Mr. Trump’s Scent

As all who care are aware, a bipartisan Congressional funding bill required to keep the government open, considered completed but for formal passage, was scuttled this week. For the most part, I’ve been adhering to my intent to distance myself from public affairs throughout the Holidays, so I don’t know whether the bill was substantively good or bad, but do understand that Congress needs to pass a funding measure by midnight tonight to avoid a government shutdown. It’s been reported that the bipartisan compromise was abandoned after Billionaire Financier Elon Musk tweeted against the bill innumerable times on December 18. It’s also been reported that that President-Elect Donald Trump himself suddenly opposed the bill unless it included an increase in the federal debt ceiling while President Joe Biden is still in office, although there is no formal need to extend the debt ceiling until sometime this summer.

Since Messrs. Musk and Trump torpedoed the bipartisan funding bill, Democrats have declared that they won’t support any new bill that House Republican leaders jerry-rig. I’m hoping they stick to it. I sincerely hope that they aren’t idiotic enough to capitulate to Mr. Trump’s sudden demand to expand the debt ceiling when there is no pressing need. If Speaker Mike Johnson gets no Democratic help, I think he might find – since he has proclaimed that the Bible is his worldview – that it was easier for Moses to collaborate with the Almighty on parting the Red Sea than it will be for him to generate a symphony from the Republican House cacophony.

Not to be lost in the chaos: the Dynamic Duo of Messrs. Musk and Trump are pulling in different directions. Mr. Musk seemingly wishes to use the authority Mr. Trump has indicated that he will be granted to cut federal spending with apparently little regard for public reaction. At the same time, Mr. Trump is evidently well aware that the large segment of his electoral base who depend on government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid don’t actually care about reducing the deficit if reduction measures adversely affect their benefits and services.

In terms that Mr. Johnson would understand if not appreciate: the majority of American voters opted for this Tower of Babel, and now they’re beginning their trip to Gehenna.

While Mr. Musk’s billions have obviously provided him significant influence for some time, his overt political ascendance has occurred at stunning speed. I’m wondering whether Mr. Trump yet perceives the risks he has assumed in squirting a Musk scent so liberally over his incoming Administration, and if so, what he is able to do about it.

MAGAs are absolutely excellent at spreading propaganda through their alt-right echo chamber; they’re already trying to spin this debacle as Democrats’ fault despite the fact that they hold the majority in the House. Their claims will undoubtedly be accepted blindly by Fox viewers and the like. If Democrats have any savvy at all – not a given – they should exploit this extraordinary opportunity to make Mr. Musk the issue – and politically emasculate Mr. Trump (whom exit polls indicate some young men voted for because of his manliness) in the process. Nobody likes billionaires, rank-and-file MAGAs no more than anybody else. One and all, House Democrats should message, “We will vote for what was going to be passed by both parties until Donald Trump’s puppeteer, Elon Musk, got in the way. We will vote for nothing more, and nothing less.” Every House Democrat should put this message out every hour of every day in every outlet they can reach.

According to an “AI Overview” generated in response to my Google search:

“Description

Musk is a warm, subtle, and complex scent that can be powdery, sweet, woodsy, or earthy. It can also have fruity or floral undertones. Some say it’s a better version of the natural smell of skin.

Uses

Musk is a common base note in perfumes, adding depth, warmth, and longevity to fragrances. It can also be found in candles and room sprays.

Origins

Musk originally came from the musk deer’s glands, but is now mostly synthetic or plant-based. The name “musk” comes from the Late Greek word moskhos, which is derived from Persian and Sanskrit words meaning “testicle”. The deer’s gland was thought to resemble a scrotum.

Ethical concerns

The use of natural musk in perfumery has been banned due to ethical concerns over the cruel practices involved in obtaining it from deer.”

There are certainly those among Mr. Musk’s detractors who maintain that Mr. Musk will engage in cruel practices. Unless the incoming Administration is willing to quickly institutes autocratic measures to achieve its unpopular aims, Mr. Trump and Congressional Republicans may soon determine that they need to distance themselves from Mr. Musk before he extracts any more from their political moskhos. 😉

Back At Ya

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden (“hereafter, “Hunter”), yesterday seemed to me worthy of a short note. At some point in January before Inauguration Day, I’ll do a post on Mr. Biden’s conduct of the presidency, but the pardon will only be addressed here.

While the media is harrumphing that the President “lied” when he indicated while running for a second term that he would not pardon Hunter, and I would have considered the action dishonorable a month ago, I now consider it to be irrelevant whether Mr. Biden was lying or simply had a change of heart since the election. I also consider it irrelevant that President-Elect Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and the alt-right media propagandists will constantly cite Hunter’s pardon as rationalization for every disreputable action they hereafter take; masters of “whataboutism” that they are, if they didn’t have the pardon to yell about, they’d find something else. (If they even care to justify their actions; I suspect that soon if not immediately, they won’t even bother to try.)

It was the American people who pardoned Hunter. The vast majority of American eligible voters – not only those who affirmatively voted for Mr. Trump, but perhaps as many more who didn’t care enough about our democracy and way of life to go to the polls to vote against him – blatantly demonstrated that they don’t give a damn about self-dealing, lying, or respecting the rule of law. Why should Mr. Biden be expected to act in disregard of their evident sentiments?

I had already determined since the election that when referring to the actions of Mr. Trump and his acolytes in future posts, I wouldn’t allude much to the Constitution, federal law, or authorities such as The Federalist for what the Founding Fathers might have intended; Mr. Trump, MAGAs, Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court and a majority of the American people have already made a mockery of those standards. So, reflecting purely by what seems right to me, since hearing of the pardon I have considered the mood of an 82-year-old man, whose heart has been broken by the majority of Americans’ willingness to turn their backs on the American principles he has spent his life defending, faced with the prospect that he would probably die with his son in a prison system controlled by the unscrupulous who hate him. Of course, he would pardon his son. I would. Any parent reading this who wouldn’t should immediately place his/her children up for adoption.

I would submit that the pardon also represents a “Back at Ya” from Mr. Biden to the American people for their disregard of his half-century of service. It would be from me, were I in his place. (I know; “Back at Ya” is merely a euphemism; but someday my grandchildren may read these notes 😉 .)

May the Biden Clan have a Very Merry Christmas.

A Little Bit of Heaven

At Mass a couple of weeks ago, I heard the best sermon I have ever heard in my life – and that’s covering a lot of sermons – offered by Fr. Thomas Hagan, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, founder of Hands Together, the nonprofit he started in 1986 after leaving the Princeton University Chaplaincy. Hands Together provides educational, pastoral and humanitarian development to Haiti’s largest and poorest slum, Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil. Before he recounted the horrendous conditions which residents of Cité Soleil endure – they not only suffer extreme destitution, but are now subject to the terror of the gang anarchy dominating Haiti — Fr. Hagen, approximately 80, of Irish ancestry, began by describing his childhood with his siblings in a working class area of Philadelphia, and indicated that as he grew up, his father often repeated that his family provided him “a little bit of heaven” on earth.

