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.

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.

Oops, I Did It Again

For the last four years or so, I've done my best to avoid getting into social media spats over politics. That was made easy since the last presidential election, as I either de-friended or have been de-friended by most of the social media "friends" with whom I've had shall we say, heated political disagreements. 

Like banging my head against the wall, it felt so good when it stopped.

I didn't jettison all of my friends with alternative visions of the universe. 

Yet for my part, since the 2020 election, I've kept political commentary to the minimum on my own posts (saving it for this blog), and have bent over backwards to avoid commenting on others' posts when they rubbed me the wrong way. 

But one post the other day was particularly aggravating, and I simply could not help myself. The post was, as are so many of them are, not original, but the repost of a meme. The meme said: "Run on your record. Not your race. Not your gender." signed: "America."

As you can see it was not explicitly addressed to any particular candidate, but you can probably guess who the intended target was. Taking advantage of the ambiguity, this was my response:  

Oh I don't know, if you have a record that includes dozens of criminal indictments, thirty some felony convictions, two impeachments, trying to overthrow the United States government because of not liking the outcome of an election, having Orban, Kim and Putin as BFFs AND total incompetence in handling the one real challenge (COVID) of his administration, what else does he have to run on besides being an old white guy?

I had a flash of Deja vu when I read the comments from total strangers to my response which were posted within minutes of my comment. I learned that I'm drinking the Kool Aid, that I'm delusional, that I don't have an open mind and that I need to stop paying attention to the "mainstream media."  

What they don't know about me (as I said they're perfect strangers so how could they?), is that I stopped drinking Kool-Aid when I was about seven, never really liked the stuff. For much of my adult life and then some I've prided myself on having an open mind, seeking out sources of information from all sides of the political spectrum, especially those with whom I disagreed. After all what can you learn if you just read things that confirm your own biases? Yes, I do get information from the dreaded "mainstream media" as well as from other sources, including Fox "News".

Until eight years ago, I considered myself to be politically moderate, even right-of-center on certain issues.

What they also don't know about me is that no, my opinion of Donald Trump has not been shaped by the MSM or any other political commentary, but rather by observing and listening to the man himself.  I've been following Trump's career for the past oh, forty years or so and can honestly say that for all that time, I never found him to be anything more than an attention grabbing, self-serving crook, a conman and a grifter. And that was back when he called himself a "liberal, very pro-choice Democrat." Needless to say, my opinion of the exPOTUS has not improved in the last eight years. 

As for the delusional part, well in some circumstances, I have to plead guilty as charged. But judging by the words of my comment published in its entirety above, one would be hard pressed to deny anything I wrote; yes friends, Donald Trump is responsible for all that, and so much more.

Fittingly, none of the responses to my comment tried to deny any of what I said. Instead, they dwelled upon what a great president their man was, how the country was so much better off under Trump and what a disaster it has become under Biden. According to them, Trump may have done some bad things, but nothing that the Democrats haven't done.

Well, I beg to differ. 

If you've been reading this blog for the past eight or so years, you've heard it all before so I'm not going to rehash it here. In a remarkable bit of self-restraint, I let it go with my original comment, choosing not to get into arguments over politics with complete strangers. 

I did type out a response to my friend, an actual friend by the way, who made the original post. Basically, she pointed out the predictable: prices are too high, too many immigrants, two wars waging in Europe and the Middle East, and more. 

How much those things are attributable to the current administration is very debatable, which is what I wrote. But I never posted it, seeing no point in arguing with my friend either, since she's as set in her opinions on the subject as I am in mine. 

However debatable though, hers are valid concerns and if the Democrats are going to have any chance of winning in November, they're going to have to address them honestly. 

As far as I'm concerned, they can dump on Trump all they want but they're also going to have to give up demonizing Trump supporters as Hillary Clinton did with her infamous "basket of deplorables" comment eight years ago. That alone I believe, is what doomed her campaign more than anything else. 

Interestingly enough, I listened to an interview with Tim Walz a couple weeks ago. He spoke passionately about all the folks we still see wearing the red baseball caps at Trump rallies and how they're not all that different from folks like us who turn our noses up at them. The Democrats aren't going to reach all of them, probably not even most of them, but the truth is, deep down, most of these folks have by and large the same needs, the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families as the vast majority of Americans. (Yes there are the dyed-in-the-wool racists too who I'd say comprise a small minority of the MAGA crowd.)  

I was so impressed by Walz and especially his comments about unifying the country, that I became convinced Kamela Harris should choose him as her running mate. Two days later, she did.

Trump was clearly aggravated when President Biden announced that he would not seek reelection and would throw all his support to his vice president. So too were Trump supporters who like their man, were beginning to see a slam dunk victory in November, especially after (for Biden) the disastrous debate performance, the assassination attempt against Trump, and the rousing, bullshit laden RNC in Milwaukee. 

In stark contrast, those of us who wouldn't vote for Trump if our lives depended upon it, were in a state of depression at the thought of the man who waged an insurrection against the United States government on January 6, 2021, returning to office. So, the timing for Biden's announcement, coming just days after the MAGA Convention, could not have been better for the Democrats and anybody who thinks a redo of the Trump presidency is the last thing this country needs.

I'm not often right but I made the right call two posts ago when I said that there were only two legitimate options for the Democrats. Either Joe Biden would have to voluntarily withdraw from the race and get behind Kamala Harris (and no one else), or stay in the race and deal with the ever-growing scrutiny of his mental and physical condition. In either case, the Democrats, if they wanted any chance of beating Trump, would have to be all-in in supporting their candidate, whomever that may be.  

