Where Do We Go From Here?

We're at the end of the month that saw perhaps the most consequential election of if not our nation, at least our lifetime. Quite frankly I'm at a loss for words.

In my last post I mentioned a friend who voted for Donald Trump. In challenging him I brought up the insurrection after Trump refused to accept defeat in the 2020 election. 

My friend's response? 

"What's that?" 

I said: "you know what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021."

He said to me and I quote: "Oh you're not going to hold THAT against him?"

In a post-election radio interview, one of the authors of the book "How Democracies Die" either Steven Levitsky or Daniel Ziblatt, can't remember which one, said that the public cannot be held responsible for preserving a democracy, rather it is the responsibility of democratic institutions, and the people placed in charge of them. 

If that's the case, then God help us.

For me, I tuning out of politics for now, as I'm trying to mend a broken heart, quite seriously. 

Fatalistic as it sounds, let's hope for the best and expect the worst.

See you next month.

Post Mortem: The Blame Game

On the afternoon of Election Day before a single vote was counted, I flushed all my hopes down the toilet that Kamala Harris might pull off a victory. No, I wasn't disillusioned by one of the plethora of polls that made me see the light, or dark if you prefer. Nor was it a commentary written by one of the great thinkers of our day. Rather, it was talking to a friend who was set to vote for Donald Trump when he got off work. I asked him why and he told me this: "Because the economy is so bad." 

I foolishly set about trying to convince him that the economy really wasn't that bad, and that Donald Trump was by far the lesser of the two candidates because of the many threats he poses to this nation.

My friend was unmoved.

I've had countless arguments with Trump supporters who more or less are just like me in that they spend a lot of time thinking about politics and are just as passionate and strident about their views as I am about mine.  

But I've never talked politics to folks like this friend, that is to say, people whose world doesn't revolve around current events, especially what's going down in Washington, not to mention the rest of the world. The fact that until Tuesday afternoon we'd never in the decade or so we've been friends discussed politics, illustrates that point.

Simply put, folks like my friend are doing their best to get by one day at a time, struggling in his case with health issues, with living in a not always safe neighborhood, and especially having enough money to live a reasonably comfortable life. After having worked hard and honorably through his mid-fifties, he certainly deserves it. 

So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that my friend and tens, of millions of Americans like him, don't make their electoral decisions based upon any ideology, but rather personal experience. And he feels his life was better under the Trump administration than under the Biden/Harris administration.

Quite frankly, who am I to tell him otherwise?

After our brief encounter Tuesday afternoon, it dawned on me that Kamela Harris didn't stand a chance to win the presidency, not because this country has taken a sharp turn to the right, but because more Americans are moved by the words "five dollars for a dozen eggs" than by these: "existential threat to democracy." 

In post after post, I tried to make the case that this attitude was selfish and myopic, that we were better to follow JFK's famous words "Ask not what your country can do for you, ,,," than Ronald Reagan's famous question to the American people during one of his debates with incumbent president Jimmy Carter in 1980: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

Compounding it was the realization that from what I consider any reasonable viewpoint, the policy proposals of Team Trump, namely mass deportations and imposing blanket tariffs on all goods coming from abroad, would only exacerbate inflation and have other disastrous impacts on the economy.

But what do I know?

Since the election I've read dozens of reasons why Harris lost. 

In a post-election podcast by New York Times writer and commentator Ezra Klein. Klein places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Joe Biden who Klein says, should have withdrawn from the presidential race long ago, so there would have been enough time to have a proper primary to pick his successor as the Democratic Party nominee. I agree that Biden should have stuck to his pledge in 2020 not to seek a second term because of his advanced age, but would that have made a difference? 

I don't think so.

We have history as a model. In March of 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, leaving open a field of Democrats, including Robert F. Kennedy, to seek their party's nomination. Kennedy was assassinated in June of that year and shortly thereafter came the contentious Chicago convention in August which left the party in disarray. Johnson's vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated standard bearer and as the representative of an unpopular administration, lost the November election to Richard M. Nixon. Another vice president who unsuccessfully ran to replace an (at the time) unpopular boss was Al Gore in 2000. Granted, both elections were extremely close, but as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

At least, some say, the Democrats should have had an honest-to-goodness primary which included Biden with other candidates challenging him. Well, the last time an incumbent president was seriously challenged by his own party was in 1980 when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries that year. Carter ended up losing the November general election to Ronald Reagan. That one wasn't at all close. Why? Well yes, Americans were still being held hostage in Iran, but the overriding issue of that election and the reason that Jimmy Carter was a one term president, as was his predecessor Gerald Ford, was inflation. 

I remember it well.

The interesting thing about all the finger pointing is that it seems to come from folks who have a particular bone to pick about something or other. Some claim that Harris lost because she refused to rebuke the Biden administration's policy on the war in Gaza. Had she been more open to the suffering of the Palestinians and the need for their own homeland they say, she would not have lost the many progressive voters who refused to vote for her. 