A Little Bit of Heaven. I suspect that in many instances, Thanksgiving will mark the first occasion since the presidential election that family members holding fiercely contrasting political perspectives will be together. No matter whether one eagerly awaits or fearfully dreads what will follow Inauguration Day, during this Holiday let all of us who are blessed with family embrace that Little Bit of Heaven that our loved ones provide, and take a minute to say a prayer for or otherwise remember those who are not as fortunate. Also, consider whether you experienced a particular blessing during the past year for which you are truly, truly thankful. We did.

Fr. Hagan was in Madison rather than in Haiti because he was evacuated from Haiti earlier this year due to death threats against him; other members of the Hands Together organization had previously been captured, tortured, and killed. His most recent attempt to return to his adopted land was abandoned literally in-flight due to reports that gangs were shooting at planes attempting to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. Recognizing that this is the time of year that all with an address are deluged with solicitations for charitable contributions, I am including a link at the bottom of this note for any with an interest in Fr. Hagan’s mission. I admit that I was very taken with the fact that almost thirty years ago he left what was clearly a pretty comfortable position at Princeton to undertake the work he has.

In a number of past Thanksgiving notes I have included a link to one of the West Wing vignettes relating to Thanksgiving. Aaron Sorkin’s Thanksgiving scenes ranged from the patriotic to the humorous. The one below was perhaps his best expression in the series of the love and tradition that is family.

Happy Holiday.

https://www.handstogether.org/

A Reversal of the American Spirit

I was going to write a version of this post during the interregnum between Administrations no matter which presidential candidate won the recent election, but President-Elect Donald Trump’s clear victory over Vice President Kamala Harris brought the issue I have been pondering into immediate relief.

Americans are afraid of the future.

I would submit that Mr. Trump’s manifest wide support – even if he hadn’t won – demonstrates a fundamental reversal in the American spirit, an indication of a visceral if not cognitive understanding on the part of a decisive segment of our people of the uniquely American danger they face, brought on by our own success over the last quarter of a millennium with its attendant rising expectations: they lack the capability to perform at the level necessary to maintain the traditional American lifestyle. They’re not fools; they know it. They fear it. I would submit that this group of citizens has embraced Mr. Trump, despite his obvious failings, because he provides them the illusion that he can turn back the clock to a simpler time in which they can still compete — a reversal of the American ethos trumpeted by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

Let’s start with my profession. The fictional Attorney Perry Mason first appeared in 1934. All fans of the novels or the television series will well recall Mr. Mason’s secretary, Della Street; but Mr. Mason also employed Gertie, the receptionist/switchboard operator. The novels have multiple scenes of Mr. Mason dictating to Ms. Street taking shorthand in his office while Gertie was in the outside area to answer the phone. That said, in the real world, over time Mr. Mason would have gotten a dictation machine – the newfangled invention is a key component of the solution to Agatha Christie’s classic 1926 mystery, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – and then, he wouldn’t have needed to consume Ms. Street’s time with taking dictation; she could be out front, greeting clients, answering the phone, and transcribing dictated tapes … and Gertie, unless she had or could acquire other skills of commensurate economic value, would have been out of a “good-paying” job. You know where this is going: with the advent of voicemail, the personal computer, email, and word processing software, Mr. Mason would be receiving most of his messages technologically and doing most of his own transcription; the services he would then need from Ms. Street would be significantly more sophisticated for her to maintain her “good-paying” job. Two different types of fallout occur here: not all previously satisfactorily-performing secretaries would have the raw ability to discharge these more sophisticated responsibilities, and thus would no longer earn “good” wages; and over time, as Mr. Mason and any potential associate he hired further leveraged technologies to conduct their practices, they would need only one sophisticated assistant, putting a second out of work. (Lawyers themselves are certainly not immune; when I started, young lawyers were sent to the library to do research and draft legal memos for their seniors; now Artificial Intelligence can provide senior lawyers probably as good or better results at a fraction of the time and per-project cost.)

In 1914, Henry Ford enticed farmers to work in his plants with the offer of the unheard-of wage of $5/day. Being a farmer is hard – it requires many different skills. The vast majority of farmers who left the fields for Mr. Ford’s jobs were undoubtedly vastly over-qualified for the tasks he assigned them, but the phenomenal money was the ticket to the middle-class lifestyle. Now, we face the opposite reality: machines ever-increasingly perform the repetitive tasks that traditionally afforded “good paying” jobs to Americans who lack the wherewithal to perform more sophisticated tasks affording wages now necessary to support the traditional American lifestyle.

And again: You will recall the recent strike by the International Longshore Workers Union, in which the organization demanded not only wage increases but a management agreement not to employ automation to take their jobs. (I think the automation issue is still outstanding.) My reaction: in the long run, the Longshoremen might as well jump in unison into the Atlantic Ocean, and thrust their palms seaward: they’ll stand a better chance of holding back the sea than they will technology.

Obviously the least relevant to the vast majority of us, but still indicative of our current state: “The average speed of a four-seam fastball in Major League Baseball (MLB) today is 94.2 miles per hour. … In 2022, the average fastball speed was 93.6 miles per hour. … [In] 2002 … the average fastball speed was around 89 miles per hour.” (The irony is that I can’t even cite a source for this; it was an “AI Overview” generated in response to my Google search.) Judging by trends, you’d have to guess that in 1980, the mid-80s was a decent major league fastball. Although not many of us have been or aspired to be major league hitters, it would seem that a hitter who 40 years ago could hit a fastball in the 80s could be a well-compensated major leaguer even if he perhaps struggled to hit heat in the 90s; today, unless he has other skills, that same individual is coaching high school baseball at a fraction of a major league salary.

All of us saw clips of Ms. Harris declaring on the stump, “We won’t go back.” Although I think her primary meaning was a rejection of an America dominated by the male, white, straight, and Christian, to many of our people worried by the future, it could also have meant a more fundamental kind of threat, because they intuitively and cognitively recognize that their only hope to maintain the traditional American lifestyle is to go back to what worked – what was safe – in the past. They’ve turned to Mr. Trump.

I recently noted in these pages that the majority of our forebears (aside from Native Americans and those brought here in chains) affirmatively marched into the future, risking everything to start a new life here. That spirit created a very large share of the advances humankind uses today, from the automobile to the light bulb to the airplane to the smart phone. But while Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit has made us great creators, the progress of these achievements has over time made it increasingly difficult for a growing segment of our less-talented citizens to match the material expectations that have accompanied these American accomplishments. During travel in our latter years, we have seen the lifestyle of the average Mexican, the average Cambodian, the average Dominican, the average Brazilian, the average Kenyan; even if we haven’t seen we can imagine the lifestyle of the average Chinese. The general populace in these nations may lack the capability to create technical innovations, but they obviously have the manual skills to efficiently recreate them in return for wages sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of living in their respective nations but wildly insufficient to maintain an acceptable standard of living in ours. The irrefutable fact that immigrants will do jobs in this country that native-born Americans won’t demonstrates the distinct difference in perspective and expectation. Our youngest son, the most widely traveled in our family, has observed to me on more than one occasion that Third World poor have objectively less than most American poor, but are significantly happier. I would submit that it is because their expectations are so much lower.

