AND SO IT BEGINS

 Donald Trump isn't the first US president to serve 2 non consecutive terms (Grover Cleveland did too).  He is, however, the first president to be reelected after being found guilty of 34 felonies not to mention his  being impeached twice in his first term. That first term was a dumpster fire of chaos and corruption, topped by his utter mismanagement of the pandemic, which, according to some studies, lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths in this country.  But tens of millions of Americans seem to have forgotten all of that and just remember that prices were lower when he was president, so here we are.

And any hopes that a second Trump term would be less insane than the first were quickly dashed when he started naming his intended cabinet members.  First, former Senator Marco Rubio was named for Secretary of State, which, under the circumstances, wasn't such a bad choice.  But then came the crazy trifecta: Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Robert F.  Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Right off the bat it should be noted that each of these men has a history of alleged sexual misconduct: Hegseth made a payment on a sexual assault charge that he claims was actually consensual, Kennedy has faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, and Gaetz famously was investigated for taking illegal drugs with and having sex with a minor, although he was never formally charged.  Once upon a time, these kind of allegations would cast a serious shadow over a nomination, but since the country just reelected a man with 28 allegations of sexual assault (including an adjudicated rape charge), things have clearly changed on that score.  Just ask Justice Kavanaugh.

But after even dismissing those allegations (even though we shouldn't!), none of these men are qualified to run the agencies that Trump wants them to: Hegseth is a combat veteran and TV personality who's never run anything on the scale of the largest military in the world.  Gaetz does have a law degree, but little experience.  And Kennedy is a lawyer with no scientific training.

Of the three, the one that scares me the most is Kennedy because of his anti-vaccine views, and the power he would have if he were confirmed. (He would run a department with over 80,000 employees and a three trillion dollar budget).  Although he publicly goes back and forth on the subject of vaccines, depending on who he's talking to, (he recently told a podcaster that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” and then later tried to walk that back), it's clear that he is skeptical of their safety.  He has even chaired an anti vaccine organization, deceptively titled  The Children's Health Defense. All this  despite the fact that there has never been any proof of a link between vaccines and autism as he and other anti-vaccine people have claimed.  (A 2014 meta study by the University of Sydney that looked at 10 different studies covering over one million children  concluded that there was no such link).

Vaccines should be celebrated as one of the great scientific advancements of the 20th century, with terrible conditions like polio and diphtheria being eliminated.  But, mainly because in 1998 the medical journal The Lancet published an article by surgeon Andrew Wakefield that claimed that there was a link between vaccines and autism, the lie has spread on the internet.  Even though The Lancet retracted the story and Wakefield's questionable research methods and personal financial interest in lawsuits against vaccine companies were exposed, the damage was done.  Since then Wakefield has continued to lie about his findings while celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and social media have kept the lie going.  And the pandemic and the fact that many conservatives refused the Covid vaccine, even when it came from the Trump administration, only furthered the anti vac movement in this country.

Kennedy's personal history on this issue is downright despicable: in 2019 in Samoa, he took a picture  with local anti vaccine activist Taylor Winterstein.  The Children's Health Defense and Winterstein both blamed the 2018 death of two Samoan infants on vaccines, even though it was later discovered that were wrongfully given muscle relaxant injections along with the vaccines.  These false allegations lead to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed over 70 people.  So, putting it simply, Kennedy has blood on his hands.

And it gets worse, during the pandemic he came out against Covid vaccines and  absurdly claimed in 2023 that the virus was "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. the people who are the most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese ... we don't know whether it's deliberately targeted or not."  There is, of course, no scientific evidence that the virus was "targeted".  Clearly he was buying into the right wing media racist mindset of blaming China for the virus, which lead to an increase of hate crimes against Asian people in this country.  And he threw in some anti semitism for good measure.  In any normal time, this single offensive, stupid quote would kill any nominee for Health Secretary, but we haven't lived in normal times in this country since Trump first announced his candidacy back in 2016.

As for Trump's own views on vaccines, he's always seemed anti vac adjacent, but, because he's a fool who just repeats whatever he's just heard, and he's been listening to Kennedy a lot lately, he appears to have gone full on anti-vax himself.  Add that to his bigotry, sexism, dishonesty and corruption and you can see why I'm not excited about the next four years.

THE FACTOR THAT CAN'T BE IGNORED

 

The day before the election, I blogged that if Donald Trump won, a large part of it would be because of the lingering effects of the pandemic and Vladamir Putin's invasion of Ukraine,  both of which  caused  inflation to skyrocket all around the world.  I definitely stand by that statement because it has been shown that globally this year, as John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times noted, "...governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year. The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that... held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records."  Interestingly, this is not a conservative or progressive thing: while the Democrats lost big here in America, the conservative Tories in England just suffered their worst loss on record.  One way of looking at it is that there is one thing that everyone all over the world can agree on: we all hate inflation, especially when it effects the price of food.

So, being an incumbent in a time of global anger at incumbents made this election an uphill battle for Kamala Harris.  But there was another factor here.  In the last eight years, Trump has run three campaigns and won two of them; the only time he lost was when he ran against another man.  Now, both losing campaigns had their own set of difficulties: Hillary Clinton had a history of legal troubles, Harris had to step into a campaign just before the convention, but it's still hard to say that gender didn't play any role here, especially given that Harris played it up by giving talkshow host Oprah Winfrey a prime speaking role at the convention and then appeared on the female oriented political talk show The View.  

One of Harris's big strategies was to make abortion a central issue of the campaign, which made sense give that this was the first presidential campaign in the post Roe world.  To push that issue, Democrats put abortion support on the ballot in 10 states, hoping to drive out the pro Harris female vote.  In 8 of those 10 states, the abortion support won, but in several of them Trump still won the state, meaning that voters voted for abortion rights while also voting for the man who caused those rights to be threatened in the first place.  In Arizona, for example, more than 60% of female voters voted to protect abortion rights, but only around 50% voted for Harris.

The sad fact of the matter is that it just seems that there are millions of Americans (perhaps even tens of millions) who just won't vote for a woman for president, even if they agree with them on the issues. And they're not all just men. (Trump has now won a higher percentage of the white female vote than his opponent in all 3 of his electoral contests.) Way back in 2013 I first wrote about this issue, and I don't think its changed that much.  That is, a combination of fundamentalist religious beliefs and the sheer masculine nature of the president being known as the "commander in chief" of the armed forces,  have driven many people in this country to think that our president should be a man.

And Trump, for all his despicable sexism, is very much the epitome of the all American male success story for around half of the country.  While some see the fact that he cheated on his first wife with his second, and then on his second with his third, all the while boasting of his many sexual partners in between, as proof that he sees women as disposable, others just see him living the rock star celebrity lifestyle they wish they had.  To them, the sexism is a feature, not a bug.

Now that the Democrats have suffered two stinging losses with female candidates running against a man  I truly believe to be a sexual predator, the question arises as to whether there will ever be a female president.  Sadly, it's really hard to say; the only real way I could see it happening is if both parties were to run female candidates at the same time, an unlikely but not impossible scenario.  Until something like that happens, I think we will be stuck with men leading the country for years to come.

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?