To join the chorus:  Given what the Democrats had to accomplish last week, I would score their effort 9 out of 10.  I was very concerned during the first hour of the first night, which was both uneven and boring (a friend called the early minutes “a snooze”), and would maintain that the Democrats’ use of celebrities as moderators was less than befitting given the importance of the event, but starting with the second hour of the first night, I found it surprisingly arresting throughout.  A few impressions:

Putting aside until later the acceptance speech of Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, of the Convention’s many effective presentations – including one by former President Barack Obama, who clearly considers President Trump to be the existential threat to the American way of life that I have suggested in these pages — I found particularly powerful the talks by former U.S. AZ Rep. Gabby Giffords, a victim of gun violence, regarding our need for greater gun regulation, and by Kristin Urquiza, who declared of her father, a Trump supporter who had succumbed to COVID-19, “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump [that the Coronavirus was under control], and for that, he paid with his life.” That said — and speaking as a somewhat jaundiced political junkie that has seen, figuratively and perhaps literally, a thousand political speeches – I consider the words of young Braydon Harrington, who struggles with stuttering, on his relationship with and belief in Mr. Biden, as moving as anything I have ever witnessed.

For reasons I can’t readily describe, I have mentally paired what was to me a haunting part of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech and the presentations of former OH Gov. John Kasich and former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell.  In her remarks, Sec. Clinton stated, “For four years, people have said to me, … ‘I wish I could go back and do it over.’ – or worse – ‘I should have voted.’” [Emphasis by Ms. Clinton – in the sense that she uttered the italicized words in her speech, but they are not in CNN’s published text.]  I found Messrs. Kasich’s and Powell’s message, that it was acceptable for Republicans distressed by Mr. Trump’s presidency to vote for Mr. Biden, both encouraging and disappointing — encouraging because these gentlemen have greater credibility than any liberal in coaxing conflicted Republicans to vote for Mr. Biden; disappointing because some of our citizens are so rigidly party-bound that despite deep misgivings about the leader of their party, they nonetheless require reassurance that it’s “okay” to break ranks.

As to Mr. Biden’s speech:  it was undoubtedly the Republican ticket’s worst nightmare.  He was cogent, energized, caring.  He didn’t look befuddled or scary, and the Republicans needed him to look one or the other.  What’s more, he did something that I didn’t think he had in him:  make us believe that he truly believes that America’s best days are ahead.  All Presidents and presidential candidates mouth it, but none since Ronald Reagan – including Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama, despite their oratory skills – have declared it in a manner such that I actually thought they believed it.  Joe Biden believes it.  Until his speech I had been pleased to support him because I considered him honorable, qualified, and the most generally-acceptable alternative to the wide swath of voters needed to defeat Mr. Trump; I considered Mr. Biden’s contribution to the nation if elected was likely to be limited to ridding us of the malignant Trump presidency.  His words and manner in his acceptance actually made me contemplate the possibility that a President Biden, despite his age and if he has a Democratic Congress, could, by drawing on input from disparate constituencies in old-school style, be a healer and achiever rather than simply a caretaker.  His speech made me more affirmatively for Joe.  One cautionary note:  While Mr. Biden’s thundering declaration, “If I’m your president, we’re going to protect Social Security and Medicare. You have my word,” undoubtedly played well in Florida, a pivotal Electoral College state, it also carried echoes of then-Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush’s similarly-thundering declaration, “Read my lips.  No new taxes.”  Social Security and Medicare will undoubtedly need revision over the next four years, but many of the actions proposed by experts to perpetuate these programs, as well as measures likely to be necessary to reduce our seemingly-crushing deficits after the Coronavirus has been brought under control, may well lend to an accusation that Mr. Biden failed in his pledge to “protect” these hallowed programs.

As to the Republican Convention upon us:  I have seen comments that the GOP will strive to have upbeat sessions, and that the President has been advised to primarily focus on the perceived strength of the pre-pandemic economy and assert that he is best suited to resuscitate it.  My comment:  the President is congenitally incapable of being uplifting.  Where he’s comfortable and effective from a political standpoint is hate, fear, resentment, and bitterness.  I have no doubt that he recognizes that he’s never going to get anybody to like him that doesn’t already, and fully expect that he intends to stick with what got him the presidency:  hate, fear, resentment, and bitterness.  Since there are almost certainly not enough heretofore nonvoting Trump supporters to overcome his apparent poll deficits, and Mr. Biden’s speech has pretty well dispelled the notion among the few remaining swing state undecideds that Mr. Biden isn’t up to the presidency, one can anticipate that Mr. Trump will try to scare those few undecideds back into the Trump camp with the “Biden is the prisoner of the socialist left that will seek to cancel you” claim.