Maybe there was a time when we could have done something about the fact that the progress of American life was beginning to outpace an increasing number of our citizens’ ability to meet their material expectations; maybe not. The first instances of outsourcing began in the 1970s, Republicans’ belief in unfettered international free trade (later also embraced by Democrats) accelerated the process in the 1980s, and TLOML and I recently attended a talk in which the speaker asserted that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, served as the true death knell for much of American manufacturing. Assuming that one accepts the speaker’s assertion, Mr. Clinton, as bright as he is, certainly didn’t recognize the impact that NAFTA would have on the American factory worker. I’ve heard any number of pundits note how many of Mr. Trump’s base voted for President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. This may be unfair, but one must consider whether the charismatic Mr. Obama was not these voters’ last hope – The Audacity of Hope; “Yes, We Can” — and when it turned out that No, We Couldn’t, they were receptive to Mr. Trump’s dark message of American carnage. When Mr. Trump proved so unsavory and incompetent in his first term, a barely decisive segment was willing to turn back to President Joe Biden, an unquestionably good man and longtime friend of American workers. Since many of these Biden voters apparently believe, rightly or wrongly, that he failed them, they returned to Mr. Trump.

[With the benefit of hindsight, query whether the belief of a notable segment of Americans in the promise of America didn’t expire during Mr. Obama’s time in office, when so many of our citizens never truly recovered from the Great Recession. I have pondered whether he put his chips on the wrong issue in his first term when he went all in for health care. Notwithstanding the much societal good that the now-very-popular Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) has provided, I will venture that if required to choose, the vast majority of us would prioritize a good paying job over good health care benefits. In the first two years of his presidency, should Mr. Obama have championed, instead of healthcare, an aggressive jobs act and apprenticeship programs to accompany the financial institution bailout effected to preserve our economic system? (But if so, what skills would have been chosen to emphasize? At whom would the training have been directed? Would those at whom it was directed participated? With the advance of technology, would any such targeted occupations still afford “good” wages today?) Although Mr. Biden is a good man, one could argue that even he has engaged in palliative sophism, regularly referring to the “good paying” manufacturing jobs that will result if America takes the lead in “green energy” technology. While we certainly have the capability to design cutting edge green technologies, it will take the less-developed world virtually no time to figure out how to manufacture anything we develop at less cost than it can be manufactured in America.]

I have – clearly obliviously and arrogantly — thought that college-educated Americans have in recent elections broken so heavily for Democrats because they were willing to recognize reality – the truth about Mr. Trump – while Trump supporters actively refused to accept it. While there is certainly some validity to that – some MAGAs willingly gobble up the distorted reality spewed at them by Fox News and other alt-right media outlets, despite having (at least up to now) an ample opportunity to discover a closer approximation of reality by digesting a blend of news sources — what may be a more accurate perception of the American majority’s return to Mr. Trump, despite all of his obvious flaws, is that the American college-educated minority is largely financially satisfactorily-fixed, and thus can literally afford to contemplate issues of democracy, equality, and the rule of law, while many in the non-college-educated majority generally cannot afford such a luxury. The decisive segment in the last election was arguably not motivated by cultural issues, but by survival. They are financially drowning. When you’re drowning and in need of a lifeboat, you don’t care about Climate Change, the fate of minorities or faraway peoples, or the fact that the lifeboat captain who says he will throw you a life preserver is an unsavory liar, bully, and racial bigot; you want the life preserver. You also don’t pause to consider whether the preserver he offers actually has any buoyancy.

Although America has unquestionably bestowed more good on downtrodden countries than any other nation in the history of the world, perhaps we never were as generous, as magnanimous, as we liked to think we were. Maybe we just had, relative to the rest of the world, first a lot of land, and then a lot of money. If we were more generous, more magnanimous, we are no longer. If this is a criticism, it is also a self-criticism — I certainly do NOT suggest that my focus is not and has not always been first on the wellbeing of my family – but it is nonetheless a painful realization.

Mr. Trump promises his supporters that he will return them to a time in which not only — as the lyrics of All in the Family’s theme song, “Those Were the Days,” impart — “Girls were girls and men were men,” but also: to (figuratively) bring back shorthand; to impose aggressive protective tariffs; to keep all automation off the docks; and to prohibit any fastball above 89 miles an hour. The obvious trouble with all of this is that other nations will continue to automate their plants, their docks, and their offices, and will train to hit fastballs faster than 89 miles an hour – while our prices go up, and American factories do not magically reappear. The price for Mr. Trump’s salve is the loss of world leadership, and perhaps even deeper American disillusionment.

In what was an ode to immigrants in his last speech as president, President Ronald Reagan stated in part:

“While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams, we create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. … This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

This is a dilemma for which I would venture that no American president of any political stripe, no matter how wise or well-meaning, would have a ready answer. Ninety-two years ago, at a time when so many of our people were in much more dire straits than they are now, they put their faith in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom I rank as one of our three greatest presidents (along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln). One of the greatest travesties of the upcoming Trump Administration may be that no meaningful initiatives are undertaken to see if there is any realistic solution to assist the voters motivated by economic fear who have placed their faith in Mr. Trump.

If you’ve made it through this post, I admire your tenacity. I’ve mentioned several times here since I started in the fall of 2017 – now a pretty long time ago, during the first year of Mr. Trump’s first term in office – that this site has provided me a means of catharsis during the most domestically turbulent period of my lifetime. (There was a point at which pundits compared the Trump Era to the Vietnam Era; having lived through both, I would submit that in terms of the breadth of overall national toxicity and threat to our national fabric, Vietnam now pales in comparison to the present day.) Even so, I admit that right now I am drained – as much by the fact that a majority of my fellow citizens choosing to cast ballots voted for Mr. Trump as that he won at all. (Even those fearful about their futures should have realized that no matter what challenges we face, Mr. Trump isn’t the answer.) That said, since by Constitutional definition, no efforts to degrade American democracy or dismantle of our traditional way of life will be undertaken before January 20, 2025, this seems the right time to give us both a respite to replenish (and also to provide these aging eyes with a literally sorely-needed break from what has been extended screen time). While it is certainly possible that Mr. Trump or his MAGA cohort will do something between now and Inauguration Day to sufficiently stir my ire – or that the Green Bay Packers, not as good as their record would indicate, will do something to stir my fervor 🙂 — so as to drive me to post, except for Holiday notes, I intend to be largely taking a break from these pages until the early part of the New Year.

Until then, stay well.

The Art of Diversion

What is President-Elect Donald Trump best at? Diversion. Mr. Trump has said so many outrageous, cruel, and frankly traitorous things over the years that it has been impossible for the responsible media or any individual citizen to keep track of them all. All have become mentally numb, and our national moral spirit has correspondingly withered. I have seen it suggested that Mr. Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks thus far, taken together with the possibility that these nominees will be placed in their jobs through a maneuver that would avoid their requiring Senate confirmation, constitute either a mockery of the American system or an attempt to tear it down. (The President-Elect’s selections are so absurd by traditional standards that at one point I briefly considered whether Mr. Trump hadn’t decided to destroy our system by staging his own version of The Producers, Mel Brooks’ 1960s film about a couple of Broadway failures who attempt to reap millions from a fraud by staging what they expect to be a sure flop entitled, “Springtime for Hitler.”)

