UTTERLY DEVASTATING

In 2016 after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency, I was shocked.  I cried, I had trouble sleeping, and I suffered from what was basically panic attacks for days afterwards.  This time, I was more prepared for the possibility of a Trump victory, so right now I'm not as shocked.  But I'm actually more worried about the future of this country than I was then.

I still can't believe it.  A twice impeached president who sent a mob to the nation's capitol after he refused to accept his loss has now won a second term.  Part of the reason he won is that the numbers already show that the female voters who appeared ready to vote for Kamella Harris failed to do so.  You would think a man who once bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault or rape by 28 women, and who put the judges on the supreme court that overturned Roe Vs Wade, wouldn't appeal to female voters, but here we are.  A majority of white women have voted for him every time he has run, proving, I suppose, that race matters more than gender.

If Trump does the things that he has promised to on the campaign trail, the next four years are going to the some of the ugliest in American history.  Here's just the worst parts of his coming agenda:

A mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants unlike any seen before.  Demonizing undocumented immigrants, whom Trump has referred to as "vermin" has been Trump's big issue since the beginning.  His plan to use state, local and federal law enforcement officials to hunt down the undocumented, house them in camps, and then deport them, will cost billions of dollars to implement, rip families apart, and seriously damage the economy.  (A recent story in the New York Times said that the dairy industry is so dependent on undocumented labor the dairy industry in the country might not survive without it).

He wants to put a tariff on all imported goods of 20% and on ones from China at 60%.  Nearly every economic expert says that Trump's tariff plan would cause prices on goods to skyrocket, hurting the poor and the middle class more than the rich.  And, of course, many of those countries will start putting their own tariffs on our exports, hurting our industries.  He would also make his massive tax cuts for the rich that he passed in his first term as president permanent, blowing a hole in our deficit. 

He wants to turn the Justice Department into his own personal vendetta outlet.  In recent weeks Trump has discussed turning our military against "the enemy within", specifically meaning his political opponents.  Now just how far he'll be able to go with what is essentially a fascist attempt to jail political party  members for no reason other than running against him before the courts stop him is debatable.  But the fact that the question is even raised is terrifying.

He has talked about turning massive parts of our nation's health regulation over to anti Vaccine extremist Robert Kennedy, who's desire to ban all vaccine mandates for children could bring diseases like polio back.  He wants Elon Musk to run an efficiency task force to cut federal waste.  It should be pointed out that Twitter had a value of over 40 billion when Musk bought it a  few years ago, and its current value is under 10 billion.  Oddly, Musk himself has admitted that his attempt to cut waste might cause some "hardships" in the short term.  How heartening!

He would undo all the good work the Joe Biden administration has done to encourage a green economy and proudly boasted that he would open up vasts areas of the country for more oil drilling.  He would do this in the face of more and more obvious effects of climate change happening all over the world.  It would also allow China to take the lead in developing green energy, which will be a huge growth industry in the future.

He has also said that he would end the war in the Ukraine in one day.  While that's impossible, what he clearly will do is cut all aid to the Ukraine and try to give Vladimir Putin whatever he wants.  Which would basically open the door to Putin invading other countries.  But what does Trump care about that?  He's threatened to withdraw from NATO too. And he has encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do whatever he wants concerning the horrific bombing in Gaza.

These are just a few of the awful things that Trump will try to do in his next term: it's an agenda of corruption, cruelty, unhealthiness and economic disaster.  The fact that tens of millions of Americans have voted for this is appalling to me.  I am so deeply disappointed with this country right now.

PESSIMISTIC/OPTIMISTIC

 

With  the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris a mere two days and the race seemingly deadlocked, I have reasons to be both pessimistic and optimistic.  Here the reasons I'm pessimistic:

1.  Trump outperformed the polls in the last two elections.  When trump won in 2016, it hit many Americans (myself included!) like a thunderbolt, because every poll had Clinton ahead.  And then the polls were off again in 2020, with Biden winning by a smaller margin than predicted.  It appeared that either pollsters weren't reaching Trump supporters, or that many people weren't willing to admit to those pollsters that they were going to vote for him, or a combination of both.  Either way, if Trump beats the razor thin polls again, he will almost certainly win.

2.  Trump is winning on the economy.  The number one issue with Americans in presidential elections is almost always the economy, and voters have been looking back fondly on the days of the pre pandemic Trump years and giving him higher marks on the issue than Harris.  This is frustrating, because the economy has been good overall for the past four years, with solid job growth and a soaring stock market.  But people really notice and hate inflation, which exploded in 2021-2022 for a number of reasons.   While inflation has come down significantly in the past few months, residual anger over it may give Trump the win.