As per the link below, the Republicans have decided to forego a party platform and simply “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”  For a party known for its bitter internecine platform battles over the last 70 years from those between Eisenhower internationalists and Taft isolationists to those between regulars and tea partiers, and currently between those who respectively favor and oppose more robust Congressional Coronavirus aid, I confess that even given Mr. Trump’s dominance, I am surprised at this level of the party’s capitulation to the President. 

https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/RESOLUTION_REGARDING_THE_REPUBLICAN_PARTY_PLATFORM.pdf?_ga=2.109560193.504857691.1598219603-2087748323.1598219603

“[H]ow often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind.”

Publius (Alexander Hamilton):  The Federalist No. 70

I’ve made no secret in these pages of the concerns I had if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden selected U.S. CA Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.  I acknowledge that this note is primarily lament.

Given Mr. Biden’s age, Sen. Harris will clearly be assessed by voters as someone who could be President.  Ms. Harris isn’t qualified.  Three-plus years as a United States Senator after a career as a prosecutor does not prepare one for the presidency.  Fans of former President Barack Obama might point out that Mr. Obama assumed the presidency after the same period of Senate service.  I would counter – while having complete respect for Mr. Obama’s rectitude and offering tremendous credit for his lifting the national mood at the lowest point of the Great Recession and leading us to the Affordable Care Act – that comparing Ms. Harris to Mr. Obama is as much indictment as endorsement; Mr. Obama consistently stumbled in foreign policy, lacked the canniness to master Congressional relations, and showed no ability to establish rapport with or address the needs of the disillusioned citizens in states like Iowa and Ohio who voted for him in hope and later turned to then-candidate Donald Trump in despair.  Ms. Harris has no notable foreign policy expertise and evinces no greater affinity for these dispossessed citizens than Mr. Obama had — while lacking the former President’s charisma.

Ms. Harris’ oft-repeated phrase during the Democratic presidential debates – “I will prosecute the case against Donald Trump” – brought to my mind another potential weakness.  Any trial lawyer on a major case does exhaustive discovery to learn all s/he can about the dispute and then attempts to conceptualize the appropriate response to all variations of all aspects of whatever might come up at trial.  A daunting task – but even in complex litigation, the variables are finite.  In a presidential campaign, the variables are infinite, and cannot all be anticipated.  Presumably, Mr. Biden saw Ms. Harris’ political experience as an asset when compared to (for example) former U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice.  While Ms. Harris is good when scripted, I saw her clutch several times in the early months of the presidential campaign when reporters asked her questions she did not expect.  In one of the debates, Ms. Harris blanked when U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard claimed that Ms. Harris, when a prosecutor, withheld evidence of innocence against a defendant in a capital case.  (Different issue:  if Ms. Gabbard’s claim is substantially true — I haven’t seen any fact checking on it – I expect the Republicans to use it to attempt to suppress turnout in this George Floyd era.)  In the next three months, Ms. Harris will be asked everything from her favorite brand of running shoe (Is it made in China with child labor?) to whether we should intervene to protect the citizens in an obscure Yemen town under siege.  How she holds up will be pivotal to the Democratic ticket’s chances.  (To see what havoc an uninformed answer can wreak, do an internet search on the phrase, “Gary Johnson  Aleppo”.)  Ms. Harris also proved predictable; I do not look forward to the many times we will hear in the coming months that she ran the nation’s second largest Justice Department, and that she’s been to more funerals than she can tell us.

Ms. Harris has indisputably softened some of her more conservative “law and order” prosecutorial positions as she has sought the Senate and the presidency, which seemingly makes her vulnerable to Republican attacks both that she’s too soft on crime and a flip-flopper to boot.  I consider her California residence a weakness:  many Americans will viscerally accept the Trump Campaign’s allegations that Ms. Harris is a “radical California leftist” and perhaps pay heed to the Trump claim that Mr. Biden is under the control of the “radical left.”  On a more objective note:  Mr. Biden is going to win California’s electoral votes no matter whom he picked, so a chance to establish additional affinity with a swing state through the VP selection has been forfeited.