I’ve reconsidered. Consider whether Mr. Trump’s announcements aren’t a brilliant diversion.

Take former U.S. FL Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has just resigned from the House of Representatives after being tapped by Mr. Trump to become Attorney General, the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ). I would suggest that Mr. Gaetz may merely be a pawn for Mr. Trump. Since the nomination was announced, I’ve seen a Twitter clip in which a Republican House member stated that about 200 members of the House Republican Caucus – there are only about 218, in total 😉 — are happy to see Mr. Gaetz depart the House for all the disruption his self-serving shenanigans have caused during his years in Congress. It is hard not to believe that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, no matter what he says in public, was pleased to see Mr. Gaetz resign. Given the antipathy for the Attorney General-nominee among his own party members, it is also hard not to believe that what is by all accounts a very damaging House Ethics Committee report on Mr. Gaetz won’t become public by some means or other. In any event, the legislative outcry about the Gaetz nomination will seemingly demand public hearings if Mr. Gaetz does not withdraw, and one would have to assume that the odds against his confirmation are high – rejecting him will enable several Republican Senators to pretty politically painlessly establish that they are still institutionalists, independent, bipartisan, and moral.

But even Mr. Gaetz’ head on a stake might not be enough of a diversion to achieve Mr. Trump’s ultimate goal. So the next item on the menu will be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom Mr. Trump has nominated to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Kennedy is a manifest quack. His steadfast opposition to most if not all vaccines, questioning fluoride in water, etc., etc., etc., is enough to raise doubts in the minds of all but the densest conspiracy buff; I’ll venture that even the majority of MAGAs who have now been conditioned to question the efficacy of COVID vaccines nonetheless support children’s polio, chickenpox, and measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. Add to that Mr. Kennedy’s declarations that he has a dead worm in his brain and that at one point he dumped a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park, and Senate confirmation hearings on Mr. Kennedy’s nomination will be enough circus to keep late night talk show hosts busy for weeks. Even the most rabid Murdoch American print publication, the New York Post, has come out vociferously against Mr. Kennedy’s nomination. Mr. Kennedy – although he may well not be savvy enough to recognize it – may simply more political cannon fodder for Mr. Trump. He provides more political cover for Senate Republicans, who can hold hearings, provide Democrats enough votes to reject Mr. Kennedy, and thereby appear institutionalist, independent, bipartisan, and rational. (And if by some miracle Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, one might question how effective he will be in instituting his hair-brained beliefs. I will venture that Mr. Kennedy is wildly misguided, but not malevolent. HHS is 80,000 strong, and every HHS employee will understand how to employ every existing bureaucratic roadblock to check Mr. Kennedy’s flights of fantasy.)

The President-Elect wins either way. If the Gaetz and/or Kennedy nominations are confirmed, he has completely emasculated the Senate. If either or both are not, Mr. Trump will have nonetheless gained favor with the Republican House caucus and the diehard healthcare conspiracists among his base. But what else, of greater strategic importance, have these nominations achieved? They’ve cleared the way for Senate confirmations of two nominees who might well have faced significant opposition from a decisive number of the remaining conservative (as contrasted with MAGA) Republican Senators but for the fury that will be expended during consideration the DOJ and HHS nominees: those of obviously unqualified Fox News Host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and undoubted Russian sympathizer former U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Even if hearings are held for Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Gabbard, Senate Republicans certainly aren’t going to reject everybody; Messrs. Gaetz and Kennedy will be the outside limit.

One might argue that Mr. Hegseth, if confirmed, will have trouble effecting MAGA aims against a bureaucracy as entrenched as the Pentagon. I’m not sure that’s correct – after all, remember who will be the Commander-in-Chief – but even if it is, imagine how much American military readiness will be impacted by the distractions within our armed forces caused by Mr. Hegseth’s – I can’t resist 😉 – witch hunts for “Woke” officers. The men and women who lead our military are human; they are concerned with their careers just like everybody else. Similarly, assuming that Ms. Gabbard is confirmed, our ability to protect our interests – at least, our traditional interests – will certainly be compromised if, as I have seen reported, our allies will no longer be willing to share their most sensitive secrets with us for fear that they will be disclosed to Russia.

I will venture that Russian President Vladimir Putin could care less about HHS, and probably but little more about DOJ. He does care about American military efficiency and America’s intelligence capabilities. One could argue that if the Russian President himself had orchestrated this series of nominations, he couldn’t have done any better to protect his interests.

Clever. Really clever. I practiced law too long to not still admire a true tour de force by those with whom I disagree. (Mr. Trump’s not that smart, you say? The man has been smart enough to get elected President of the United States twice – this last time with a majority of the vote – while making plain who he is and what he stands for.) Liberals and progressives – and me – now suffer from whiplash after nine years of having repeatedly looked down to see if our shoes were untied. (This analogy is not to make light of what is happening. Recall that on the brink of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to try to stave off the invasion President Joe Biden took the unprecedented step of releasing extremely sensitive American intelligence – undoubtedly shaped just sufficiently to protect the source — warning the Russians that we knew what they were about to do. At the time, it was speculated that to have such intimate intelligence, we had to have “turned” one of the perhaps – what, half dozen? 10? — men closest to Vladimir Putin. If this speculation was accurate, on or soon after January 20, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard is going to know who that is. Unspoken but almost certain: right now, the Biden Administration is undertaking frantic efforts to get America’s most sensitive Russian assets out of Russia.)

Bob Woodward noted in his book, Rage: “As [the first] DNI [in the first Trump Administration, Dan] Coats had access to the most sensitive intelligence – intercepts and the best deep-cover human CIA sources in Russia. He suspected the worst but found nothing that would show Trump was indeed in Putin’s pocket. He and key staff members examined the intelligence as carefully as possible. There was no proof, period. But Coats’s doubts continued, never fully dissipating.”

And to think — if Mr. Trump had lost this month’s presidential election, I had planned to pitch all of the Trump-related books I collected during the first Trump Administration.

Do Not Weep for Me

President-Elect Donald Trump’s announcements this week of appointments for his Administration have demonstrated a previously evident but now openly flagrant contempt for – and possibly hatred of – the principles America has stood by and for over the last two hundred-plus years. We will reap the whirlwind. Even Mr. Trump’s most reasonable selection, U.S. FL Sen. Marco Rubio, who is qualified to be U.S. Secretary of State, has made it clear by his nauseating bootlicking to Mr. Trump that he will be no more than a lapdog for the incoming President’s whims. Stephen Miller, named Deputy White House Chief of Staff, declared at the New York City Trump Rally in the last days of the campaign that “America is for America and Americans only.” (I’ll leave it to you to characterize that one; I will note that it has been suggested in the Jewish publication, Forward, that Mr. Miller’s declaration was an echo of the “Germans for Germans only” slogan “which the Nazis used to separate out (and slaughter) Poles, Jews and other undesirables.” Tom Horman, whom Mr. Trump has named as “Border Czar,” will soon be caging migrants. I think one can be confident that while SD Gov. Kristi Noem is head of Homeland Security, any dog seeking to enter the country illegally will be shot. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been named co-heads of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” – transparently an organizational device that will be used to rid the federal bureaucracy of all of those not perceived as abjectly loyal to Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement. (This is a Trump proposal that does surprise me a bit in one respect. It’s not that Mr. Musk is getting a prominent role in the upcoming Administration – since he’s collected a car, a spaceship, and a social media site, he certainly has room in his garage for a President — but if this new Department’s “Efficiency” initiatives result in delay of Social Security checks to Trump voters, they will notice, no matter how much propaganda the alt-right media feeds them.)