Well, much to Donald Trump's dismay, they chose option A, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them, up until now at least. 

The double whammy was Harris's pick of Walz, who couldn't be farther from the MAGA concept of the wealthy, elitist, Ivy League educated coastal Democrat who has zero connection to or appreciation of Average Americans and their values. 

For the record, both Trump (Penn) and his running mate J.D.Vance (Yale) are in fact, Ivy Leaguers while Harris and Walz both are not. 

That little tidbit in a normal world would be quite irrelevant, as all four have advanced degrees from respected universities. But if the Trumplicans are going to paint a picture of themselves as being more in touch with the lives of average Americans, as you can see, that simply isn't so. 

Harris and Walz would do well to remind folks of that. But it's also important that both candidates don't spend all their time reminding us that they're not Trump and Vance, we already know that. As I said, they're going to need to get substantive and address those bread and butter issues mentioned by my friend in her response to my comment on her post.

Because at some point, as everyone keeps reminding us, the honeymoon will eventually be over with the Harris/Walz ticket and the voters who will determine the outcome of this election, will be a relatively small number of people in a handful of states who will show up to vote, based upon whether or not they feel Harris and Walz are worth the effort. The Democratic candidates need to do everything in their power to reach out to these folks, even some of the ones in the red caps. 

Trump of course will always be Trump, a man who cannot resist the impulse to be a jackass and a bully, no matter the cost to himself. While his base has shown they will support him no matter what he does, his Achilles heel is that he will never lift a finger to reach out to anybody who doesn't already adore him. His choice of running mate proves that in spades. That weakness provides the Democrats with a tremendous opening, if only they'll take the opportunity to run with it.

Well, so far so good.

So, what was it about my friend's post that irked me so? 

Well, you may recall four or five of my posts which address the issue of "colorblindness" that seems to be an obsession with the MAGA right. They just love to brag about how they don't notice race and how inspired they are by the line of the "I Have a Dream" speech where Martin Luther King dreams of a day when: "his children would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin." When you're reading a rant about race by a MAGA writer, you can set your watch by when that line will come up.  

And how did these same folks react when it was announced that Kamala Harris, a woman of Black/Asian ancestry would be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States? 

They called her a "DEI" hire, implying that she was picked not because of her qualifications but because of her race and her gender. Never mind that she served as Vice President of the United States for four years, a senator from the largest state in the country before that, and the top law enforcement official of that state before that. Before that she was a prosecutor.

And remind me, what exactly were Donald Trump's qualifications before he was elected president in 2016? Oh yeah, he was a talk show host and a businessman who went bankrupt a half-dozen times.

So, if anyone is running on race and gender in this election, it is the Trumplicans. 

That point was made crystal clear during last week's Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, where the milestone of Harris possibly becoming the first woman president of the United States was not lost on many of the speakers, but practically ignored by the candidate herself. 

Meanwhile the exPOTUS is working overtime to portray Kamala Harris with references filled with piggish male chauvinist stereotypes of women, portraying her as weak, frivolous and stupid, someone who will not garner the respect, nor inspire fear in the minds of our adversaries. 

Well, anyone who has ever seen her in action, such as when she grilled the likes of former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. understands that Harris, a former prosecutor, senator and vice president, is as serious, intelligent and tough as they come. 

On the other hand, her current opponent, the exPOTUS, extremely vulnerable to attention and flattery, has proven himself to be easily manipulated by our adversaries. His shameful performance in Helsinki with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is the most but certainly not the unique example of this. 

Of course none of this should come as a surprise, Donald Trump is a master of projection, casting his own faults onto his opponents, only more so with those he truly fears. 

From his unhinged rants on Kamala Harris, we can gather a few things. He's really scared of her and he's the unserious, weak and stupid one.

And how.

Job Number One

An analyst before the debate said the president had to win the first three minutes or else he'd lose the entire debate. Then the debate started and from my perspective, Joe Biden lost the first thirty seconds. 

Then it got worse. 

Yes, Biden lost the debate, but it would be a stretch of the imagination, a huge one, to say that Donald Trump won. With Trump, especially last Thursday night, fact checkers would have had a much easier time enumerating the things he said that were facts. I watched the entire debate and for the life of me, I still can't think of anything Trump said that was remotely true.

Never mind the verbal stumbles and the occasional losses of train of thought, Joe Biden lost the debate because last week Donald Trump handed him talking points on a silver platter that he failed to take advantage of. 

Warning, here comes another sports analogy:

In ice hockey, when a team has a two-man advantage, that is to say when two players on the opposing team are sent to the penalty box at the same time, it's usually a pivotal moment in the game. If the team with the advantage fails to score during that opportunity, they often lose the game.

Using that analogy, Joe Biden had a two-man advantage for at least half the debate.  

At times he appeared even to have a three-man advantage, something not possible in hockey, yet he failed to score. 

The subject of abortion was Biden's greatest missed opportunity. Unbelievably, Trump once again brought up one of his most egregious lies ever, perhaps even worse that his claim that he would have won the 2020 election were it not for voter fraud. Regarding late term abortions he said this:

(Doctors) will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth.

I find it understandable that people would be particularly sensitive to abortions that take place late in a pregnancy when the unborn child has developed beyond a certain point and in our time, might even be viable outside of the womb. 

But using late term abortions to sum up the "pro-life" argument is a logical fallacy, a classic example of the "Strawman", that is, basing an argument upon exaggerated and faulty assumptions. Trump's assumptions here were doozies, not only faulty, but outrageous and shameless, something we've all come to expect from the man.

