Category: U.S. Foreign Policy

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 6th 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.

Candid Advice for Ms. Harris: a Postscript

In an entry yesterday, I suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris needed to toughen her message against Mr. Trump in order to win the presidency.  A very close and very discerning woman friend of ours thereafter sent me an email, indicating that she feared that if Ms. Harris followed my recommendation, “being angry might backfire on a woman because she’d be perceived as being too emotional and ‘out of control’ to become the president.”  It did make me ponder whether, in such a razor-thin contest, Ms. Harris might alienate more potential supporters than she would gain by being more combative as I had suggested.

Today, we got an answer.  If the Vice President had had any idea of our exchange, I’d say that she had thread the needle and addressed both our friend’s and my concerns.

As all who care are aware, retired Marine Corps. General John Kelly, the longest-serving Chief of Staff in the Trump Administration, has within recent days gone on record with the New York Times stating that Mr. Trump meets the definition of “fascist.”  Below is a link to a short speech Ms. Harris gave today in the wake of Mr. Kelly’s remarks.  I would submit that the extremely grave tone she struck was perfect for the message – neither plaintive, nor too strident — the tone of a president addressing us about a true crisis.  The three-minute length was perfect:  short enough that any media outlet that wishes to air it can do so in its entirety.  Two notes she made particularly resonated with me:  first, without undue emphasis she recast her reference to Mr. Trump’s allusions to the “enemy within” to include anyone who might disagree with the former president, not just government officials or journalists; second, she employed the ultimate word about Mr. Trump (while being able to correctly attribute the characterization to Mr. Kelly):  fascist.   

I don’t know how many voters’ sympathies can be shifted in the days culminating on November 5; I will affirm that I consider Ms. Harris’ efforts today to be pitch-perfect.

CALL TO ACTIVISM on X: “If you watch one video today and decide to share it with others, let it be THIS three minute speech by Kamala Harris over the latest bombshell by Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, former General John Kelly.   Trump is Hitler is trending because that’s who he admires. https://t.co/3BaR9jZzeb” / X

A Compliment for Mr. Trump; a Warning from Mr. Shakespeare

On October 8th, the panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe went on at length about the fact that former President Donald Trump is seemingly veering out of control on the stump, reporting that Trump insiders indicate that the former President isn’t listening to the advice from his campaign counselors, and chortling that contrary to the advice from such advisors – who believe that effectively exploiting economic issues will bring the former President victory in November — Mr. Trump is instead doubling down on his lies and rhetoric of hate and racism against migrants.

While I’m just an old retired blogger and these are an array of seasoned political analysts, I think that as loathsome as his tactics are, Mr. Trump’s instincts are strategically right and his advisors and the pundits are wrong.  Not long ago, a close friend texted me about an observation that James Carville, formerly President Bill Clinton’s key political strategist, had made about Pennsylvania (seemingly likely to be the pivotal 2024 Electoral College state):  That between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, it’s Alabama.  In what both sides clearly consider a turnout election rather than a persuasion election, Mr. Trump – either cognitively or viscerally – seems to recognize that to win the state he needs to motivate the low-propensity Trump supporters in the small, picturesque but mostly destitute communities in the expanses between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  For Mr. Trump to instead try to convince moderately conservative suburban Philadelphia and Pittsburgh women – who are probably personally repulsed by him, who probably aren’t feeling inflationary pressure, and who have watched their stock portfolios soar during the four years of the Biden Administration – that they should vote for him because of a bad economy, seems a longer stretch.  Better to play on impoverished Trump supporters’ natural fears and biases.  As Adolf Hitler noted in Mein Kampf:  “Faith is harder to shake than knowledge … Hate is more enduring than aversion.”        

That said, if Mr. Trump is defeated – although right now, I fear that the Vice President’s campaign is flagging a bit — my instinct is that it won’t be because of his stands on most substantive issues; I would submit that aside from his clearly unpopular positioning on abortion (which he knows is hurting him, and he keeps trying to run away from), if the former President loses it will be because of his gargantuan and – crucially – blatantly obvious personal moral defects:  the narcissism, the self-aggrandizement, the transparent lying, the sexual predation, the adultery, the pettiness, the instability, the greed, the conniving, the overt racism (as contrasted with subtle racism, which much of America unfortunately seems to accept); in a word, his amorality.  To anyone who retains common sensibilities – even among some who may end up voting for him despite his evident failings — he’s … distasteful.

