STILL TOO CLOSE TO CALL

 It has only been a little more than two months since President Joe Biden decided not to run for reelection and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in as the Democratic candidate for the presidency, but the whirlwind of activity that has occurred since then has come fast and furious.  The Democratic convention was a joyful affair, with Barack and Michelle Obama delivering great speeches and Harris herself emerging energized.  The Presidential debate with Donald Trump was even better for her, with most viewers overwhelmingly thinking that she clearly bested him.  Really, it seems that the Harris campaign has been perfect so far, with no major gaffes or missteps.  Sure, she has some residual baggage from the Biden administration, but her handling of it has been effective as she's laid out her new economic plans while trying to counter Trump on immigration  and hammering him on her strongest issue, abortion.  Along the way she's picked up endorsements from Republicans like Dick and Lynn Cheney, and over 700 former secretaries of state and defense who all signed a letter stating that Trump posed both a threat to democracy and our nation's defense.

You would think that a campaign with all that going for it would be riding high, but while she did get a slight bounce from both the campaign and the debate, current polls show her only slightly ahead nationally and essentially tied in many battleground states.  The poll analysis website 538.com has them running even.  And with Trump refusing to debate Harris again, there's probably no breaking story or "October surprise" awaiting that could radically change things.  It really looks like the vote on November 5th may be one of the closest ever.  What really scares me is that Trump's polls numbers were lower than his actual percentage of the vote  in 2016 and 2020, so he could have the advantage here. 

Why is this happening?  Is America really about to elect a twice impeached convicted felon?  Sadly, the answer could be yes.  And really, a lot of this comes down to American men. One thing the polling clearly shows is that this will be the most gender divided election ever, with some polls showing Harris leading Trump among female voters by a whopping 20 points.  That's no surprise, given that this is the first presidential election since Roe Vs Wade was overturned.  But this goes beyond the issue of abortion, with Trump's swaggering, absurdly boastful nature appealing to men who somehow see his string of marriages to younger and younger women as something to aspire to, and who cheer when he goes to Ultimate Fighting matches.  And who shrug off his infamous Access Hollywood tape comments as "locker room talk" and buy into his argument that the criminal charges against him are just being political witch hunts.

As an American male myself, I find it soul crushing that such a despicable man could be a role model to anybody, and I know I'm not alone in this.   But most male are going for Trump, raising the depressing possibility that a misogynistic man who's been accused of sexual assault or rape by 26 different women could defeat not one, but two different female candidates.  Again I have to ask, why is this happening?

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

 

Another assassination attempt was made against presidential candidate Donald Trump last Sunday when an armed, mentally unstable person camped out at his golf resort, waiting for him.  Thankfully the man was stopped with him ever firing a shot.  This is, of course, the second such attempt made against Trump during this campaign, and an investigation into just how two such dangerous people could have gotten so close to him is understandably, underway.

Trump has, not surprisingly,  blamed what he called the "inflammatory rhetoric"  from Democrats, as has his running mate, JD Vance.  In a classic burst of Trump hypocrisy, Trump used the exact kind of language that he was condemning to describe his political opponents, calling them the “enemy from within” and “the real threat.”  But what do you expect from a man who says that if he loses we "won't have a country anymore", calls his opponents "vermin" and says that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of America." 

Sadly, I could go on much further when listing the violence tinged, hateful words that Trump and his supporters regularly use on the campaign trail or in social media.  But what I want to do instead is to compare and contrast the reaction to this attack, and another violent. politically based one.

In October of 2022, just before the midterm elections, a mentally disturbed man, armed with a hammer, broke into the home of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and brutally attacked her husband.  While he eventually recovered,  he had to spend days in the hospital with a cracked skull. The attacker was obsessed with online rightwing conspiracy theories.

And what was the response of Donald Trump to such a vicious attack?  He made jokes.  He repeatedly made sick jokes during speeches about the attack that had left an innocent man hospitalized.  And he didn't stop, he still joked about it this very month while giving a speech in front of fraternal police officers, saying, "Nancy Pelosi has a big wall wrapped around her house. Of course, it didn't help too much with the problems she had, did it?" (Thankfully, witnesses described the joke as only getting a few awkward laughs).  And it wasn't just Trump, ridicule of the attack and conspiracy theories about Pelosi and his attacker being lovers, spread throughout  right wing media.  While this attack was obviously different than an assassination attempt made against a presidential candidate, they are both politically based, potentially deadly attacks made by mentally unstable men.

Compare that cruel response by Trump to President Joe Biden's about the recent  attempt on Trump himself:  Neither he nor anyone connected to the Kamala Harris campaign have in any way downplayed the seriousness of what happened, and Biden strongly condemned political violence and called for more government aid for the Secret Service.  And while some radical people on the left have made sick jokes about the assassination attempt on social media, no mainstream political figure on the left has embraced any anti Trump conspiracies or said anything to condone what happened.  The notion that it is people on the left that are using violent language, or even that both sides do it, is just a false equivalency.  