First of all, everyone agrees that willfully taking the life of a child after birth is nothing short of murder, which has never been legal anywhere in this country. Suggesting otherwise as Trump has done now for at least eight years, needs to be called out for the bullshit it is, unequivocally. 

Biden didn't do that. 

Beyond Trump's reprehensible claim of obstetricians willfully murdering babies outside of the womb, late term abortions need to be addressed for what they really are. These are not cases as Trump suggests of capricious women deciding late in their pregnancy that they can't be bothered with giving birth. 

The most eloquent words I've heard about the subject were spoken by current Secretary of Transportation and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg:

Let’s put ourselves in shoes of a woman in the situation, if it is that late in your pregnancy that means almost by definition, you have been expecting to carry it to term, we are talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib, families that get most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible choice.

It would have been nice if Biden could have responded to Trump's stupid, uninformed comment with one tenth of that eloquence. But instead, we got crickets. He even pivoted mid-response from one of the Democrats' most powerful issues this year to one of their least, immigration.

Yes, it was a terrible performance, one perhaps for the ages. Immediately after the debate, one of the TV commentators said that he loved Joe Biden, that Joe Biden was his mentor, but that Joe Biden needed to step down, he's simply not up to perhaps the most difficult job in the world. 

One word immediately came to mind:

Fuck.

But I've had a week to think about it. Quite honestly, I am a little pissed at Biden because I do remember him saying four years ago that he intended to be a transition president and as he would be 81 in 2024, wouldn't intend to seek a second term. Had he lived up to those words, we wouldn't be in this situation today. Of course, the situation could have been worse with another candidate, who knows.

By any reasonable standard, Joe Biden has been a good president. Yes, inflation is still a problem; we're all feeling the pain myself included, especially at the gas pump and the checkout counter of the supermarket. And yes, this is also a terrible time if you want to buy a home for the first time. But the fact of the matter is that's the way of economics, we've been here before and were it not for the selective memory and/or historical amnesia of many Republicans, they'd see it as it is. It's also true as I pointed out in a recent post that the extremely dire warnings made by economists four years ago of an imminent recession did not come true. 

I have to laugh hysterically because if Trump were president now with the current state of the economy, you wouldn't be able to shut him up about how the stock market continues to shatter records, how we're producing fossil fuels in record amounts, and how we have at the moment, the strongest economy of practically every nation in the world. Which reminds me of a line from Bill Clinton, "if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat."

Biden has also had to face numerous challenges, especially two major wars that threaten to destabilize the world. The current president has remained steadfast in the American tradition of supporting our longtime allies, democracies that are facing existential threats from totalitarian regimes. In contrast, Trump has shown nothing but admiration for those totalitarian regimes, especially those in North Korea, China and Russia.  

And Biden has addressed the issue nearest and dearest to the hearts of the right, namely immigration, by working on a bipartisan bill to stem the tide of immigrants crossing the southern border. That bill was quashed by Trump who insisted the Republicans kill it in order to prevent the Democrats from having another issue they could campaign on against him.

 

By contrast, Trump had few challenges during his first three years in office. He inherited a strong and growing economy from his predecessor, much of which he erroneously took credit for himself. There were also few international incidents for which he also, without any credible evidence, continues to take credit.

In the final year of his term, he had one tremendous challenge that had he done even a slightly credible job of addressing, that is, no better than a C-, he would have won reelection in 2020 handily. Instead of bringing the country together as any good leader does during a time of crisis, Trump used COVID to further divide the country, this time over the proper response to a pandemic, resulting in the United States having one of the highest rates of mortality from the disease of any nation in the world. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump supporters died of COVID at a disproportionately high rate.

Yet even that doesn't seem to dissuade his supporters. 

Nor does the fact that he attempted to wage an insurrection in order to overturn a free and fair election. If you disagree with that last part, show me the evidence, not just theories. 

Is Trump the existential threat to our democracy that many people insist? Well I happen to believe that beyond having been a terrible president, he is a threat and has no business of ever setting foot in the White House again.

Naturally in my opinion, it's job number one to beat him in the election in November. Biden's performance last week certainly didn't help in that matter.  

So in that vein, where do we go from here? If Biden should decide to step down, I would support and respect that. But then what? To me the natural replacement for him on the Democratic ticket would be his vice president. Personally, I would vote for Kamala Harris in a heartbeat, in fact I was kind of rooting for her to win the Democratic nomination in 2020. But truth be told as I pointed out in another post, I'd vote for my cat in a heartbeat over Donald Trump. 

But I'm not sure if Harris could beat Trump in the electoral college in November, since many people seem to despise her as they did Hillary Clinton. As an aside, it dawned on me the other day that their hatred of these two women is perhaps not prejudice against strong women as I once thought. Could it rather be a prejudice against smart women? Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both strong women who get a lot of support from the Right. But certainly no one ever accused them of being smart. 

One thing's for sure, I'd sure love to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump. Trump would never let that happen though, even he's not that foolish. 

The polls today show that a Democratic candidate other than Biden would do well against Trump. Unfortunately, "Democratic candidate other than Biden" is not going to be a choice on the ballot in November. And I'm afraid that if the Democrats were to go above Kamala Harris's head and select someone other than her for their candidate, that would lead to a lot of hard feelings, with good reason. 

I also think that the Democrats forcing Biden out would be a terrible idea as he is the candidate who was elected by the people, including me, who voted in the Democratic primaries. 

To me the only credible options for the Democrats going forward are for Biden to voluntarily step down, turning over the reins to his vice president, or Biden remaining the Democratic candidate. 

