of these phenomena are indicative of a certain kind of temperament but they are also real political strategies.

Bottom line: don’t overthink the polls. Just go and vote, and get your reluctant friends out to vote too.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: US Constitution Under Threat

Trump’s Threat To The Constitution

First They Came For The Communists

Trump

Taking Out The Garbage