Other progressives were offended when Harris joined forces with never-Trump Republicans, especially the Cheneys, whom they hold in particular disdain. Surely, they say, she might have won had she kept the whole lot of them at arm's length.

Bernie Sanders and others blame Harris, and the majority of Democrats for abandoning the working class.

Others claim she lost because of her gender and her race, claiming that Americans are too sexist and racist to elect a woman whose heritage happens to be black and Indian.

Folks both left and right of center blame Harris for not distancing herself from the president, whom they point out has desperately low approval ratings, especially on issues like the economy and immigration, 

Sam Harris (no relation to Kamala), whom I've quoted in this space extensively, in his latest podcast, before completely eviscerating Trump and his supporters, takes a good deal of time eviscerating the Democrats for losing the election because of their allegiance to identity politics and other sacred cows of the Left, singling out in particular the Party's defense of transgender rights.  

As I see it, these issues may have cost Kamala Harris votes but, they are all break even issues. Had Kamala Harris spent more time addressing the plight of the Palestinians, which admittedly I think she should have, she would likely have lost Jewish votes. Had she followed the avowed Socialist Sanders' advice, she would have lost the votes of some of the centrists whom she picked up with her alliance with Liz Cheney. 

I don't honestly see any credence that she lost many votes because of the Cheneys, but I have no doubt she did lose votes because of her race and her gender. On the other hand, I think it's likely that she won at least as many votes because of those two undeniable facts, so there's another break-even issue.

And had she thrown Joe Biden under the bus, as many suggest she should have, that would have left her vulnerable to accusations of disingenuousness and hypocrisy (being an integral part of that administration), and would have caused a tremendous rift in the Democratic Party who still by and large believes, as I do, that when all is said and done, Biden will go down in history as having been a very good president.

I had an equally illuminating conversation with another friend the week before the election. We shared our disbelief, given Trump's record, his policies and his lack of decency, that anyone still supported him. This friend had a one-word solution to the problem, education. It's no secret that Harris won the vote of people with college educations quite handily, while his shall we say, unorthodox style late in the campaign, led some to believe that Trump was speaking directly to male voters without college degrees. Given the vulgarity of his rants, that should be considered a tremendous insult to male voters without college degrees.

Now this particular friend and I by and large share political ideologies although I would have to say he is to the left of me. He also comes from a background of undeniable white privilege as do I, only more so in his case if you factor money into the equation. And he married into a family of even more privilege if you catch my drift. 

So it's easy for him to say that education is the answer as he and his wife had the means to send their four children to good colleges, paying their way in full.

By contrast, the friend I spoke with the day of the election is neither white nor privileged.

But privilege transcends both race and money. My definition of privilege includes a child having parents, family, friends and an environment that encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and above all, a love of learning. I had all that in spades when I was growing up, but unfortunately many people do not. Having money, and the ability to afford going to college alone, do not necessarily grant this important privilege. 

That's not to say people who grow up without the privilege of having been taught a love of education, cannot develop one, they just have to work harder. 

I agree with my friend about education being the key to a well-functioning society, especially as we've been seeing lately, populists with bad intentions can easily manipulate people without a sense or desire to think critically. Could it be a coincidence that the President-elect plans to do away with the Department of Education?

Unfortunately, curiosity, a love of learning, and critical thinking are not things we as a society can expect of everyone, as education is just not everyone's bag.

It's likely that more Americans are like my friend the Trump voter who thinks about politics most likely only during election season if then, rather than the habitual watchers of FOX, or like me, people who for better or worse, think about politics on an almost daily basis. 

In the aforementioned podcast, Sam Harris takes some admittedly well-deserved jabs the Democratic Party's losing touch with average Americans with their over-devotion to the alphabet soup of progressive dogma from PC, to CRT, to DEI, with a little woke thrown in. But he tips his hand when he claims that all of the Trump voters he knows are not concerned about the nuts-and-bolts issues that directly affect people's lives like crime and inflation, but rather culture war stuff like Christmas, taxpayer-funded art, and trans rights. If that's the case, I have a sneaking suspicion that he doesn't know too many people like my friend the Trump voter whom I can assure you doesn't lose sleep over any of those things. 

This is not just an American phenomenon. At the beginning of the podcast I mentioned earlier, Ezra Klein points out that in the past few years, Great Britain, Japan, Sweden, Portugal and Finland all have had dramatic swings in their governments. These shifts were not ideological, conservative governments lost to liberal ones, and vice versa. The only thing they all had in common was the voting public's demand for change, in whatever form it might take.  

Why? Well as they say, it's the economy, (or at least the public's perception of it) stupid.

And how.

So what do the Democrats have to do to get back into the White House? That's another question I've been hearing ad nauseam since last Tuesday. Tremendous soul searching is the response I hear the most. 

That's Democrats for you.

No, there's only one way for them go get back into the Executive and Legislative Branches. Take a page from the Republican playbook and do everything in their power to make sure Donald Trump and the Republicans seriously fuck up in the next four years, and the American electorate will be looking for yet another change. 