3.  Trump is also seen as strong on the border.  Trump's signature issue has been ending undocumented immigration and building a wall on the Mexican border.  During the pandemic, then president Trump sealed the border with Mexico for heath reasons.  Shortly after Biden returned to office, as the pandemic receded, the border was reopened and there was a flood of border crossings, from both undocumented immigrants and refugees, which caused many Americans to want to return to Trump's hard line policies.  As with inflation, recent numbers have actually decreased, but many voters are still angry about it.

4.  Trump is polling surprisingly well with African American and Latino men.  It's a bit hard to believe that a man who once characterized a white supremacist rally as having "wonderful people on both sides" could get more support from minority men than  any Republican Presidential candidate in modern history, but here we are.  Along with the above issues regarding the economy and immigration, Trump has really tapped into the anger and frustrations of working class men of all races in the country, which could obviously help him.

5.  Post pandemic anger at incumbents is real.  Even though the pandemic is well behind us, the residual effects of it, from inflation to a brief spike in violent crime, have soured voters towards incumbents not just in America, but globally.  While Harris has tried to break from Biden in her campaign, she has been Vice President for the past four years, and that anti incumbent feeling may be enough to push Trump over the top. 

Here's why I'm optimistic:

1. The polls could be right.  Most of the polls have shown Harris with a tiny lead (sometimes less than a percentage point) in many swing states.  While those polls are all within the margin of error, its better to have a very small lead in an election than none at all.  And because Trump's views have become more mainstream Republicans ones, people answering polls might not be ashamed about admitting that they're voting for him, which means the polls will hold and Harris will win enough swing states to take the White House.

2.  Abortion is a big issue,  One thing that the polls have shown definitively is that this will be the most gendered split election ever, with many female voters anger over the recent overturning of Roe Vs Wade pushing them towards the Democrats.  The issue is galvanizing enough that, for the first time in this century, a majority of  white women may vote for  a Democrat instead of a Republican for president.  And there are more female voters than male ones in the country.

3.  Harris is gaining on the economy.  When Joe Biden was still in the race, Trump was trouncing him on the issue of the economy.  While Trump is still being given higher marks on this issue than Harris, she has definitely closed the gap.  It helps that inflation has recently gotten under control and Americans, despite some economic pessimism, are still out there spending.

4.  Trump has had a terrible closing.  Trump's 2016 campaign was an absolute garbage fire, but somehow he still won, so we can't count him out just because he's surrounded by chaos; that's always been his thing.  But his Madison Square Garden rally, which featured a comedian making racist jokes about Puerto Ricans, a crucial voting bloc,  has been regarded as a mess that could cost him.  And his age is clearly starting to show, with his speeches veering into more and more incoherent rambling.  Hopefully, Americans have gotten fed up with Trump's non stop lies, boasts, and childish insults and realize that it's time to move on.

So there you have, my mixed feelings about this election in a nutshell.  Of course, there's also the issue of Trump refusing to concede if Harris does win, but that worry is for another day.

THE DUMB JOKE THAT COULD COST TRUMP THE WHITE HOUSE

 Yesterday, the Donald Trump presidential campaign did something it almost never does: it distanced itself from one of Trump's rally speakers.  The rally in question was in Madison Square Garden, an odd choice given that Trump has no chance of winning New York State, but it played to his desire to be fill the most famous stadium in America with cheering supporters.

The rally's opening speakers proudly said things that would have once been as being too offensive to say in a political speech  (Stephen Miller yelled that "America is for Americans and Americans only!”) that now seem to have just been accepted as part of his campaign.

But then comedian Tony Hinchliffe may have crossed a line:"There’s a lot going on." He began,  "I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico."  After the rally, Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokesperson,  said in a statement that “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.  It should be pointed out that everything Hinchliffe said was vetted before the rally, although the Trump campaign is saying that he improvised the joke (sure he did).

In Hinchliffe's defense, this joke was standard issue for him: he's an insult comedian who grew up loving the late Don Rickles, the king of cruel put downs.  Hinchliffe's usual performance space is at celebrity roasts, where his offensive jokes play better than when he's endorsing a political candidate.  

It should also be pointed out that the Trump campaign is only condemning that one joke and not many of the other offensive comments  that Hinchliffe and others said.  (Another Hinchliffe joke: “These Latinos, they love making babies too.  There’s no pulling out, they don’t do that, they come inside, just like they did to our country.”) 