Even then, the President-Elect was just getting warmed up. I admit that I found it so absurd that I actually laughed when I heard that Mr. Trump had named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News Host, as his choice to be Secretary of Defense. I’m no longer laughing; I wasn’t then aware of numerous reports I’ve since seen that he has called liberals, “domestic enemies.” The pick that has generally created the most shock is Mr. Trump’s choice of U.S. FL Rep. Matt Gaetz – he who has been investigated for sex trafficking and was as of the time his nomination was announced the subject of a U.S. House of Representatives Ethics inquiry – to become the next Attorney General, a post from which one might reasonably assume he will pursue former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, U.S. CA Sen-Elect Adam Schiff, and others Mr. Trump has called “enemies within” America. But … we’re still not done. Mr. Trump has named former U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — who has been referred to by a Russian commentator on Russian state television as “our girlfriend”— to become Director of National Intelligence. Russian President Vladimir Putin arguably literally couldn’t have selected any American as Intelligence head better suited to his purposes.

With every succeeding pick, Mr. Trump has ever more arrogantly demonstrated his intent to institute an autocratic regime aligned with other autocratic regimes (at least, Caucasian autocratic regimes). Not even I – and no one who reads these notes would call me, “Mr. Sunny” — thought he would move this dramatically, at least this early.

Ominously but predictably, I have seen reports that representatives of the upcoming Administration are making arrangements for erection of huge tent encampments outside our major cities, purportedly intended for the housing illegal immigrants prior to their deportation. I expect that this will be the only way in which these encampments are employed … for a while.

The majority of voting Americans are going to get what they voted for, although a significant segment of them might well soon decide that it wasn’t really what they wanted. As I said in a note posted here about a month ago: “[If Mr. Trump wins the election], [a]t some point [thereafter], some of the citizens who vote for Mr. Trump this November will say, ‘This is wrong. This is too much. I never intended this.’ By that time, it will be too late. In this context, the shame will be on them, not on him; he has made his designs perfectly plain [Emphasis in Original].” Now – although Mr. Trump hasn’t even yet assumed the presidency, and whether or not such segment realizes it yet – it is indeed too late.

One of the most arresting images I have seen since Mr. Trump was declared the victor in last week’s election is a sketch of Lady Liberty, seated, bent over, her face in her hands. Because I am now well into my Medicare-eligible years, these days I frequently find myself considering events not from the perspective of how they will affect TLOML’s and my generation, but how they will affect our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren (assuming that we ultimately have some 😉 ) and their generations. As I looked at that sketch of Lady Liberty, these words came to mind – perhaps blasphemous, but reflective of my sentiment:

“But Jesus turning to them said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children.’”

Luke 23:28

What Will Be, Will Be

“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Abraham Lincoln, January 27, 1838

After giving you eye strain in the week before the Election, I have been uncharacteristically silent since. It has taken me a while to put Tuesday’s election results in perspective. I didn’t have to go through all the stages of grief – I was able to avoid “denial” (I always instinctively felt that it was going to be difficult for Vice President Kamala Harris against an entrenched MAGA base) and “bargaining” (whatever that means in this context; I leave it to the two accomplished psychologists who read these pages to enlighten me at some future juncture 🙂 ), and experienced depression before transitioning to anger (as one of Irish descent, that sequence is my usual). At this point, I have internalized that we have the result we have, although I am not ready to placidly acquiesce in what might come from it.

The fact that President-Elect Donald Trump won a majority of the popular vote (sweeping all seven of the supposed swing states) is at once reassuring – he has received a mandate from our people, which is what democracy is supposed to be about — and demoralizing, demonstrating as it does the willingness of the majority to deprioritize the principles that over the last two centuries made America different – that in my view actually have, in good economic times and bad, made America great.

There are so many rationales floating around as to why Ms. Harris lost that one cannot possibly list or address them all. I doubt that Ms. Harris lost because she is black in a nation that President Barack Obama won twice. I have significant doubt that she lost because she is a woman [although I also doubt that Democrats will run another woman presidential candidate in my lifetime (assuming there are further elections; more on that below)], since two Democratic women senatorial candidates – one of them openly gay — defeated male MAGA opponents (albeit narrowly) in swing states Mr. Trump carried. I don’t believe that President Joe Biden would have won if he had stayed in the race, given his low approval ratings (no matter how, in my view, grossly undeserved). Finally, I don’t believe that if Mr. Biden had announced his withdrawal after the 2022 mid-terms – a course recommended in these pages at that time – a full-blown Democratic Party Presidential Nomination contest would have either provided Ms. Harris a greater opportunity prove her mettle as a candidate or yielded a different Democrat who would have defeated Mr. Trump – not when Mr. Trump not only won all the swing states, but improved his vote percentage over 2020 in 35 states.

I’ve used pro football analogies before in describing different perspectives of the race; Democrats’ current rationalizations sounds to me like a losing NFL team saying, “We should have run the ball more,” or “We should have blitzed more,” when it lost by four touchdowns. In fact, given America’s currently toxically-partisan and supposedly closely-divided citizenry, Democrats – to use Mr. Obama’s summation of the 2010 midterm elections – got shellacked. This isn’t a criticism of Ms. Harris; I think she did all that she, or any other likely Democratic presidential nominee, whether starting this past July or in 2022, could have done to address all of the competing factors with which she had to deal. [And for all you fans of MN Gov. Tim Walz 🙂 : the final outcome seemingly unquestionably shows that Democrats wouldn’t have fared any better with PA Gov. Josh Shapiro as their Vice Presidential nominee than they did with Mr. Walz. I am guessing that today, Mr. Shapiro is privately thanking his lucky stars that Ms. Harris didn’t pick him as he readies for a presidential bid for 2028 (again assuming, for the purposes of this paragraph, that we have an election in 2028).]

One observation that has resonated with me is the notion that a significant number of our citizens were more offended by Democrats’ emphasis on identity politics — which they perceived as demonstrating a disregard for them — than they were fearful of Mr. Trump’s unabashed willingness to disregard the rule of law and demonize “others” and those who disagree with him. Perhaps those sentiments, taken together with the indication that a growing number of Americans are afraid of the future, yielded the result we got. In a democracy in which each citizen gets the same one vote, this matters. Although their irritation with identity politics is understandable, these citizens’ selection of Mr. Trump, despite all warning flags, to “fix it,” ignores the clear lesson of history: that demonization and trampling of norms, once begun, only metastasize. The latter fear of the future, if accurate, represents an apparent retreat from the bold optimism that has been the animating American characteristic throughout most of our history — a retreat that will form the subject of an impending post.