Both options are fraught with risk but frankly I don't see any other option.

Which means for the first time in a long time, the Democrats are going to have to get their act together and unify themselves in unequivocally getting behind their ticket in November. That means if Biden remains the guy, to assure the public that he can do the job and if by some chance he can't, he has a very capable vice president who can easily fill the shoes. 

If Harris is the woman, again, to a person the Democrats will have to get behind her full speed ahead.

In either case the Democrats, and by that I mean every single one of them, will need to be on the same page doing a full court press (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) to show the country the difference between their party and the other one.  

On the bright side, I believe this week, the largely Trump-picked Supreme Court handed the Democrats a tremendous gift in ruling that a president has complete immunity in his or her official acts while in office. Why do I believe it's a gift to the Democrats? 

Remember that the Supreme Court ruling goes both ways. As Joe Biden is the current president, he could now do all sorts of things including enacting an executive order banning convicted felons (have anyone particular in mind?) from running for president. Heck while we're at it, he could even, thanks to the Supreme Court, take out a contract on his chief political opponent with likely impunity. True he might get impeached by the Republican House but likely won't get convicted by the Democratic led Senate.

By not doing any of that, he's showing the nation that he means business by not wanting to be king or dictator, which six members of the Court seem to have said is his right. 

Assuming these things won't happen, the Democrats will be able to rightfully say that Republicans,  including an obviously biased Republican leaning Supreme Court, not the Democrats, want to increase the powers of the president in ways never imagined in the Constitution. Combined with the 2025 Project, the work of the Heritage Foundation which is effectively the planform of the Republican Party in the upcoming election, the Democrats can rightfully argue that they are the party committed to preserving and protecting the Democratic Republic that has served this nation well for the last 248 years, while the Republicans in what they are calling a "new American revolution" are looking to overthrow all that and return this country to the monarchy it rejected on this day, July 4, 1776, or worse, introduce a type of government that no one in their right mind ever imagined for this country. 

Between that and the Dobbs ruling which overthrew the federal government's protection of a woman's right to choose her own healthcare, the Democrats will have a lot to work with in terms of convincing the American people that they are the party that looks out for the rights of the people and the fights for the preservation of the democracy we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years. 

Of course, all bets are off if the Democrats drop the ball and lose sight of the big picture by letting their personal grievances take precedence and refusing to compromise their more extreme positions. 

I understand that it may not be the best of choices this year, but there couldn't be a more clear choice.

It's a 50/50 chance at best the Democrats and their voters will come together to do that but if they do, I'll bet my firstborn the Democrats will win in a landslide this November, no matter who leads their ticket.

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

Let's not fuck it all up.

Rigged!

My late father-in-law, may God rest his soul, was a life-long, die-hard fan of the Green Bay Packers football team. 

He can be forgiven for that. 

But there was one particularly aggravating aspect to his fandom, for him there were only two possible outcomes to a Packer game, they could either win, or else the game was rigged, stolen from them by the refs. Could the Packers legitimately lose a game? Unthinkable.

This isn't an unusual trait of many passionate sports fans, a word which of course is short for fanatics. Fortunately, those folks are in the minority because if they weren't, if enough people seriously believed that the games were not played on the up and up, the world of legitimate spectator sports would lose all credibility and become a mere offshoot of professional wrestling.

What? Professional wrestling not legitimate? I'm shocked, shocked!!!

That's precisely why ever since the mother of all sports scandals, the 1919 Black Sox fiasco, Major League Baseball has been so strict in regard to its dealings with players and coaches who have been caught betting on the game. Just last week, Tucupito Marcano, who was until last Monday a middle infielder for the San Diego Padres, was banned from baseball for betting on games that involved his team at the time, the Pittsburgh Pirates. While MLB denies that the outcome of any games was affected by Marcano's wagering, the mere hint of impropriety was enough to get Marcano booted out of the game for life. 

Legitimate spectator sports work because of three fundamental principles:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules. 
• Everyone involved with a team, from players to coaches to support staff, is committed to putting the best team they possibly can on the field.
• The acceptance that there can only be one winner at any given time.

These three principles form the basis of a covenant between fans and the sport. The first two are a matter of faith, fans trust the leagues to ensure fair play, and they trust the teams to do their best to win. The third and most important of the three, is the expectation that winners will be gracious in victory, and that losers be sportsmanlike in accepting defeat, and will be around to play another day.

Unfortunately, like everything that involves human nature, these principles are aspirational. In other words, shit happens. 

• Bad calls, especially a series of them, can make fans seriously question if everyone does in fact, play by the same set of rules. 
• Seeing a player "dogging it" during a play can make it appear like he or she is not putting every ounce of effort into their performance, or worse, has an ulterior motive.
• Bad sportsmanship, truly the root of all evil in sports, deflates or even has the potential of destroying the very spirit of athletic competition.

Therefore, in order to preserve the covenant between the sport and its fans, the governing bodies of legitimate sports do their utmost to address these issues. 

Some would say they don't do enough while others would say they do too much.

I guess you just can't win.

But they must be doing something right because legitimate spectator sports continue to be a remarkably successful endeavor in this country and in much of the rest of the world.

And in my humble opinion, that's a very good thing because there are few things in this world that bring people together like sports, once you cut through all the business and political BS that is. Think of the World Cup, the Olympic Games, or on a more parochial level, the Superbowl, just for starters.

During these events, people set aside their religion, political ideologies, and most of the things that separate us, sometimes even allegiance to a team, to celebrate the sport.