From what he suggests he's going to do once in office, they won't have to work too hard.

At least we've got that going for us.

On Respecting Opinions

On the eve of the upcoming election, I've noticed a surge in pleas to "respect each other's opinion." On the surface that sounds like an honest, sensible and heartfelt attempt to help alleviate some of the divisions in our country at the moment. After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion, aren't they?

Well sure, it's a free country, at least for now.  But on the same token, while we should grant others the right to their opinion, no one should feel in the least, the obligation to accept, or respect that opinion.

Here's an extreme example: Suppose a person is of the opinion that their own race, nationality or religion is superior to all others and therefore members of their group should be granted rights not granted to other groups? Not only do I vehemently disagree with that opinion, but I find it vile, repugnant, and entirely unworthy of respect. 

Here's another: What if someone believes in something that is verifiably false, such as the earth being flat? Are those of us who have come to the conclusion that the earth is not flat by personally witnessing empirical evidence to the contrary, supposed to agree to disagree?

I would hope not. The size and shape of planet Earth is an established fact, as it has been for thousands of years. It is not an opinion.

Opinions by definition can never be wrong. But opinions can be misinformed, illogical, unconscionable, and a score of other things that should reasonably disqualify them from respect.

Virtually every issue that is front and center in the current election cycle in the United States can be honestly and intelligently debated. I don't have the slightest problem with people who disagree with me on those issues and indeed I respect those opinions so long as they are well thought out and based upon credible evidence.

For example, I assume most people accept that we can't possibly grant residency in this country to every single person who wants it, as that would be an untenable situation, consequently there must a system that manages immigration. It is not unreasonable to argue that the current administration could have done better on that front. 

I also assume most reasonable people agree that it would be a mistake to ban all immigration as naturally all of us who are not among the indigenous American population, are descendants of immigrants if not immigrants ourselves, AND that immigrants continue to contribute a great deal of good to this nation.

Just exactly how to balance these two is a matter worthy of sincere and above all, honest debate.

The Republicans behind their standard bearer in the 2024 presidential election have made immigration the centerpiece of their platform. 

I agree with them that there is a reasonable argument that can be made for deporting some people who are here illegally. 

On the other hand, in my opinion, the blanket deportation proposed by the exPOTUS is short-sighted, not to mention morally objectionable, as it would create vastly more problems in this country than it would solve. 

For starters, in purely practical terms, much of our economy depends upon the labor of undocumented workers. Contrary to what the exPOTUS might have you believe, undocumented workers do not take away jobs from American citizens, they occupy jobs that the vast majority of American citizens would never do, especially for the amount of money those workers get paid. In a perfect world, everyone would get paid a fair wage for their labor but in the real world, the idea of paying ten dollars for a single tomato at the grocery store or twenty dollars for a head of lettuce picked by U.S. citizens making a living wage would make even the most fair-minded of us re-evaluate our well-intentioned values. 

In addition to the inflation many cite as their primary reason for voting for the exPOTUS this time around, we are also experiencing a housing shortage which has been exacerbated by a labor shortage. Many folks working in the construction industry, as Donald Trump could (but won't) testify as he's hired many thousands of them as a real estate developer, are guess what, undocumented workers. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out what a wholescale Trump deportation program would do for the housing problem.

Deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants is one of the exPOTUS's handful of campaign promises. It doesn't help that Trump and his running mate are unapologetically promoting outrageous lies to attempt to cast illegal immigrants as the source of every problem this nation faces. 

I must say it's a little difficult to take the immigration problem seriously when the best these guys can come up with are fantasies of Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, that criminal elements from Venezuela are taking jobs away from hard working honest-to-goodness American criminals in Aurora, Colorado, and that immigrants as a whole are coming to this country to take away "Black jobs." 

Another sweeping solution to all our problems from Trumpworld is imposing stiff tariffs on all imported goods. Again, you don't need a doctorate in economics to understand who will ultimately pay for those tariffs, the consumer. You think inflation is bad now, just wait.

Yet despite the Republicans' dubious agenda, imbecilic exaggerations and outright lies, people in this country are legitimately struggling and feel that government at the moment is not doing enough to help them. I can't fault people for wanting to vote out of pure self-interest, even if they haven't quite thought the whole thing through.

Nor can I completely fault single-issue voters, the people who feel that one issue above all others is so important that it trumps, no pun intended, all others, and are willing to overlook a candidate's shortcomings because they feel he or she best represents their view on that particular issue. There are many such issues but the two I'm specifically thinking of at the moment are abortion and the War in Gaza.  

Unlike the issues mentioned above, finding compromise on these particular issues is exponentially harder as many Americans stand firmly on one side of the fence or other, without any intent of considering the other side. I won't go into detail because I've written extensively about both issues, here's a piece on abortion and here is one of many on the Middle East War.