Finally, there remains the internet search, “Willie Brown Kamala Harris.”  I don’t expect to see the Republicans use this line of attack until after Ms. Harris is formally nominated.  If they do, one would have to be Pollyanna on steroids not to believe that it will suppress the Democratic vote of “Me Too” advocates and swing state suburban Republican women heretofore leaning against President Trump.

Presumably, in addition to Ms. Harris’ political experience, Mr. Biden was attracted to her relatively more aggressive style – as contrasted again, for example, with Ms. Rice – for a contest that I have recently heard predicted to be “a knife fight in an alley.”  If so, in this way the pick calls to mind Dwight Eisenhower’s selection of Richard Nixon in 1952 and Gerald Ford’s selection of Robert Dole in 1976; in both instances, the presidential nominee sought to remain above the fray while selecting a brawler as his running mate.  If this was indeed Mr. Biden’s thinking, I hope it is correct.  Sitting in a swing state, my instinct is that the citizens of these states seek less contentiousness and more calm competence.  I am genuinely concerned about how Ms. Harris’ style will fare in her debate with the somnolent Vice President Mike Pence – despite Mr. Pence’s unblemished record as a sycophant, toady, fawner, bootlicker, lickspittle, and kisser of Mr. Trump’s … er … rear.  In the 2016 Vice Presidential debate, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine tried to be aggressive with Mr. Pence, and, contrary to all expectations, Mr. Pence won – handily.

In a note a while back, “The Right Choice,” I suggested, “There is no [potential Vice President] candidate whose record will not contain some vulnerabilities that will have to be explained.  [Mr. Biden] might as well do his explaining on behalf of the running mate that he considers best equipped to serve all American people and their interests.” As one who truly feels that the fate of the nation depends upon getting Mr. Trump out of the White House and will vote for the Democratic ticket no matter who the Vice Presidential nominee is, I am disappointed in Mr. Biden’s selection of Ms. Harris.  I can only hope that he didn’t make … the Wrong Choice.

… how odd it is for President Trump – the incumbent – to be complaining about the possibility of a rigged presidential election in 2020?  Consider some of the world’s most renowned autocracies:  Russia, China, Turkey, and Venezuela.  Add in innumerable little autocratic nations across the globe masquerading as democracies.  Isn’t it usually the challengers that claim an election system is rigged?

Although our presidential electoral “process” – which, based upon a federalized, decentralized structure, is actually 51 (counting the District of Columbia) individual processes – is less amenable to manipulation by an incumbent than those of many autocracies, and while acknowledging that four of the six generally-accepted swing states — Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – have Democratic Governors, I note that each of these four states has a bicameral legislature in which both houses are controlled by Republicans.  Arizona and Florida Republicans respectively control their statehouses and both houses of their bicameral legislatures.  Clearly, and despite Mr. Trump’s claims, Republicans will be in position to monitor the fairness of the elections in these pivotal states.

As of the time this is posted, Congress has yet to renew the federal unemployment relief that expired at the end of July.  The Trump Administration and the Senate are currently balking at the bill extending current unemployment benefits, affording funding for COVID testing, and providing relief to local governments passed months ago by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.  In purely political terms, the Republicans’ intransigence seems to me sheer lunacy.  Certain impressions are too deeply embedded in the American psyche to be readily overcome.  If one asks the vast majority of Americans whether Ronald Reagan ever agreed to an income tax increase during his presidency, they’ll say, “No”; but he did.  Given the widespread and deep [and not entirely inaccurate ;)] conception of Democrats as profligate spenders, most Americans in need will viscerally hold Republicans accountable for the delay no matter the GOP rationale.  While the Republicans figuratively quibble about gas mileage and tire tread, their dawdling – and perhaps in some instances, 2024 political posturing — arguably adds to our death total and undisputedly increases the burden upon our financially desperate people.

From a legislative perspective, there is obviously little we citizens can do but watch and wait; from a health perspective, we need to continue to be our own best friends. 

Stay safe.

If one intends to review this post, but has not yet read Part I (which is a couple of notes below), I would start there.

I would offer a final precept that might prove vital to Mr. Biden’s winning the White House this November:

Pigs Get Fat; Hogs Get Slaughtered.  On July 11, the New York Times ran a story I had been expecting and, frankly, dreading:  “Democrats Tell Biden to Go Big,” which reported that given Mr. Trump’s “slumping” poll numbers not only in swing states but in recently- or traditionally-conservative-leaning states such as Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Montana, and Kansas, Mr. Biden is facing increasing pressure within the Democratic Party, intent on a resounding renunciation of Trumpism, to “compete aggressively in more states,” “press his party’s advantage down the ballot,” and work “to install a generation of lawmakers who can cement Democratic control of Congress and help redraw legislative maps following this year’s census.” 