I myself often use strong language when describing my deep loathing of Donald Trump and the political cult movement that he represents, but naturally I draw the line at condoning violence.  My hope is that Trump will lose the election in November and then go to jail for the multiple crimes I think he has committed.  In fact, I think Trump has been engaging in lawless behavior for years and should have gone to jail for it long before he got into politics.  (I especially believe those 26 women that have accused him of sexual assault or rape, and those accusations stretch back decades.)  I can think all of these things and still be repulsed by the assassination attempts made against him.

WILL THE DEBATE CHANGE THE RACE?

 

I tend to not be good at gauging who won a presidential debate after I've seen it.  Being an unswayable progressive, I allow my own bias to think that my side has always won.  I even thought that Barack Obama did alright in his first debate with Mitt Romney back in 2012, a debate that even Obama himself later admitted that he lost.

Given that, I watched the first (and probably only) presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris with anxiety.  I knew that the bump in the polls that Harris received after President Joe Biden agreed to step down and she took over as the nominee had seemed to fade, with the race now being a tossup.  

Even right after the debate, I wanted to say that Harris won, but I wasn't sure.  My biggest fear was that the lies that Trump spoke, most of which he had repeated many times at his rallies, just might work on the American public at large the same way that they do for his rally crowds.  (And, for the record, a CNN fact checker says that he lied 33 times, and Harris only did once, and some of his more absurd lies were corrected live by the moderators).

I was relieved to hear that nearly all of the pundits have said that Harris won; she looked calm, collected and often even amused while Trump got angrier and angrier.  Plus she introduced some economic ideas that could be popular and firmly stated her position on abortion well.

Plus she really did seem to get under Trump's skin better than Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden did in their debates with him.  Perhaps the most interesting exchange came when Harris said “I’m going to actually do something really unusual. I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies. Because it’s a really interesting thing to watch.” She then mentioned his usual rally speech subjects like windmills causing cancer and the fictional character Hannibal Lecter.  Then she concluded by saying, "And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”  

Not surprisingly, to a man obsessed with his rallies and their size, Trump looked flustered and threw out an absurd childish insult when it was his turn to speak, “People don’t go to her rallies, there’s no reason to go, and the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there.”  Hopefully, most of the American public will see just what happened there, a bitter old man lashed out over an insult to the thing that he was most obsessed with; his own popularity.  For the rest of the debate he seemed flustered, ranting laughably about immigrants eating people's dogs while Harris just rolled her eyes at his ridiculous claims.  

One clear indication that Trump lost is that shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, fell more than 12 percent the next day.  He also looked like a loser when he started bleating that the debate was "rigged" against him; as usual, he thinks that everything he ever does is perfect and the only way he can ever lose is if the other side cheats.

But even if Harris did as good as possibly could be expected last night, I still fear it may not be enough to get her over the finish line. Don't forget that Obama in 2012 and George W Bush in 2004 both lost their first debates and then won reelection.  Debates tend to only have a slight effect on the polls, and with two months to go, this is still a very close election.  Still, it was great to see that at least once, Trump was called on his terrible lies and humiliated in front of millions.

BIDEN MISPLAYED INFLATION

 

Recently Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamela Harris announced an economic plan to federally ban price gouging by "setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”  This is the right thing to do politically, because President  Joe Biden's administration, and by extension, the Vice President herself,  have had low approval ratings on the economy for quite some time now.  By coming out on this issue more strongly than Biden has, Harris can forge a more forceful image for herself on the economy and blame big corporations for price inflation, a popular idea with many voters.  

But while it may be the right thing politically, economically it doesn't seem necessary: the most recent reports on inflation show that it has sunk to under 3% for the first time since 2021.  Clearly, the Federal Reserve raising interest rates have cooled down the economy enough that inflation is under control again.  So her plan feels like a solution looking for a problem, and honestly I think that by the time she's in office if she wins, inflation and price gouging will have been reduced as an issue to a point where she probably won't actually do anything about it.  To me it's all political theater, but if it helps her win, I'm fine with it.  

This issue does reveal one of the weaknesses of the mostly good Biden presidency: he should have made inflation a bigger issue.  Overall, the economy has been strong under Biden, with excellent job growth and a skyrocketing stock market.  But the issue of inflation has been blamed on him even though it wasn't his fault, and, of course, inflation is something that all Americans see at the grocery store.   It reached a high of  9.1% in 2022, and recent polls say that many Americans think that  increased government spending is what caused it, and while that is perhaps part of it given how much pandemic financial relief was passed by both the Biden and the Trump administrations, other factors like the pandemic leading to  increased product demands and compromised supply lines are another part.