The reason for the Trump campaign to distance themselves from that joke is obvious: Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state, has over four hundred thousand Puerto Ricans living in it, and Biden won that state in 2020 by only around twenty thousand votes.  Offending Puerto Rican voters a week before the election is the dumbest move Trump's campaign could make.  Will it cost him the state and the White House?  We'll know in about a week or so.

Trump has spent the last nine years always saying things that went right to the edge of outright bigotry without going too far: remember in his first official campaign speech in 2016 he said that Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, bringing crime, they're rapists" before slightly backtracking by adding "and some I assume are fine people".  Somehow, he has mostly gotten away with saying these offensive things without paying a political price.  And he has also associated with people who have a record of bigotry, from  having   Pastor John Hagee give a benediction at  dedication ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem  in 2018 even after Hagee had said that Adolf Hitler had carried out "biblical prophecy",  to having dinner with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes just a few months ago.   None of this seems to have hurt him, especially with his base. But this one joke seems to have gotten enough media attention so close to the election that it might break through.  Personally, I would love it if this one insult  comic at a rally is finally the thing that sticks to Trump and brings him down.

AN IRONIC TWIST THAT MAY PUT TRUMP BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE

 

Back in July I did a blogpost with the title "Can Harris Keep Up Her Momentum?", and now, with just a few days before the election, it appears that the answer might be no.  That doesn't mean that Kamala Harris will definitely  lose, the race now is essentially tied,.  But it does appear that some of energy and excitement that came when Harris first announced her candidacy and the Democrats ran a joyful convention, has dissipated.

This is enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall. Especially because, since the convention, Harris has run a near perfect campaign: she's raised over a billion dollars (considerably more than Donald Trump has), clearly bested him at the debate, and hasn't made any large, noticeable gaffes.  Meanwhile, Trump has not only continued his usual mix of lies, boasts and racist comments, but he's also clearly started to show signs of mental decline, with his rambling speeches lasting so long that even his own supporters sometimes leave his rallies early.

And yet he and Harris are still tied.  A big part of this comes down to Trump polling ahead of Harris on two big issues: the economy, and immigration.  This leads me consider a crazy irony that might take place: the pandemic, which is probably what cost Trump a second term in 2020, has had residual effects that may now  allow him to reenter the White House!

While we'll never know for sure, but it's likely that if there had been no pandemic, Trump would have won a second term in 2020.  In America, the presidential incumbent always has an advantage, and without the effects of the pandemic, the economy probably would have been good enough for him to win.  But he so obviously handled the pandemic poorly, from downplaying its dangers to suggesting that people inject bleach, that  his inept flailing sent him down to defeat.

So what has happened since?  Well, shortly after Joe Biden took over in the Spring of 2021, inflation started skyrocketing to its highest levels in 40 years.  While there are a number of reasons that this happened (like Valadmir Putin's  invasion of the Ukraine), one of the main factors was the then continuing pandemic,  with consumers staying home and buying goods online driving up demand while sickness and shutdowns compromised  supply chains inevitably leading to price increases.  Now, overall, the economy has been good in the past four years, with the Federal Reserve raising of interest rates causing inflation to finally cool in 2023 without pushing the country into a recession.  But most voters have paid less attention to the state of job growth and the stock market than they have to inflation, which, even though it has slowed, still remains in their memory every time they go to the grocery store.  Biden has been quite upset with this situation, and he has a point: even if you ignore the pandemic, in the first two years of the Trump presidency, 5 million jobs were created, while in the first two years of Biden's, 10 million were.  But, sadly, people still wish for the lower prices of the Trump era and give him high ratings on the economy. 

And then there's immigration: in March of 2020, Trump sealed the American border with Mexico for everything but commercial trade while expelling asylum seekers, citing Covid safety issues.  After Biden entered the White House, there was a relaxing of those policies, not only at the border but also between other Central American countries, which resulted in an inevitable flood of people crossing the border.  While there are many reasons for this increase, the ending of Covid restrictions was definitely a factor.  Even though border crossings have been reduced in the past year, that initial increase is what most voters think of when they give Trump higher ratings for immigration. 

What has happened in America is endemic of the entire post pandemic world, with voters still smarting from the global shutdown going after incumbents all around the planet.  I think it's hard for many people to accept what a massive event the pandemic was, and how long it will take before we are completely free of its effects. Yes, the very thing that cost Trump a second term could wind up giving him another  next year.  We live in truly crazy times...

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.