With the possible exception of Ohio, such sentiments are misguided nonsense.  Mr. Biden needs to resist this temptation.  This may be our last election based upon a predominantly two-party system (a premise obviously worthy of a future post) that until this century generally served us well for over one hundred years.  A campaign has limited time and resources.  In 2016, Democratic Presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently well ahead in the polls and anticipating that Mr. Trump would claim that her victory had been “rigged,” attempted to run up her Electoral College score to establish her legitimacy.  While never visiting Wisconsin, she diddled around in states like Georgia and Utah — states that any reasonable observer recognized that she was never going to win.  (It is a classic example of Mr. Trump’s bombast causing an opponent’s unforced error.) 

There are 538 Electoral College votes at issue in November.  If Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden wins exactly 270 Electoral College votes, he gets 4 years.  If the winner gets 400, he gets … four years.  If the winner gets 500, he gets … four years.  (All assuming, of course, that if Mr. Trump is elected, he doesn’t – as in effect Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have – declare himself President for Life.)  The candidate that musters 269 or fewer gets … ZERO years.  For the good of the nation, all that matters for Mr. Biden is getting in the White House.  While closely monitoring for any slippage in any of the states won by Ms. Clinton in 2016 (232 Electoral votes, if one includes the few votes denied her by those states’ “faithless” Electors), he needs to claim (assuming no “faithless electors”) any combination of 38 additional Electoral College votes from the six swing states listed in Part I:  Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), Wisconsin (10), Florida (29), North Carolina (15), and Arizona (11) [and maybe Ohio (18), where Mr. Biden – perhaps boosted by the tacit support of former OH Gov. John Kasich — shows a steady if narrow lead and his traditional northern liberalism shouldn’t alarm persuadables].  As of the time this note is posted (while recognizing that these numbers vary daily), Mr. Biden’s leads in these six swing states have actually narrowed by an average of more than 1.5% from their respective late June and July crests – and he didn’t have that much of a lead in Arizona and North Carolina at his best.  I would assert that any decision by the Biden Campaign to broaden its efforts beyond the acknowledged swing states, perhaps Ohio, and any other 2016 Trump states in which polls show that he is sustaining a lead over Mr. Trump outside the margin of error (Nebraska?), is folly. 

Even the cautious might ultimately be tempted to suggest:  Wait until a couple of weeks before the election, and if Mr. Biden retains a commanding lead, then broaden the effort.  Two weeks before the 2016 election, national polls indicated that Ms. Clinton had a 12-point lead over President Trump — days before FBI Director James Comey announced that the Bureau was reopening its investigation into Ms. Clinton’s emails.  I would recommend that Mr. Biden run hard and narrowly right to the end.  As recently as a July 19 interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Trump refused to indicate he would concede the election if he lost.  I would submit that it is more important for Mr. Biden to achieve convincing margins in the requisite number of Electoral College states than it is to achieve narrow – and, thus, contestable – margins in a larger number of states.  Let the Lincoln Project and other groups of disaffected former Republicans make the case against Mr. Trump in heretofore conservative states.  There is one qualification to a narrow approach:  Mr. Biden should be willing to devote time to non-swing states in which polling indicates that his assistance might help the Democrats gain a U.S. Senate majority (e.g., Colorado and Maine).

A note:  The site I consult for the poll numbers I rattle off is Project FiveThirtyEight.  I like its ease of use; I assume it’s as accurate as any. 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/

As President Reagan indicated (reportedly to laughter, presumably rueful) in Rochester, NY, at a campaign rally on November 1, 1984:  “The polls [in which Mr. Reagan then held a substantial lead over Mr. Mondale] are scaring me to death … President Dewey [then-deceased former Republican Presidential nominee and NY Gov. Thomas Dewey, who in fact lost to President Truman in 1948 despite leading in pre-election polls] told me to tell you that isn’t true.”

Although Gov. Dewey is as hard to reach now as he was in 1984, if Mr. Biden needs any confirmation for the sentiments Mr. Reagan attributed to Mr. Dewey, Mr. Biden can always consult … Sec. Clinton.