Because in the big picture, it's the game that really matters, and while almost every fan favors a particular team or athlete, in a perfect world at least, every sports fan is at heart, a fan of the game, be it baseball, Australian Rules Football, Wife Carrying, yes, such a thing exists, or whatever.

As hackneyed, trivial and downright off-the-wall as what I'm about to say may seem, legitimate spectator sports are in a sense, a model for democracy. There, I said it.

 

Let me explain:

A democratic republic like legitimate spectator sports, depends upon a few basic principles in order for it to function, ideally:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules.
• Chosen by free and fair elections, legislative and executive representatives govern reflecting the will of the majority, while protecting the rights of the minority clearly spelled out by a constitution.
• While there can be only one winner of any election, new elections without fail, are held on a regular basis.

Again, like sports these principles form the basis of a covenant, this time between citizens and their government. The first two again are a matter of faith, here citizens trust the electoral system and if necessary, the courts to ensure free and fair elections, and they trust their elected officials who, without ulterior motive, govern to the best of their ability. The third is the expectation that winners of elections will be gracious in victory, and that losers magnanimous in accepting defeat, will form the loyal opposition, and have the opportunity run for office another day, if they so choose.

Talk about aspirational.

One would think it a no-brainer that most people would want to live in a country ruled by the will of the people, rather than the will of an all-powerful king or a dictator. In the United States, we've been living so long in our own democratic republic, nearly 250 years, that we have taken it for granted, assuming that nothing could ever come around to destroy it. But not so fast. 

I think it's fair to say that the most important part of a democracy is that despite differences of opinion, a critical mass of its citizens, and by that I mean a super majority, ultimately put their country ahead of their ideology and political party. 

Doing so means supporting the government, the electoral system and the safeguards built into it, as well as the judicial system, even when their actions don't exactly jibe with what one would like. At times it may take quite a leap of faith to do so, but that trust is essential in keeping any democracy alive.

Which brings to mind the 2000 presidential election, the closest in American history. Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes but where it really counts, the Electoral College came down to one state, Florida and its 25 electoral votes. That year the winner of Florida would become the next president. But that state was painfully close as well, separated by only hundreds of votes, and battles over technical errors at the polls, (anyone out there remember the hanging chads?) had to be resolved in the courts. In a controversial 5-4 decision reflecting party lines, the Supreme Court overruled a Florida State Supreme Court mandated recount which turned out to the deciding factor in the election. Gore technically had other opportunities to challenge the result but for the sake of the country, elected not to. As Vice President he even had to face the unenviable task, as Mike Pence did in 2021, of certifying the Electoral College Vote in favor of his opponent. Gore even had to declare his Democratic allies out of order when they refused to accept the slate of Florida electors for George W. Bush.

If any presidential candidate in history had a reason to gripe about the electoral system, it was Al Gore in 2000. For the record, in that election I voted for Ralph Nader teaching me a lifelong lesson on the futility of voting for third-party candidates. 

As I said above, shit happens. True, Al Gore was screwed that year, but managed to move on in a respectful and honorable way which went a long way to help preserve our democracy.

But when members of government fail to live up to their part of the bargain, that is to say governing with ulterior motives such as abusing their position in the quest of disproportionate power or financial gain, or the failure to accept the result of elections just to name three examples, all bets are off.  

Which brings us to you-know-who.

The 2020 election was nowhere near as close as 2000, in fact it wasn't close at all. Yet the loser of that election, the incumbent president at the time, insisted without evidence, "just lots of theories" in the words of his lawyer Rudy Giuliani before a judge, that the election was "stolen" from him. Today nearly four years after the event, that exPOTUS has yet to concede the election to President Biden.

The election denial came as no surprise to anyone paying attention as the same candidate claimed before his successful 2016 election that only two possible outcomes for that election would be possible: victory for him, or a rigged, stolen election. Sound familiar? Although he won the Electoral College and the presidency that year, he still griped about losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes to Hillary Clinton, claiming that was made possible only through fraud. 

His supporters however with a world class case of selective memory, ignored that obvious pattern and chose to believe his lie about a rigged election, casting grave doubts about our election system.

Well he's at it again, this time whining about a "weaponized Biden Justice Department" doing everything in their power to persecute him. 

Once again, he and his sycophants have a boatload of theories but zero evidence to back up that very serious charge.  

It's been a little over a week at this writing since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up another crime, election interference. Granted, it's not the most glamorous or egregious crime imaginable, remember the Feds got Al Capone, (whom the likely Republican nominee for president this year likes to compare himself to), for tax evasion. 

The crimes for which he was convicted in New York for example, were not as bad as say, absconding with hundreds of boxes of highly sensitive and top-secret government documents from the White House, showing them off to patrons of his country club, then refusing to return them when the government asked for them back. They're not nearly as bad as trying to blackmail the Georgia Secretary of State into "finding" just the right number of votes to put him over the top in that state in 2020, or extorting the president of Ukraine by demanding he dig up dirt on his political opponent, the current POTUS, an act which resulted in his first impeachment. And they're practically nothing compared to his actions surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, in the effort to illegally overturn an election which he lost, an act for which he was impeached a second time.

But a crime is a crime, and one of the most essential parts of democracy is that no one is above the law, not even the president. 

One can only imagine the outrage and moral indignation among Republicans (which would have been justified), had those crimes been committed by a Democrat. Remember the kerfuffle over Hillary's emails?  Remember the constant chant of "lock her up"?

As their dear orange leader rightfully claimed during the 2016 election, he could murder someone in cold blood and not lose any supporters. 

I like to think that by any definition of the term, it is inconceivable that any reasonable person would make a claim like that, especially at an official event during a presidential campaign, even in jest.  