An aside, but perhaps an appropriate reflection upon the evolution of the American perception of acceptable presidential behavior evidenced by Mr. Trump’s election (excluding the many presidential indiscretions of which we are now aware, but were unknown by the American people at the time they were occurring): Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was an aide to now-long-deceased NY Gov. Nelson Rockefeller until he was lured away by President-Elect Richard Nixon in 1968, made clear in his memoirs that he considered Mr. Rockefeller one of the most able men he ever met. In 1960, when Mr. Rockefeller vied with Mr. Nixon for that year’s Republican nomination, one of the political impediments Mr. Rockefeller faced with the ordinary voter was that he had been divorced. By 1974, when Mr. Nixon was driven from office by his complicity in the Watergate scandal – although his resounding 1972 re-election makes clear that most Americans thought he was doing a good job on substantive issues — his successor, President Gerald Ford, successfully got Mr. Rockefeller confirmed as Vice President. In 1980, Americans elected President Ronald Reagan despite a previous divorce (although by that time Mr. Reagan had been married to Nancy Reagan for decades). By 2000, Americans were willing to accept a president they knew was not only a philanderer but a perjurer as long as they believed he was helping them; President Bill Clinton left office with a 60% approval rating despite the Lewinsky scandal, and I would submit that had he been constitutionally able to run again, he would have easily defeated the born-again and faithful husband George W. Bush. Twice divorced, admitted adulterer Mr. Trump was elected sixteen years later despite (well, you can fill in all of Mr. Trump’s “despites” 🙂 ) and has now been re-elected by a majority that necessarily includes a segment of voters who know that he was lying in his denial of his 2020 defeat and that he incited an attack on our nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election. It is for each of us to decide where on our own personal moral spectrums, if anywhere, the evolution from Mr. Rockefeller to Mr. Trump should have been enough. I have always thought that the American presidency called for a fundamentally good person who was willing to take morally questionable actions to achieve a greater good. It is clear that many Americans are willing to abide a man whom even a large share of his supporters concede is amoral in hopes that he will do good things. [I am particularly struck by those Evangelicals who admit that they wouldn’t want Mr. Trump as a pastor but can abide him as president. Granting that the Bible can be cited for just about anything anyone wants, one cannot help but pause at the seeming … let’s say, incongruity … that any such literalist Christians so readily disregarded Matthew 7: 17-18: “Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears rotten fruit. A good tree cannot bear rotten fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.”] It is what it is.

What comes next?

I have always guessed that the greatest irony of the 2016 Trump candidacy was that Mr. Trump undertook the effort not to win, but to hype his brand. The greatest irony of his 2024 campaign may be that he ran not because he wanted to govern but to avoid prosecution and jail time for truly consequential federal offenses for which he was obviously guilty.

We are where we are. The fact that there may be an understandable and even sympathetic explanation within a segment of the Trump Coalition for the upheaval we’re about to experience doesn’t mean that its consequences will be any less severe. Over the years, while I have striven to maintain a civil language and tone in these pages, I have said so many substantively harsh things about Mr. Trump, MAGAs, and their undemocratic designs that I couldn’t even list them all here. Any who have read many of these notes may be wondering if there is anything I might change or amend about these sentiments in whatever warm glow surrounds Mr. Trump’s undeniable victory and the impending peaceful transfer of authority of the most powerful nation the world has ever known. There is not. I pay Mr. Trump the respect of believing that he means and will do what he has said. I have meant what I have said. I have the severest doubts that the MAGA Administration will allow for a truly free and fair election in America in 2028. Over the next four years, I expect: that Mr. Trump – already exhausted and mentally degrading – to become a figurehead for a radical reformation of our federal government by Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Jr., and the MAGA zealots who have put together Project 2025; that all criminal charges now adjudged or pending against Mr. Trump will be dispensed with; that all of the convicted January 6^th rioters will be pardoned; that many of Mr. Trump’s most prominent political and media critics will be prosecuted by the Trump Justice Department on trumped up (if you will 😉 ) charges (but not, ironically, Mr. Biden, who will be largely protected by the presidential immunity doctrine Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court has handed down) or otherwise pressured into submission; that MAGAs will pass measures that in fact if not in name will serve to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning constituencies; that many legal as well as illegal immigrants will be swept up in the Administration’s deportation initiatives; that MAGA-sympathetic generals will be appointed to lead the American military, and that at some point under their direction our armed forces will take action against peaceful American citizen demonstrators; that violence will increase against African Americans, legal immigrants of color, non-Christians, and Americans with untraditional gender and sexual preferences; that NATO will remain in name, but will have severely reduced effectiveness as America substantially limits its participation; that Russia will absorb at least Ukraine and possibly a number of NATO countries formerly members of the USSR; that Mr. Trump and his cohort will continue their approach of division and distraction; that – as I saw one wag on Twitter comment – within 90 days, as inflation continues to drop, Mr. Trump will claim credit and also announce that the economy he has falsely denounced for four years is the strongest economy in the world; and that — the bitterest irony of all — the gap between the American rich and those poor who consider Mr. Trump their Messiah will continue to widen. (The cruelest joke will be that because of alt-right propaganda, most are likely not to even realize that Mr. Trump did nothing for them.)

Too pessimistic, you say? I will be thrilled – thrilled – to be proven wrong; but review the above list, and point out which of the above you believe won’t occur during the upcoming Trump Administration.

If Mr. Trump and his minions actually effect the tariffs and tax cuts for which he’s advocated and bend securities laws to favor powerful oligarchs like Elon Musk, it doesn’t take an economics degree to predict that inflation, the deficit, and accordingly interest rates will soar and the stock market will drop; if they effect the mass deportations of illegal aliens he has promised, certain sectors of our economy dependent on illegal labor will crater, materially adversely affecting the entire economy; and that if they obtain the control over the Federal Reserve Mr. Trump seeks, global confidence in the dollar will plummet along with its value and hasten its abandonment as the world’s reserve currency.

For clues as to whether the MAGA Administration will be willing, contrary to my deepest misgivings, to allow for a free and fair 2028 election, an early indication will be how the Administration approaches issues that do matter to Trump voters. Ones coming to mind are the conservative shibboleths of a nationwide abortion ban, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts (there are a lot of Trump voters who benefit from Medicaid), and repeal of the now-popular Affordable Care Act without an essentially-like replacement. In these areas, Mr. Trump, even in his obviously mentally and emotionally degraded state, is cannier than his doctrinaire followers. If he or his MAGA cohort truly intend to subject their hold on power to the free will of all American citizens in 2028, they will abstain from any actions that they know will outrage their base. A more ominous indicator of any anti-democratic intentions they may harbor will arise, if at all, after the 2026 mid-terms, if MAGA propaganda starts to stoke unfounded fears of civil unrest or insurrection.

I fear that those who love American democracy as it has existed for more than two centuries will look back at November 5, 2024, and Inauguration Day, 2025, as the darkest days in American history; I fear that those who may have voted for Mr. Trump because they feel disrespected or afraid have administered a supposed cure to our body politic that will ultimately prove extraordinarily more lethal than the ailments it was intended to address. In all fairness, what will transpire after Mr. Trump reassumes office in January is yet to be seen. At least one very close friend for whom I have the highest regard believes that my concerns about Mr. Trump and his MAGA cohort are WAY overblown. That said, although I respect the outcome of a free and fair election and understand that the purposes of the Almighty are beyond my comprehension, I can’t help but be heartsick – for us, for the Ukrainians, and for all who for centuries nurtured the dream of America. If MAGAs do begin to effect a repressive society with fascist echoes, it will then be up to each of us to decide how – while acting peacefully within the bounds of law, morals, and ethics — we respond.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”

Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860; Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s.