All I'll say is that emotions run at a fever pitch for many Americans who will undoubtably cast their vote based solely on one issue, come hell or high water. 

Do I understand their opinion if they choose to vote for Donald Trump if he happens to appear to be on their side on one of those issues? Yes. Do I respect those opinions? I'll get to that in a moment.

If you know me or have been reading my political posts, and admittedly there have been way too many of them since 2016, you know that I have about 30,000 reasons, one for every lie he told while he was president, why I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump even if he were the proverbial last person on the earth. 

But those are my opinions, so who cares.

On the other hand, I have reasons that go beyond opinion. You see I happen to love my country despite its faults. I deeply believe in our Constitution, in participatory democracy and in the Democratic-Republic we have managed to nurture along for nearly a quarter of a millennium. 

In that time we've had our share of good presidents, bad presidents, and so so presidents. All of them except one, have had a few things in common, a profound love of this country, a deep respect for our system of government and the document that holds it all together, and an understanding of the meaning of the office of President of the United States, especially in regards to the limits imposed on the job both by tradition going all the way back to George Washington, and by law.

This is what General John Kelly, the man who served the longest as President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff had to say about his former boss:

A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior (General Mark Milley) who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said, God help us.

Ah, you say, that's just the opinion of one man who obviously has a chip or two on his shoulder against Trump.

Fair enough. 

Nevertheless, Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president, period. This is not an opinion, this is a fact of the law as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, Article Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to be exact. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

(Emphasis mine)

You can dance around those words all you want, but the fact remains that on January 6th, 2001, Donald Trump relinquished his right to return to the office of the presidency when after exhausting his legal rights to contest an election he lost, he sent a mob from the White House to the Capitol Building for the sole purpose of interfering with an official act of government, intended to declare his opponent Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States. 

People, including police officers as they were defending the Capitol Building, died as a result of that attack on the most sacred symbol of our democracy, while Trump gleefully watched it all unfold on TV, refusing to lift a finger, which is all it would have taken for him to stop it. 

In a bi-partisan vote, Congress determined that yes, what happened on January 6th was indeed an insurrection and that Donald Trump as its chief instigator, did in fact, engage in it, albeit from a distance. For that he was impeached for the second time. 

My opinion of Donald Trump notwithstanding, Trump's actions on that day and those leading up to it, disqualify him from being president according to the Constitution, just as they would have disqualified any president, good, bad or indifferent who would have done the same.

One week from today, we will be electing our next president but only one of the two major party candidates, Kamala Harris, has shown any intention of actually being president if elected. In his words and in his deeds, Donald Trump has proven again and again that he has no interest in being president. He might like to be king or dictator perhaps, but not president.

Not only does he continue to defend the indefensible by maintaining his lie that the last election was stolen from him, but he declares solidarity with the people who on his behalf, desecrated our Capitol and killed and injured scores of Capitol police, by referring to the murderous insurrectionist traitors as "we."

Perhaps even more disturbing if that is possible, Trump has recently taken it upon himself to describe people, both public servants and private citizens who oppose him as "enemies from within, more dangerous than any foreign adversary." Yes that includes the likes of Kin Jun Un and Vladimir Putin, who according to Trump, are more dangerous than people like me and anyone else who opposes him. Despite attempts at damage control from Trump loyalist FOX News talking heads trying to reign him in, Trump doubled down by suggesting using the "military if necessary" to go after these people, in other words, U.S. citizens, our fellow countrymen.  

It's impossible to consider this and not think of historical figures who have said the same thing and carried out their plans.

Now, calling a politician you disagree with a fascist and comparing him or her to Adolph Hitler is certainly a tired cliche which should be avoided if at all possible. 

I will say this unequivocally, Donald Trump is no Adolph Hitler. 

But he sure appears to want to be. 

In addition to declaring his detractors as "enemies of the people", he continuously channels Hitler by using phrases directly linked to the German dictator such as "poisoning the blood of the people" in reference to immigrants. He has used the term Hitler used, "vermin" to describe his political opponents. Cruder still, out-Hitlering even Hitler style rhetoric, again referring to immigrants, Trump just this week called the U.S. under the Biden/Harris administration, "a garbage can for the world."

Then there's this.

The article written by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic titled: TRUMP: I NEED THE GENERALS HITLER HAD, reveals tidbits into the mind of Trump through conversations he had with his aforementioned Chief of Staff and retired four-star general John Kelly, and other high-ranking members of the inner circle of the Trump administration. 

Some of the main takeaways from the article are Trump's profound lack of historical perspective, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, and his complete lack of respect for the military. Here Goldberg quotes retired General Barry McCaffrey:

The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes... It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.

But the main takeaways from the article are Trump's fascist tendencies and his admiration for Der Führer which we've been hearing about all week in the news, starting with the quote revealed in the title of the Atlantic piece. Simply put, Trump rejects the American ideal that members of the armed forces take an oath to the constitution, not the president. The generals he longed for were ones who would serve and obey him, not the country, just as he imagined Hitler's generals did. If that isn't a mockery enough, Kelly had to point out to Trump that on several occasions, Hitler's generals tried to assassinate him.