As I don't consider the exPOTUS to be either a reasonable or a rational person, I can't really blame him for every moronic thing he says and does, and there are a lot of them. 

Quite honestly, I don't blame his base either. After all, his life and his countless indiscretions are an open book. If his base wants as their president a whiney, adjudicated rapist baby man narcissist who compares himself and his problems to those of Jesus, talks about retribution incessantly and little else, has a man crush on criminals and brutal dictators, denigrates current American service members and veterans, and led a failed insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States, they found their man in Trump. That's their opinion and while this is still a free country, they're entitled to it.

But I DO blame the people who know better, first of all, Republican politicians and members of the right wing, Trump enabling media who have made it abundantly clear countless times in the past that they would gleefully dance on the exPOTUS's political grave were it not for their mortal fear of the folks mentioned in the last paragraph. 

Because of that, knowing full well that a good number of Americans haven't a clue what the difference is between a fact and an opinion, or between evidence and theories, they continue to perpetuate the old lie of a stolen 2020 election and the new lie about a weaponized Justice System, casting doubt on two of the most important safeguards of our democratic republic. 

And if the exPOTUS should win the 2024 presidential election, a distinct possibility, I WILL blame the voters who do know better, but plan to either sit this one out or vote for a third candidate because Joe Biden isn't a worthy enough candidate to earn their vote. Maybe they feel he's too old, they don't like his policy on the war in Gaza, or or that their lives haven't improved sufficiently because he hasn't done enough to curtail inflation.

What these folks fail to take into account is that yes Biden is old and has lost a step or two over the years, as have I. But his opponent is also old and appears to have taken way too many direct shots to the head. Check out this speech from this past Sunday.

If they don't approve of Biden's support of Israel in the war in the Middle East, imagine what a reboot of Trump would bring, the man who instituted a Muslim ban and controversially moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? 

And they don't understand economic realities enough to realize that a president has little direct control over inflation. The truth is that Biden inherited a precarious economy, a result of the pandemic. I distinctly remember many economists predicting a very high likelihood of a recession or worse in the coming months after the 2020 election. Yet where are the voices singing the praises of the Biden administration for averting a real economic disaster?

My biggest fear is that the true culprits of a possible second term for the exPOTUS will be those voters who know what a disaster he is, yet who in failing to vote for Biden, will be effectively casting a vote for Trump. Yes, the Democrats are going to have to work hard for their votes, which is a good thing, but the voters themselves have some serious soul searching to do.

Bringing this post full circle, in his pre-political career, the exPOTUS was very much involved in two sports industries. His foray into the legitimate sport of American football didn't work out so well as he single-handedly destroyed a professional football league. You can read about that here.

He was much more successful in the world of professional wrestling where he in fact is a member of World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Fame. 

He must be very proud of that honor.

Now I'm not quite sure what political system professional wrestling is a metaphor for.

But it sure ain't democracy.

Even if a Trump reboot could possibly flatten out the rising cost of living, (which it can't), for my money, preserving our democracy is sure worth the extra buck for a gallon of gas.

And Then She Raised Her Hand

A couple weeks ago I said to a co-worker that the night before I had done the geekiest of things, I watched the Republican Presidential Debate in its entirety. "Why would you do that?" she asked.  Siting a bit of ancient wisdom filtered through Michael Corleone I responded: "because it's good to keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

But in all seriousness, while I may never vote for any of these candidates for anything, ever, I always find it a good idea to keep an open mind because as I've pointed out in this space time and again, I might actually learn something.

There were a few surprises for me this go around. Perhaps the biggest was the number of times the word "woke" was mentioned by Ron DeSantis in the debate, zero. It seemed clear in this reboot of his campaign, the third or fourth (I've lost count), his handlers must have advised him that his incessant use of the term had become tiresome. That bit of advice was sound. 

I do question his general approach to the debate however. He seemed like a carnival automaton, whenever called upon by the moderators, it was as if they were putting coins into the slot, and out would come a diatribe on one the of talking points near and dear to the hearts of the limited scope of Americans he hopes to attract. 

You could tell he was playing to the crowd with lines such as leaving drug cartel members "stone cold dead."

Unfortunately, for the Americans whom he is not trying to attract, stone cold dead best describes the feelings they have for him. To them, me included, Ron DeSantis is Donald Trump without the charm. 

Vivek Ramaswamy's star both rose and fell, depending upon which side you're on. He was certainly the most visible and audible of all the folks on the stage in Milwaukee that night, in both the number of words coming out of his mouth, and those coming out of his opponents attacking him. As his hero the exPOTUS, Ramaswamy understands that any attention, good or bad, works in his favor. 

He spent an endless amount of time talking in circles uttering nonsense, proving himself to be the true heir apparent to the former president. I must say though, he was slick, he handled the barbs coming his way from Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and especially Chris Christie with aplomb with perfectly timed comebacks. But I suspect his comment that Climate Change is a hoax didn't win him any support outside of the MAGA base, or even inside it with younger voters. It was certainly a deal breaker for a large segment of Americans. 

I thought Mike Pence gave a solid performance, perhaps because I didn't have particularly high expectations for him. He had the best one-liner of the evening when asked if presidents over a certain age should be required to take a mental competency test. Pence dispensed with that thought by saying perhaps everyone in Washington should be asked to take one. He made a good case convincing at least some of the MAGA faithful that he did the right thing on January 6th. When confronted by the question of Pence's actions on that fateful day, most of the candidates on the stage talked around the issue but at least grudgingly paid lip service to the former vice president. The exception was Chris Christie who said unequivocally that Americans owe Pence a great deal of gratitude. He's right.