And then there's the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022.  Although Biden mentioned the invasion as it related to American inflation in some speeches, he failed to hammer the point home effectively, so few Americans know how that war has affected food prices not only in American but also all over the world.  Before the invasion, the Ukraine was the world's fifth biggest exporter of wheat and other grains, obviously the war has changed that.  The invasion also triggered a round of sanctions against Russian oil exports that inevitably lead to a rise in oil prices.

So, if one person is to be blamed for the increases in the price of gas and groceries, it should be Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but I doubt most Americans even are aware of this.  I wish that the Biden administration really had pushed harder on the fact that Putin's invasion was more than an attack on Ukraine, it was a blow against the economies of Western countries.  Oh sure, the right wing media would have scoffed at Biden blaming Putin for what they saw as his own failed economy, the message may still have gotten through to many swing voters.  Sadly, it didn't, and now Harris has to break with the soon to former president on the economy as a way to sell herself as a different kind of Democrat.  While I sure hope it works, I think she would have an easier job of it today if Biden had more effectively linked Putin to inflation.

WAS WALZ THE RIGHT CHOICE?

 

Ever since she announced her candidacy for president, there has been much speculation about just who Kamala Harris would pick for her running mate.  Although the effect of a vice president on an election is usually negligible, the race right now is extremely tight, and the right or wrong choice could make a difference in certain swing states.

Her choice, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, has both pluses and minuses: on the one hand, he seems like a genuinely nice guy.  He grew up in a small town, he's a former football coach, and he's progressive in a plain spoken way.  On the other hand, Minnesota is not a swing state, and while Walz's good nature may win a few votes from undecideds in middle America, whether he can help out with those prized swing voters in electoral rich states like Pennsylvania and Michigan remains to be seen.

Harris engaged in a lot of reviewing and considering before going with Walz, and while Democrats seem mostly happy with him, some have said that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro should have gotten the nod.  This is understandable in that Shapiro is a very popular governor in a state with 19 electoral votes.  Picking him might have helped push Harris over the top there.  On the other hand, Shapiro is Jewish, and running a ticket with a mixed race woman at the top with a Jewish VP might have been a tough sell in middle America.  (For the record, there's never been a Jewish VP;  Joe Lieberman ran with Al Gore and they lost a highly contested election back in 2000).  Walz, on the other hand, is a Christian, Lutheran, to be exact. Shapiro is also seen as being too pro Israel at a time when that country's war in the Gaza strip has become highly controversial.  Personally, I tend to think that she should have gone with Shapiro, given the importance of the state he governs.  Still Walz's basic decency is hard to resist.  And Shapiro will certainly get out and campaign for her in his state, which should help.

If Harris loses both the state of Pennsylvania and the election in November, the choice of Walz will be seen as a big  mistake, but there's also a chance that having a likable middle American dad will help out in a Harris victory.  Certainly, he seems excited to be on the ticket, as their first joint rally showed.  Perhaps he's just what Harris needed.

CAN HARRIS KEEP UP HER MOMENTUM?

 The speed with which the Democratic party has coalesced around Kamala Harris's presidential nomination  is astonishing: since President Joe Biden's terrible debate performance a month ago, there was much speculation among Democrat party members as to how to pick a candidate if and when Biden stepped down, with the possibility of the party going into an open convention in August with no clear front runner being raised.  But then Biden almost immediately endorsed Harris after and she quickly moved to take over his campaign, including the money he had raised.

More importantly, Democrats who had been floated as possible presidential candidates themselves fell in line behind her.  Not only that, the party suddenly seemed thrilled to have Biden step down, with Harris raising record amounts of campaign donations and giving well received speeches that spread throughout social media.  And polls show her pulling even with Trump both nationally and in swing states, turning around the deep hole that Biden was falling into. 

The reason I'm so surprised by this is that the past four years have not been great for her; in 2020 her campaign for the Democratic presidential candidacy failed quickly.  Then when she became vice president, her term got off to a rocky start: there were stories about staff turnover and disorganization, and her trip to Guatemala in 2021 to try and stem the flow of refugees seemed weak ("Don't come." She lectured).  She later found her voice after Roe Vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, and her full throated defense of a woman's right to choose made her a stronger advocate on that issue than Biden ever was.   Still, the party's shift to her in such a short time may qualify as one of the biggest political turn arounds ever; seemingly overnight she went from a VP with a poor approval rating to a strong presidential candidate.  In a way, the viral video clip of her giggling  about "falling off a coconut tree" is the perfect encapsulation of what's happened with her: at first, that video was sent around by Republicans trying to ridicule her and her boisterous laugh.  But now that laugh is seen as good natured and endearing by her supporters.  (I always found it likable myself).