OK you get it, I don't like Trump for many reasons, some of them personal opinions, some of them not. It's the ones that are not, like his betrayal of our country and its democratic norms on January 6th, and the revelations from those close to him that he really wants to be dictator (not much of a surprise there), that make me realize no American who takes this country or our constitution seriously, regardless of their political ideology, has any business supporting him. 

That is what makes the current alliance between the Harris/Walz campaign and die-hard conservatives like the Chaneys so compelling. These are people who despite their profound ideological differences are coming together because they share one idea in common, that country comes before party, ideology, and everything else.

The thing is this: out of the plethora of issues facing us, we should all be able to agree to disagree on the multitudes of ways to address those issues. But for those of us who believe in our in our system of justice and government, flawed as they are, we should all agree on one thing, that no one in our country is above the law, not even the President of the United States. 

There in a nutshell is the most basic foundation of our democracy. 

No one should ever expect or be expected to agree with all or any of the policies of the president. The truly special thing is that we all get to directly address our objections every four years. 

But the one thing all of us must expect from a president, is that he or she lives up to the solemn pledge made before God and country at inauguration, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." 

If he or she refuses to do that, then truly nothing else matters. 

And that is a fact, not an opinion.

Immigration Man

Kamala Harris did so well following my advice before her debate last month with Donald Trump that I thought I'd offer the same service to her running mate Tim Walz for his debate with J.D. Vance this evening.

You may recall that on the day of her debate, I suggested that Harris be mindful of her facial expressions which would be visible on the split/screen during Trump's time on the microphone. Be careful I said to her, not to do what Joe Biden did during his July debate:

Hers should be a look of dismissal rather than of abject horror which lost a lot of points for Joe Biden ten weeks ago.

She took my advice and ran with it, way beyond I could ever imagine. I went on:

We all know that Trump absolutely relishes being thought of as a badass, as a tough guy who takes no prisoners. But brushed off of as irrelevant, that drives him crazy, possibly to the point of spontaneous combustion.

I think her high point in the debate came early on when she emotionally and eloquently argued about how the Supreme Court's Dobbs Decision overruling Roe v. Wade has been an unmitigated disaster which has put the lives of scores of American women in jeopardy, while I might add, not reducing the number of abortions in this country, which I'm assuming is the whole point of the Pro-Life movement.

But the turning point of the debate came when she brought up massive snooze fests, otherwise known as Trump rallies. You can call Trump a thief, a grifter, an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a wannabie dictator,  an existential threat to democracy, or a whole slew of other really terrible things, and he doesn't bat an eye. In fact I think Trump takes those accusations as compliments. 

But suggest that people are so bored by his stream-of-consciousness ramblings that they leave his rallies in droves while he's still speaking, and he goes apeshit. He may not have spontaneously combusted as I predicted, but he did the next best thing, going off on a diatribe about how immigrants, legal ones at that, are stealing people's pets in Ohio and eating them for supper. When challenged, he doubled down, insisting it's true because he saw it on TV.  

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn't have believed it either. 

As has been well established, the pets of Springfield, Ohio are perfectly safe.

That didn't stop Trump's running mate from running with the story of Haitian immigrants dining on the Fidos and Whiskers of Ohio. In his defense, Vance said it was justifiable to report a false story in order to bring home the gravity of the situation of illegal immigration. 

But here's my question: if illegal immigration is so bad, why does he have to make up stuff to point that out?

So here's my advice to Tim Walz:

Run with it. Be relentless in pointing out that Trump and Vance are lying to the American public and not even caring enough to hide it. 

If they're lying so openly about their strongest issue, what's stopping them from lying about every other issue?

They say that illegal immigrants are causing untold harm to the American people by taking American jobs, that's a lie, they're not. 

They say crime is up in the country, mainly because or undocumented immigrants. That's a lie, crime in general is actually down from the days of the Trump administration and all the evidence shows that immigrants commit far fewer crimes (understandably so) than do native born Americans.

They say that the Biden/Harris administration wrecked the U.S. economy. That's a lie, the economy they inherited from Trump caused in large part, but not entirely by the pandemic was in shambles, in danger of slipping into a recession. That did not happen, and the biggest concern about the economy, inflation which was a direct result of the pandemic and is a world-wide problem, has decreased in this country to the point where the Federal Reserve last week deemed it safe to lower interest rates that were implemented in order to help bring down inflation.

These are Trump and Vance's supposedly "strong" issues which when you look closely at them, are based upon garbage information and outright lies. That's not to mention their "weak" issues, lot sof doozies there too.

Tim Walz shouldn't be afraid of confronting these issues, nor should he or Harris be afraid of owning the accomplishments of the Biden/Harris administration, because the other side's portrayal of them as an abject failure, and their "plans" to improve the lives of everyday Americans, is nothing by smoke, mirrors, and a ton of lies. 