What will be, will be.

On the Power of Faith

[As always, please excuse my use of male pronouns when referring to a Supreme Being without gender.]

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln regularly pondered the irony that two sets of peoples were fervently praying to the same Deity for diametrically opposed ends. In September, 1862, he wrote:

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for, and against, the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something quite different from the purpose of either party – yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose.” [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s]

In a letter to a friend on September 4, 1864, Mr. Lincoln wrote:

“The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. … God knows best … We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains.”

Finally, in his March, 1865, Second Inaugural Address, delivered on the cusp of what had become an overwhelmingly-likely Union victory, Mr. Lincoln noted the aspect that faith was playing in the conflict:

“Both [Union and Confederate adherents] read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

For someone who has been so viscerally engaged in our current electoral struggle, I find myself, if not serene, with at least a level of equanimity as we contemplate today’s uncertain outcome. I have realized that it is because I believe – as Mr. Lincoln held – that God knows best. What follows is the passage we chose as our wedding Gospel so many decades ago and has since been included in each of our children’s wedding celebrations:

“Therefore, I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. … Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they?

… Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which flourishes today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith?

Therefore, do not be anxious … But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice ….”

Matthew, 6:25-26, 28-31, 33

As this Election Day unfolds, I know what I think is the best way forward for our country; but about half of my fellow citizens feel just as strongly to the contrary. I have frequently referred in these pages to what I consider to be our struggle to maintain democracy; yet it cannot be forgotten that the peaceful expressions of different views are the essence of a democracy. Given these circumstances, I feel fortunate – nae, blessed – to have the consolation of my faith. Today, I am confining my prayers to this: that the Almighty bring about the victory of the presidential candidate who will do the most good for our nation, our children, our grandchildren, and – given our geopolitical, financial, and military standing in the world – who will provide the most good for all of His people of the earth.

If you haven’t yet voted, quit reading this and go vote. If you have voted, it’s time to sit back and embrace what has been, for over two centuries, the most magnificent expression of public will in the history of the world.

Pre-Election Notions

As all who care are aware, over the weekend the highly respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released results of its last Iowa poll taken October 28-31, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris – who in all of the organization’s previous polls since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee had trailed former President Donald Trump in a state he won in both 2016 and 2020 – had edged 3 points ahead of the former president. Even more intriguing was the poll’s finding that Ms. Harris’ strongest Iowa demographic group was women 65 and older, in which she held a whopping 2:1 lead over Mr. Trump. I find the results particularly noteworthy since there are a lot of Evangelicals in Iowa.

To start with the most glaringly obvious: winning a presidential election is a matter of math — how many votes a candidate gets, and where the candidate gets them. Although I’m confident that Ms. Harris would like to claim Iowa’s 6 Electoral College (EC) votes, the poll may be more important for what it indicates might happen elsewhere.

Although it will take some states, such as Georgia, days to reach a final vote tally – and thus, during those days, the outcome of the election could remain uncertain – I would suggest if we knew definitively on Election night the final results of all states east of the Mississippi River, we’d probably have a pretty good idea who our next president will be. I’ll even go so far as to venture that if we definitively knew the results along the Atlantic seaboard, those alone might provide us a fairly firm indication as to the final outcome.

Take Ms. Harris first. Commentators – including me 😉 – have gone on ad nauseam about her surest path to an Electoral College victory being the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. However, this presupposes that Ms. Harris claims all of the states carried by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. Since the “Blue Wall” path gets her to exactly the necessary majority of 270 Electoral College votes, if she unexpectedly loses even a pretty tiny New England EC state, such as New Hampshire or Maine, she’ll need to win one of the swing states now seemingly favoring Mr. Trump to reach 270, even if the Blue Wall comes in for her.

Conversely, as to Mr. Trump: since the 2000 Bush-Gore electoral debacle, I understand that Florida has sharpened its electoral processes such that it can now report its results reasonably promptly. As of the time this is typed, 538 has Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by a comfortable 6.7 points, but there are a lot of women over 65 and Latinos (remember the Trump Madison Square Garden rally) in Florida. Although Mr. Trump’s path to the presidency becomes significantly narrower if he is somehow loses Florida, perhaps more realistic Election Night scenarios from which Ms. Harris might draw reassurance would be if prognosticators consider the Florida race too close to call for an extended period, or if Mr. Trump’s margin of Florida victory is significantly smaller than now forecast. Either of these scenarios might well be an early indicator that Ms. Harris will do well in the Blue Wall states and have a better chance than now anticipated to claim either North Carolina or Georgia. As I’ve also noted here repeatedly, if she does eke out either North Carolina or Georgia, she can afford to lose either Michigan or Wisconsin and still win the presidency.

I understand that the Trump Campaign and the alt-right media silo have been constantly spreading the message that Mr. Trump’s victory is overwhelmingly likely. Let me join those observing that such is a transparent tactic to condition MAGAs to blindly accept the Trump team’s claims of voter fraud that will inevitably begin immediately if the former president loses the election. Likewise, Mr. Trump has recently ranted on his social media site about election fraud in Pennsylvania. Let me also join the chorus who have observed that such is a clear indicator that Mr. Trump is worried that Pennsylvanians are trending toward Ms. Harris.

President Joe Biden was asked some time ago whether he thought our election processes were fair and accurate, and whether he thought violence might ensue in the election’s wake. He replied that he was confident that our election processes would be fair and accurate, but he wouldn’t offer a firm opinion as to whether violence might result as the results were announced. I obviously agree with the President as to the integrity of our electoral processes – only the willingly gullible can think otherwise – and time will tell whether or not there will be violence after the winner is declared. I would offer that if Ms. Harris is declared the winner after all legal votes are tallied, Mr. Trump’s supporters might be less likely to riot than in 2020 because they will be acutely aware that unlike 2020, Mr. Biden is the Commander in Chief in charge of the National Guard and the U.S. Military.

At the same time, I consider the likelihood of election interference by swing state Republican officials, now fully immersed in MAGA election propaganda, at least a great a risk to Ms. Harris’ presidential bid as losing the vote. Taking Wisconsin as an example: If Ms. Harris wins the state’s popular vote after the initial tally, I do not consider it beyond if the state’s rabid MAGA-controlled legislature to adopt some rationale to disallow a significant number of votes in a Harris stronghold such as Dane County (Madison), in an attempt to award Mr. Trump Wisconsin’s 10 EC votes. (To be fair: I have no fears about Georgia. GA Gov. Brian Kemp and GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger proved their mettle the last time, and they must each privately personally detest Mr. Trump. If they declare that Mr. Trump won Georgia, I’ll believe it. 🙂 )

I have commented in different earlier posts that no matter what I might think about other aspects of former Vice Presidents Dick Cheney’s and Mike Pence’s respective conduct of their Vice Presidencies, I will always mentally qualify my assessments of them by noting that on the most important issue of their and our time, each got it right. On the other hand, last week former Green Bay Quarterback and Hall of Famer Brett Favre spoke at a Trump rally in Wisconsin. It is the latest of a series of disreputable incidents in which he has been involved since the end of his Packer playing days. I will always have a bifurcated view Mr. Favre – the division between the truly incredible athlete and competitor … and the person he has shown himself to be.