Speaking of Christie, his role along with Asa Hutchinson (interestingly positioned together on the far left of the dais) as flies-in-the-ointment, attacking the former president, made them persona-non-grata among the highly partisan MAGA audience, drawing jeers and boos every time they opened their mouths. Christie was a little disappointing, probably because the opportunities to address the issue were few and far between. He had to interject his Mike Pence comment because the moderators were ready to move on to another topic before he got a chance to respond. In what seemed to be an obvious attempt by the FOX News moderators to limit Christie's time slamming the exPOTUS, late in the debate, Christie was asked about UFOs. The most memorable Christie moments were his jabs at Vivek Ramaswamy, at one point saying the 38 year old entrepreneur and presidential wannabie sounded like "ChatGPT". That made me feel really old and out of touch because I had to look up a contemporary cultural reference made by a Republican presidential candidate. 

The real disappointment of the night was Tim Scott who didn't manage to set himself apart from the pack in any way, shape or form. The biggest response to one of his remarks came when he stridently proclaimed that his first act as president would be to fire Attorney General Merrick Garland. Of course, being a Cabinet position, every new president appoints a new AG, so saying that is like saying the first thing he would do after being sworn in is give a speech. Duh.

North Dakota Governor Doug Bergum seemed like a nice and reasonable guy. His biggest moment came when it was revealed that he had suffered a torn Achilles tendon while (at 67), playing in a pickup basketball game in Milwaukee earlier that day. He made it through the debate, standing the whole time and turning in a respectable if not particularly memorable performance. He may not exactly be the Willis Reed of politics, but his calm demeanor was a welcome relief from all the noise and the fact that he made it through the two-hour ordeal enduring what must have been incredible pain was impressive by itself. The dark horse candidate made himself known to everyone who watched the debate. Unfortunately, most of them have forgotten him by now. 

I've given up trying to predict the future, especially the outcomes of elections. There's plenty of evidence in this space that practically right up to the 2016 election, I didn't think Donald Trump had a snowball's chance in hell of ever becoming president.

Recalling that, I'm not going to bother to predict what will happen in November, 2024.

Instead, I will offer an opinion that you can easily discount but can't possibly prove wrong which is this:  if a general election for president were to be held in the coming few weeks between Joe Biden and any of the men standing on the stage in Milwaukee (and the one who didn't show up), Joe Biden would probably win.

The woman is another story.

In my book, the hands down winner of the first Republican presidential debate was Nikki Haley. I'll add this: if a general election were held today between her and the president, she could beat Joe Biden, perhaps handily. 

Obviously, that's a moot point because she would have to win her party's nomination before she could run in a general election. And at least judging by the way things look now, that ain't gonna happen because A) Donald Trump is leading the polls by a whopping margin and B) Haley said little in the debate that would sway anyone in the Trump base away from him and towards her.

So how could Nikki Haley have possibly won the debate? 

It's simple, because she and the dudes who participated in the debate, with the possible exception of DeSantis, are running for the 2028 nomination, not the current one. 

There's the answer to the question many of us have which is why so many Republican candidates are running in an election they know they have no chance of winning.

It's the future stupid (I'm talking to myself here), and the road to the White House is a long haul that typically spans several election cycles. I can't count the number of times Joe Biden ran for president before he won in 2020*. Donald Trump was publicly talking about running for president (albeit as a pro-choice Democrat) all the way back in the eighties. His predecessor Barack Obama, while a relative newbie in the public eye, gained national attention four years before his election as a newly elected senator from Illinois in 2004 when he introduced himself to the nation by giving this inspirational keynote address to the DNC in Boston.

The cold reality is that it takes more than public support to become president, it takes money, gobs of it. The candidates we saw on that stage in Milwaukee beyond trying to get the public's attention, are all vying for funds to build up their campaign treasury. The folks with gobs of money on hand willing to contribute to a political candidate, do so because they expect some kind of payback in the end. That payback only comes if the candidate they support can actually win the general election, not just the party nomination.

Naturally the big contributors not only look for candidates who might give them something they want, but they also hedge their bets on the candidates they feel have the best chance of winning.

It was clear from her performance during the debate that Nikki Haley was looking beyond the Republican primary to the general election.

For example, Haley understands that the draconian anti-abortion stance Republicans have taken is not a winning strategy, not at the state level, even as we recently discovered in red-trending states like Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio and others, and certainly not at the national level. 

Despite classifying herself as "pro-life", Haley advocated in the debate for consensus and above all compassion on the issue. I have not heard that kind of nuance advocated by any major candidate, Democrat or Republican. She focused on the issues all Americans "should agree upon" such as contraception being readily available, the promotion of adoption, not punishing women for having abortions, not forcing doctors with moral objections to perform abortions and banning late term abortions.** She dismissed the idea of a federal ban (even though she claims to support one), because the necessity of finding 60 votes in the Senate to make that happen is simply not attainable. In response, Mike Pence said that "consensus is the opposite of leadership" implying a more authoritarian approach he would take on that issue. That stance is music to the ears of the far right and may help him in the Republican primary but will prove fatal in the general election. 

Haley's personal highlight from the debate came during the topic of our Ukraine policy. Vivek Ramaswami advocated becoming closer to Vladimir Putin, suggesting we give up Eastern Ukraine to Russia, as if it were ours to give. Single-handedly taking a direct swipe at Ramaswami and an indirect swipe at her former boss the exPOTUS, his foreign policy and his love affair with the Soviet dictator, Haley said this:

You don't do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends. Ukraine, it's a front line of defense... Putin has said… once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. That's a world war. We're trying to prevent war. Look at what Putin did today. He killed Prigozhin. When I was at the U.N., the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. 