Naturally, Walz isn't going to win over the base, if Trump told them Joe Biden is currently waging a zombie apocalypse against the United States and has appointed Kamala Harris as its Tzar, they'd believe him. 

But if Walz can convince the handful of voters in a small number of states who will ultimately decide this election that there is nothing but bullshit to back up Trump's and Vance's campaign promises, maybe this national nightmare of ours will be over. 

After

I have to admit having been a little nervous before tuning in to the debate the other night. All those years as a disappointed Chicago sports fans must have served me well as my motto in anticipating the outcome of practically anything I care about is this: hope for the best, plan for the worst.

That way I'm never disappointed.

Well, it turns out I had little to worry about.

Granted there were things I wished the Vice President had done better: answer more questions directly for one, be a little more hesitant with spouting BS (like bringing up Trump's "good people on both sides" and  "bloodbath" comments which were both taken out of context), and missed opportunities by not nailing the exPOTUS down more on issues like the economy, which he is obviously clueless about.

On the other hand...

Complaining about all that is a little like having your football team win the game 60-0 and then complaining about your quarterback throwing an interception late in the fourth quarter isn't it?

But, on the other hand...

Taking that sports metaphor one step further, one game does not a season make. Or a more familiar metaphor, we may have won the battle, but the war is far from over. 

If you expected a reprise of the Lincoln-Douglas debates the other night, you were certainly disappointed. 

Which is perhaps why this first, and probably only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump, despite being by any reasonable measure a hand's down, slam dunk, gob smackingly devastating victory for Harris, didn't move the poll needle significantly in either direction. 

Judging by what I heard in post-debate interviews with still undecided voters in swing states, that's because neither candidate made a very good case for his or her plan for the number one issue on their mind, inflation.

I think the bottom line for lots of these voters is this: when Trump was president, their lives were better, while under Biden/Harris, their lives are worse. Yes, that's a myopic point of view but since these folks are really the only people who matter as far as the outcome of the election goes, their concerns must be addressed.

Regarding that, I believe Harris missed a golden opportunity at the very first question she received which was, "When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?" 

As is so often the case in debates like these, she didn't answer the question (admittedly a tough one) but sketched out her economic plan for bolstering the Middle Class, while slamming her opponent's one-size-fits-all solution to our economic problems, stiff tariffs on all imported goods.

All well and good but here's what she might also have said:

Four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic which took the lives of over one million of our fellow citizens. Second only to the unspeakable human tragedy, COVID also devastated our economy. Millions of Americans lost their jobs as the unemployment rate doubled, and the annual growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product was in negative territory for the first time in thirty years. 

And yes, during COVID, gas prices were low. Do you know why? Because no one was driving and the demand for gasoline was practically zero, while the supply went through the roof. That's basic supply and demand economics, it got so bad that for a time, if you had a barrel of oil to sell, you had to pay someone to take it off your hands. 

That was the state of the United States economy when Joe Biden and I were sworn into office in 2021. At the time, economists across the board predicted a recession at the very least if not a depression. Now I'm the first to admit that the recovery from the pandemic has been slow and bumpy at times, and things, especially the inflation rate, which by the way is a worldwide problem, is still too high. But we are continuing to work on it and inflation which has been declining over the past few years, is at a point now where it's low enough that the Fed is on the brink of lowering interest rates. 

Don't be fooled, there is still lots of work to be done but far from being the disaster that my opponent will have you believe, despite inflation, our economy is looking bright. The Stock Market keeps reaching record highs. If you don't think that affects you, take a look at your retirement account statement. My opponent will tell you that we are sorely falling behind in the production of oil, but the fact is that the United States currently leads the globe in not only the production of fossil fuels but renewable energy sources as well. My opponent will tell you that our nation is an economic disaster, but the truth is, the United States economy under the Biden/Harris administration, not only staved off a devastating recession, but is leading the world in the broadest measure of economic growth, the GDP. If Donald Trump were president right now with the economy exactly as it is, rest assured he'd be telling you that it's incredible, nobody has ever seen as great an economy as this one.

But no, I'm not going to deceive you like that, we are not there yet in terms of incomes catching up to inflation, but we are getting there.

And yes, I'd say we are indeed better off today than we were four years ago when our economic future was still very much uncertain.

Or something of that nature.

Not only would that have directly answered the question, but it would have given people who may not know better, an important lesson that there are a lot of factors that control inflation, many of which have little or nothing to do with the person who sits at the resolute desk in Washington D.C. 

It would also point out that economic trends develop slowly, usually spanning multiple administrations. As an example, Donald Trump loves to point out that before the pandemic, he "created" one of the greatest economies the world has ever seen. The fact is, he inherited that economy from his predecessor Barack Obama who himself inherited the worst U.S. economy since the great Depression.

Is it possible to tout the achievements of the Biden/Harris administration while still addressing and not belittling the concerns of people who feel they got let behind?