I mentioned in an earlier note that Ms. Harris had been looking tired. In the last couple of weeks – perhaps from the adrenaline she’s felt from being electorally on the upswing – she has looked revitalized, vibrant. On the other hand, it is now Mr. Trump that seems spent – perhaps not unexpected given his 78 years. Although I thought that Mr. Trump would fade away if he was defeated in 2020, I do not think it is unreasonable to suppose that if Mr. Trump is defeated this time, we will dispense with him personally, although the MAGA movement has now unfortunately grown deep-enough roots that it will survive him. Another MAGA Messiah will emerge, although I haven’t yet seen a potential successor with the former president’s animal charisma.

In a couple of previous posts, I have likened this campaign to an NFL game. In recent days, a different image has entered my mind, perhaps arising from what I consider Ms. Harris’ and Democrats’ Herculean efforts on behalf of our democracy. It is from one of our daughter’s high school swim meets. (This is, mind you, a distant memory; our daughter has been a practicing psychologist for over 15 years 🙂 ). In that meet’s last event, a relay, a teammate of our daughter swimming one of the first “legs” had difficulty such that by the time the relay got to the last leg – always swum by a team’s “anchor,” the strongest swimmer of a team’s relay quartet — the other team’s anchor was half a lap ahead – a quarter of the leg’s entire distance — by the time our team’s anchor even hit the water. Although the other swimmer’s lead looked insurmountable, our anchor was an extraordinary swimmer and competitor; she launched in, and took off. With every stroke, she closed the gap. We spectators, starting to collect our things to depart, at first called out support in moderate tones for what appeared an obvious lost cause; but then, as the gap closed — as the two swimmers hit the turn, and started back, one ahead, then the other, steadily closing — we stood, and started yelling; by the end – as what was initially a yawning chasm between the two young women unbelievably narrowed, and narrowed, and narrowed, as they strove to reach the pool wall, the impossible suddenly seeming possible — all were screaming and jumping. It wasn’t clear until the last yard – the last second – who would win.

We’ll see what happens. If I post at all tomorrow – and I appreciate your bearing with me if you have waded through this series of lengthy missives as we passed these many days to our election outcome — it will be from a different perspective. That said, all who read these pages are aware that I am a West Wing fanatic. My Twitter feed recently included a reference to a recent book event at which Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet in the television series, spoke. The video is poor, but stay with this clip. As the link indicates, Mr. Sheen, as undoubtedly was planned, first reads an assortment of snippets of Bartlet dialog crafted by series creator Aaron Sorkin over the years; but at the end, Mr. Sheen closes the binder and for a golden minute, he again is Bartlet. As we look with hope at an uncertain electoral outcome, it seems fitting to conclude with inspiration from our greatest fictional president.

Queen Leigh 🥥🌴 on X: “Martin Sheen concluding 6th & I West Wing event with a sort of Bartlet pastiche of Sorkin speeches—and then he closes the book and *becomes* Jed Bartlet, speaking from the heart. It’s pretty cool. https://t.co/JZzl9TTXzU” / X

Wisconsin May Be Ground Zero … Again: a Postscript

After the last post – in which I indicated that today’s Packers/Lions game would provide us in Wisconsin a brief respite from election obsession — a very close friend of over 50 years – a Chicago Bear fan, to boot – pointed out to me the error in my thinking: “This game is providing probably the most compelling political turf during the final minutes of this nail-biter election. The NFL ad space between two of the NFL’s hottest teams will provide not just an audience in two of the critically contested states with a great demographic (politically) but a great national audience as well.”

He is of course right (sigh 😉 ). Although I record Packer games, and may well record this one, my conscience as a citizen won’t allow me to fast-forward through the commercials, as I normally do; indeed, if – perish the thought – Green Bay loses, I’ll probably fast-forward through the game, and only watch the political commercials 🙂 .

Our friend also wondered what I thought the respective campaigns’ ad themes might be for today’s game. We’ll soon know; their choices will obviously be data driven, intended to micro-target specific voter segments. I’m guessing that the Trump team will pound inflation and immigration, weighting the former over the latter. [The MAGAs already have all of the votes of all of the Midwest citizens who are truly worried that the illegals are coming to take them away (Ha-Haa 😉 ). It may well feel that it needs to make a final pitch to young women on tight budgets who find former President Donald Trump personally repellent]. Without the benefit of data, if advising the Harris Campaign my instinct would be to target women and young males of color. Although Vice President Kamala Harris prefers an uplifting message, negative ads have for decades been proven the most effective, and we’re now down to the figurative final minutes of the campaign. I’d recommend that the Harris team pound the loss of women’s reproductive rights wrought by Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court appointments (and raise the augur of the likelihood of further MAGA reproductive restrictions if he is re-elected), use “permission” ads aimed at the moderately conservative women repulsed by Mr. Trump (my favorite is in the link below), and an ad depicting a montage of last weekend’s Trump Rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, with the so-called comedian at referring to Puerto Rico as floating garbage and referencing watermelon with an African American and Mr. Trump’s reported reference to American citizens as the “enemy within.” [I’d like to include an ad combining clips of Mr. Trump declaring on January 6, 2021, that his supporters had to “fight like hell” or they wouldn’t have a country any more together with clips of the ensuing Capitol riot, but I would guess that the case against Mr. Trump on this issue has already been established with citizens (like me) most motivated by these appeals.]

An ad I’d make room for:

Lebron James’ recent Twitter endorsement of Ms. Harris. The link is below.

https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1852093996350275595

An Ad I would like to see:

Clips of Mr. Trump calling immigrants vermin, mocking the handicapped, and telling his supporters to beat up demonstrators at his rallies, followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has endorsed Ms. Harris) talking into the camera: “Bullies are not strong. They are weak. I’m voting for Kamala Harris. You should, too.”

An ad that I wish existed, and would run repeatedly if it existed (but if there was any prospect it was coming, the story would be too big; we’d already know about it):

Former President George W. Bush – who, shamefully, hasn’t endorsed Ms. Harris despite the fact that all are aware that he detests Mr. Trump – talking into the camera:

“When you elected me I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. My oath didn’t end when I left the oval office. Country over party. I’ve voting for Kamala Harris, and you should too.”

The latest game odds I saw favor the Lions by 2.5 points over the Packers. I would have thought that Detroit would be favored by more, even in Lambeau Field. To win, the Green and Gold need to play close to error-free football – which has not been starting Quarterback Jordan Love’s tendency this season – and win the turnover battle by at least two. That said, I am confident that even the most diehard of Packer fans will agree that today’s game is not the most important contest we’ll witness this week. There has never been a time in our lifetimes in which it has been clearer that our most important colors are Red, White and Blue.