Haley's schooling of Ramaswami and her implicit dig at Trump were noteworthy indeed. 

It was in fact, she, not Hutchinson nor Christie who delivered the harshest blows against Trump. When the economy, especially the debt and the natural Republican impulse to blame Joe Biden and the Democrats came up, Haley said this:

Donald Trump added 8 trillion to our debt and our kids are never going to forgive us for this. And so at the end of the day, you look at the 2024 budget, Republicans asked for 7.4 billion in earmarks, Democrats asked for 2.8 billion. So you tell me who are the big spenders.

Later in the debate, she laid it all on the line for any Republican willing to listen:

We have to look at the fact that three-quarters of Americans don't want a rematch between Trump and Biden. And we have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can't win a general election that way.

So consensus building was her debate performance that the conservative Haley garnered the notice and even the tepid praise of many liberal commentators. That is, until she raised her hand in the affirmative when the question was posed of the candidates if they would support Donald Trump were he the 2024 Republican nominee AND was convicted in one or more of the 92 felony counts he's facing. That was too much to handle for most of the left of MAGA tribe where the general consensus in the end was that Nikki Haley is a hypocrite. 

Is she? 

Cynical as it may sound, Nikki Haley is a traditional politician, and a damned good one. Show me a politician who could never be charged with hypocrisy, and I'll show you a losing politician.

Later, when Haley was questioned about that response, she retorted it was irrelevant because she would be the Republican nominee in 2024, not Trump. 

She has chutzpah too. 

Here's my take on Haley's M.O. 

She knows well that Donald Trump is more than likely to be the Republican Party's nominee for president in the 2024 election, regardless of the outcome of his plethora of legal issues.

She also figures that Trump is likely to lose the 2024 general election to Biden, just as he did in 2020. Haley and her team are banking on that and the logic that except for the most steadfast of Trump supporters, most Republicans will have to come to the conclusion that supporting the two-time loser and very likely jailbird Trump is not a good recipe for winning elections or the future of the Republican Party. 

If that comes to pass, Nikki Haley may be very well situated to be the Republican standard-bearer in four years, at least compared to the folks who shared the stage with her in Milwaukee two weeks ago. If the results of the last debate are any indication, Haley proved she is capable of standing up to her opponents, often leaving them in the dust. She may not have said a lot to sway the MAGA tribe to her side, but by not discounting Trump entirely, she's shown that while she may not be MAGA, she's also not a RINO. She's also one of the very few Republican candidates who have not been on the receiving end of the wrath of the exPOTUS, thereby maintaining her street cred among the faithful. That may not be enough to help make her the Republican nominee in this cycle, but it may in the next one where the party will be theoretically focusing on someone who can actually win the general election. 

History almost guarantees that 40 percent of the voters are assured to vote for the Republican candidate in a presidential election and 40 percent are assured to vote for the Democrat.

That means the election comes down to convincing the remaining 20 percent of the voters who could vote either way.

Nikki Haley showed the nation and potential donors that she is willing to look at the big picture beyond the ultra-right wing talking points that might be helpful to win the Republican nomination but won't work in the general election.

Issues like banning books, endless culture wars, climate change denial, embracing Vladimir Putin, punishing women for having abortions, teaching kids that black people benefited from being slaves, and a whole slew of other extreme positions, just won't cut it with the 20 percent.

But won't her gesture showing tacit support for Donald Trump hurt her? 

No, I don't think so. To the 40 percent Republican-or-bust voters, that gesture showed her loyalty to the Party. The twenty percent in the middle, many of whom would vote for a Republican were he or she not so extreme, will have long forgotten it. The only folks who will remember the gesture like me, are in the other forty percent and wouldn't vote for her anyway.

What I just described is only one of many possible scenarios that might take place over the next four years. For one reason or other, I won't speculate which, Trump could drop out of the election and leave the Republican nomination up for grabs. I'm not convinced Haley could pull off a nomination in this cycle, with or without Trump in the race. Or Trump could win the election in November and we may not have any more presidential elections. I say that only partly tongue-in-check. Or Trump could lose and the lunatic fringe could take complete control over the Republican Party. If that happens, all logic gets thrown out the window. 

We'll just have to see.

I strongly believe that our democracy thrives with a strong two-party system. For that to work, both parties have to respect one another, to some degree at least, and agree to play by the same set of rules. Right now, one of those parties has gone off the rails and as a result, we are as divided as a nation as we have ever been. 

I have lots of issues with Nikki Haley. Beyond ideology is her tendency to speak out of both sides of her mouth whenever it's convenient. Sometimes it's difficult to determine where she truly stands.

Given that, I can't see ever voting for her. 

But I could live with a President Haley as someone with whom I could agree to disagree, as I have with all the presidents in my lifetime before the 45th one. The bottom line is I believe she is the best person the Republicans have at the moment to get their party back on track to a semblance of respectability, and perhaps the best person in either party to help bring us back together (as much as that is humanly possible) as a nation. 

And boy would that be a good thing.

CODA

*OK I looked it up, Joe Biden ran unsuccessfully for president twice, in 1988 and in 2008. It just seems like more.

**The idea that there are several issues regarding abortion that all of us can agree upon is a little naive as all Americans do not agree that contraception should be readily available, that women should not be punished for having abortions, or that late term abortions should be banned. But I agree with her that we need to reach some kind of consensus on the issue. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/opinion/nikki-haley-trump-2024.html