I think it is, but precious time is running out, especially since Trump yesterday announced he won't do another debate, (who can blame him?), and Harris won't have as good an opportunity to address uninterrupted, tens of millions of Americans who get their information from "news" sources that won't give her the time of day. 

But try she must, to reach these folks. 

Because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

POST SCRIPT

I could go on and on and on and on and on about how Kamala Harris completely undressed Donald Trump the other night in Philadelphia, or in her words, "ate him for lunch." I won't though because it's so obvious and so much has already been said and written about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still downright giddy about her performance, but we have to put it behind us now and move on to the next challenge. 

All I can say is this: Well done.

Before

This post is being written about six hours before the most significant presidential debate in American history. The debate this evening happens to come on the heels of the last most significant presidential debate in history.

I guess that makes these past ten weeks between the debates the most significant two- and one-half months in American presidential debate history, or maybe not.

It is a little hard to believe there are still undecided voters out there who could be swayed by the outcome of tonight's debate. But given our arcane system of electing presidents, and the fact that the outcome of this election will be determined by a small number of people in a handful of states, this is the reality we're living in. 

I heard this morning that yet another poll has determined that up to one third of all undecided voters will likely make their decision based upon the tonight's outcome. Given that Donald Trump's performance is virtually a given, it means that everything will hang upon Kamala Harris's performance. Everyone and their mother, including mine, has advice for the Democratic nominee, and I hope she's listening, nodding her head, and keeps doing what she's been doing.

Yes, I'd like her to get a little more specific about her agenda, policy matters and all that. But let's face it, any president coming into office is inevitably faced with a barrage of issues that are unexpected and have little or nothing to do with the rhetoric that is spewed during the campaign. Contrary to the popular opinion of some of our countrymen and women, a president doesn't have a magic wand that he or she can wave to make an agenda reality, such as making inflation go away. The president not only has to work with Congress, and we've all seen how that's been working out lately, but also has to work with forces that are by and large beyond his or her control such as the economy. The scariest force of all that is beyond a president's control is the unforeseen, events like we've recently seen such as global pandemics and far-off wars. Setting a well-defined agenda at the outset is all well and good but in reality, what's more important to know is what are the tendencies, the values and perhaps above all, what is the intestinal fortitude of the candidate, which hopefully will give us an idea as to how he or she might handle the unforeseen.

In one of the candidates, we've seen all too well how he's handled adversity and the unknown. As I've mentioned before in this space, had the exPOTUS's response to the COVID pandemic, the one and only true challenge during his one term in office, been only barely competent, say a grade of C minus, had he made just a token effort to convince Americans that we were all on the same page in fighting that horrific tragedy together, Americans would have rallied behind him as they have in other times of crisis and he would have easily won reelection in 2020. 

However, he insisted on using the Pandemic to further divide the nation for his own purposes and as a result, he lost that election. It wasn't even close. Then, rather than conceding defeat as every losing presidential candidate up to him had done, well, we saw what happened on that day of infamy, January 6, 2001. 

In that regard, Kamala Harris is a blank slate, as has every person ever elected president for the first time.

Speaking in generalities as Harris has been doing, isn't necessarily a bad thing. In reality, that's all we ultimately have to go on, other than she can't be nearly as bad as her opponent.  

Anyway, I'll get into the act and offer my suggestion to the Vice President for the debate tonight if she's listening, which I'm sure she is...

When Trump brings up her communist tendencies, she should suggest he open up a book (perhaps "The Idiot's Guide to Communism") and read up a little on the subject before opening his mouth about something he knows absolutely nothing about.

And she should concentrate on her facial expressions during the split screen when her mic is turned off. Hers should be a look of dismissal rather than of abject horror which lost a lot of points for Joe Biden ten weeks ago.

We all know that Trump absolutely relishes being thought of as a badass, as a tough guy who takes no prisoners. But brushed off of as irrelevant, that drives him crazy, possibly to the point of spontaneous combustion. Not that I'd ever wish someone's demise as Clarence Darrow once suggested, "but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

Who said this is going to be a debate? These things are not about ideas or issues, they're all about the performance, especially the one liners.

Just ask former Vice President Dan "Senator you're no Jack Kennedy" Quayle. 

Go get him Madame Vice President.

The Chicago Convention

The head coach of this year's U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball team and of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr let everyone know last week at the DNC in Chicago how time, like Old Man River, just keeps rolling along. Reminding the crowd of the history of the building they were in, he said:  "You young people, Google Michael Jordan and you can read all about it." 

The nineties were a great time to be alive and living in Chicago, not only because those were relatively calm days for both the city and the world, at least compared to today, but Chicago was also in the midst of a bona fide sports dynasty. Anywhere in the world you went, if you told someone you were from Chicago in those days, you would more than likely be greeted by the response: "Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan!"

Not anymore.

Today we're back to being known as the home of Al "rat-a-tat-tat" Capone, as we had for decades before the arrival of Number 23 from North Carolina, on the Southwest shore of Lake Michigan. 