 Is it possible that her surge has more to do with Biden stepping down than Harris herself?  While she is rising in the polls, trouble still lies ahead: she will be attacked as a San Francisco liberal (which is why I like her!) with radical views while Trump will eventually settle on some childish nickname for her that will be echoed ad nauseam in  the right wing media.

And then there is the thorny issue of race and gender; is the country ready to elect not only its first female president, but also its first woman of color?  While polls show that Harris is capturing the youth vote, she's apparently losing the older white voters who's turn to Biden in 2020 were important to his victory.  To his credit, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has told members of his party to lay off any race or gender based attacks on her: “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he said recently in a closed door meeting with party members, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”  But this is is the Republican party; race based attacks are their bread and butter.  Sure enough, several Republicans have tried to brand Harris as a "DEI hire", implying that she was only chosen as VP because of who she was and not her qualifications (even though those qualifications for office included more political experience than Trump had before he became president!).  Will these racist statements backfire against the Trump campaign as Johnson thinks they will?  Hopefully.

Am I afraid that  that the country will soon  see another version of the unsuccessful Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016? It's possible, but remember that  Harris is no Clinton, who was always, rightly or wrongly, a controversial figure.  Harris, on the other hand,  has been throughly vetted and has no apparent skeletons in her closet.  (There will be no FBI investigations into her email!)  I also like to think that the idea of a female president is less shocking in 2024 than it was in 2016, and the energy behind her candidacy now is giving me happy memories of Barack Obama's historic 2008 campaign.

The question is, can she keep the tide turning against Trump, who seemed unstoppable just a few weeks ago after the Republican National Convention?   While the prospect of a second female candidate losing to a famously misogynistic man, especially one with plans to dismantle American democracy, is terrifying, right now I'm cautiously optimistic about Harris's chances.

THANKS SO MUCH JOE!!

 In the past two weeks we've seen a failed assassination attempt made against Donald Trump and a Republican convention that degenerated into a cult fest around him.  In a truly surreal convention moment, former wrestler Hulk Hogan gave a speech that saw him ripping his shirt, and Trump, a convicted felon, fraud and adjudicated rapist, was introduced by Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting who was once caught slapping his wife on video.  So much for unity...

And now, our insane political environment just got a new wrinkle:  President Joe Biden has officially dropped out of the race.  In a way, this isn't a  big surprise: Biden's performance at the presidential debate on June 27th was painful to watch.  Although he and his staff have tried to salvage his campaign ever since, he just wasn't able to turn around that debate.  Going into it most Americans already thought that he was too old to run, and, sadly, that was just how he looked.

Along with dropping out, he has also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party's nominee, which goes a long way towards locking it up for her.  Any other candidate would not be able to access the money that Biden has raised, and as VP Harris is the logical choice.  Plus, passing up the first Black female VP for someone else would be a bad look for the party, especially given that Black women have long been some of the most faithful Democratic voters.

Is Harris a perfect candidate?  No, she had some staffing issues early in her tenure, and has given some weak interviews.  She also may inherit the bad feelings that many voters have (rightly or wrongly) about the Biden years.  But on the plus side, she's been giving very strong speeches about abortion after the overturning of Roe Vs Wade, she's a former prosecutor, which makes her taking on a convicted felon like Trump logical, and she's grown into the office of Vice Presidency well after a rocky start.

Now that Biden's tenure will soon be in the rearview window, let's take a look at how he did: personally, I think he was a great president, perhaps better than Barack Obama because his lengthy time in congress made him better at getting his priorities passed.  And pass them he did: first there was a stimulus bill, then  the infrastructure bill, the microchips bill and perhaps best of all, the Inflation Reduction act, which went further in fighting against climate change than any action taken by any past president (which in some ways says more about our broken political system than it does Biden!).  Biden will also be remembered as  first president to put a Black woman (Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) on the supreme court.  

One of the most frustrating aspects of his presidency has been that the public has given him low ratings on the economy and violent crime.  The reality is, unemployment is the lowest its been since the 60's, we managed to get through a pandemic recovery without lapsing into a recession, and violent crime has plummeted in the past few years.  Inflation, brought on by a number of factors (the pandemic, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine) has been his Achilles' heel, with prices in 2022 spiking more than they had in 40 years, but raised interest rates have brought inflation down (although raised rates bring their own set of problems!).  Still, on the economy I would give him good marks in dealing with the tough hand that Trump (and the pandemic) dealt him.

Really, my biggest problem with Biden's presidency is that it has taken him so long to finally step down.  In a perfect world, he would have pledged to be a one term president four years ago instead of finally stepping down after much pressure a mere four months before the election.  And it appears that the people around Biden were hiding his age issues, possibly for years, before he finally crumpled during the debate.

Still, overall Biden's been an effective president who can now bow out gracefully.  Whoever the Democrats nominate, be it Harris or someone else, I will vote for enthusiastically.  Anyone but Trump!