Boy, those were the days.

Likewise, until last week, the mention these four words: "Chicago Democratic National Convention", inevitably evoked memories of riots in Grant Park, of cops armed with tear gas and billy clubs and more than willing to use them, of the image of young protestors climbing on Alexander Phimster Proctor and Augustus Saint Gaudens' equestrian statue of General John Logan across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel, of the chant "The Whole World is Watching", of Hippies, Yippies, Mayor Richard J. Daley and Judge Julius Hoffmann, and of the (in)famous Chicago Seven, sometimes Eight Trial. I have no doubt people today who weren't around back then, remember those things more than they remember the candidates who were picked to represent the Democratic Party in the November election of that year, Hubert H. Humprey, and his running mate Edmund Muskie.

That of course was the Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968. *

Never mind that before the 2024 DNC, Chicago had already hosted 25 presidential nominating conventions. the last being in 1996. more than any other city. Hardly anyone including yours truly remembers much about that last one. It could be because there was little drama, as the convention served as a rubber stamp sending the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore en route to their second term in office. Or maybe it was just because Michael Jordan and the Bulls were still dominating all the headlines in town.  

That convention is most famous for having been the first held in this city since the disastrous '68 convention and for the collective sigh of relief the city fathers (and mothers) breathed after they pulled it off, practically without a hitch.

Hard as it would be to imagine for anyone living in the nineties, almost thirty years later we're living in times that more resemble 1968 than 1996. Which is why trepidation was high that this convention would be remembered more for what went on outside of the United Center than within it.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. Starting with the Democratic Party, normally a fractious group even in quieter times, who came together nearly unanimously in support of their chosen representatives in November, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz. Not only that, but they coalesced in a remarkably short period of time after President Biden announced he would not seek a second term late in July.

By doing so, they seemed to be taking my advice. Is it possible more folks look at this blog than I realize? 

The biggest fear was that the protests, which occur during every presidential nominating convention, would turn violent as opposition to the U.S. support of Israel in the war in Gaza, is understandably running at a fever pitch. I believe kudos must go out to both the protestors, their leaders, AND to the Chicago Police Department and all the other law enforcement officials involved., who took great heed in learning from their mistakes of the past. While there were some scuffles and arrests, this convention will forever be remembered for what took place on the floor rather than in the streets. 

And while we're at it, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also deserve heaps of credit for setting the tone by insisting that we can both grant people their First Amendment right to protest and avoid violence if everyone works together. 

But will the words "Chicago DNC" from this point forward evoke 2024 rather than 1968? 

Who knows, I guess that all depends on what happens this November. 

* It should go without saying that prior to the convention that just ended, there were many remembrances of the 1968 Convention published and broadcast in both the national and local media. I was struck in nearly all of the ones I read and listened to, how the narrative about what happened has been cast to a very selective point of view. The general consensus is that the blame for the violence that occurred in Grant Park and other parts of the city during the convention lies entirely on the shoulders of Mayor Daley and the Chicago Police Department.

What is hardly ever mentioned in the discussion of the '68 Convention is the context in which it took place. In the contentious era of the late to mid-sixties, between the War in Vietnam and the struggle for Civil Rights in this country, riots had taken place all over the country. Two of the most well-known prior to 1968 were the Watts Riots of 1965 in Los Angeles, and the Detroit Riots of 1967. While not nearly as destructive in terms of lives lost and property damaged, campus unrest took place in major universities all over the country at that time. 

But in 1968, all hell broke loose. The watershed moment of that year took place on April 4 of that year when Martin Luther King was assassinated. The response all over the country was swift and devastating. In the days that followed Dr. King's assassination, much of Chicago was in flames.

It was during these riots that decimated neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side, that Mayor Daley issued his notorious "shoot to kill arsonists, shoot to main looters" order to the Chicago Police and the Illinois National Guard. 

In the shadow of the devastation, the DNC would take place in Chicago barely four months later. and the Daley administration, still reeling from the events of April, was steadfast in the determination that with the eyes of the country focused on this city, law and order would prevail during the convention. 

Meanwhile anti-war groups from all over the country set their sights on being in Chicago and made public their plans to do so. Some expressed their desire to simply to march peacefully while others planned to participate in acts of civil disobedience including spiking the city's water system with LSD. 

The Daley administration rightly or wrongly took all the threats seriously and vowed none of it would happen under their watch. 

The rest as they say, is history. 

There is no question that Daley and the Police grossly over-reacted to the goings on during the convention. But it also should be noted that the hit this city took only months before, certainly colored the officials' response to the chaos during the convention. In none of the accounts of the events of the 1968 convention I encountered, were the riots that took place after Dr. King's assassination even mentioned. One report on the radio which was filled with a number of factual errors that I easily spotted, inexplicably played the recording of Daley's "shoot to kill" order in the context of the convention rather than its proper context of the West Side riots.

Stuff like this is what makes history such an interesting and vibrant subject, especially when you've lived through it.