I think most scholars agree – with all due respect to many others across many forms of endeavor – that English playwright and poet William Shakespeare has been the most effective wielder of the English language in human history.  Mr. Shakespeare built his tragedies around seemingly formidable figures, such as Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear, who were subject to a “tragic flaw” – a trait that ultimately led to the protagonist’s downfall.  (The fictional Hamlet is highly insightful, but his ability to see all sides causes him to be indecisive, to hesitate when he should act.)  I would submit that Mr. Trump’s ability to draw from inside himself to release Americans’ basest instincts – openly declaring and giving license to what millions of others were clearly feeling, but realized that they should repress, and did not theretofore give voice to – fueled his rise and has maintained his prominence; but at the same time I would suggest that if he loses in November, it will have been his own obvious amorality, rather than any substantive policy position (possibly save abortion), to be the “tragic flaw” that will have caused his ruin.  (Note:  in the Shakespearean lexicon, a flaw was considered “tragic” because it led to the downfall of the character.  If Mr. Trump’s amorality does repel a sufficient number of voters that he loses, such will be tragic for him, but constitute salvation – or at least a reprieve — for our republic.)

But what if the next MAGA messiah – and there will be one – isn’t so obviously personally flawed?  While those who wish to protect our democracy need to focus today on beating Mr. Trump and MAGA Vice Presidential Nominee U.S. OH Sen. J.D. Vance, the very fact that Mr. Trump, despite all of his personal baggage, currently retains at least an even chance to win the presidency means we cannot delude ourselves that even an unassailable Harris victory next month – although it may mean the end of Mr. Trump’s political career – will be the end of the MAGA movement or quench the dark passions within our citizenry which Mr. Trump has unleashed. 

I fear that even if Mr. Trump loses, what comes next may be every bit as toxic but harder to contest.  By all accounts, Mr. Vance won the recent Vice Presidential Candidate Debate.  He didn’t do so because of sterling reasoning or better policy positions [he certainly continued his lies about the Springfield, OH Haitian immigrants being illegal (they’re legal) and claimed that during his presidency, Mr. Trump tried to save the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act (a whopper that anyone with the sense of a goose could see through)], but because the television camera loves style.  Mr. Vance, notwithstanding his lies, appeared smooth and of pleasant demeanor throughout.  He didn’t look crazy; he didn’t look “weird”; he didn’t look threatening; he came across as normal and sane while espousing the same positions and spewing the same lies that Mr. Trump does.  This is terribly dangerous.

I read Hillbilly Elegy in 2016.  Mr. Vance is without doubt an intelligent and insightful man who sometime over the last eight years decided that he was willing to sacrifice principle in return for power and prominence.  (Recall Mr. Trump himself noted in September, 2022, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad.”)  If Ms. Harris defeats Mr. Trump, the day after the inauguration Mr. Vance will be the leading candidate for the 2028 MAGA Presidential nomination.

So what happens perhaps four years from now, when the hypothetically incumbent President Harris seeks reelection while being lambasted daily by alt-right propaganda, facing latent and overt sexism and racism, and carrying the weight of eight years of Democratic incumbency?  When she faces a MAGA – we can now picture him – perhaps a white Christian married family man who appears stable, intelligent, reasonable, not self-aggrandizing and seemingly committed to positions larger than himself, a slyer liar than Mr. Trump and not greedy, not an adjudged sexual assaulter, not an adulterer, not a convicted felon, who will if elected set out to enact (more efficiently than Mr. Trump ever could) the policies set forth in Mandate for Leadership:  The Conservative Promise (Project 2025)?

If that time comes – although right now, those who believe in democracy need to be focused on winning this election – let’s refer again to The Bard to sum up the challenge we will then face: 

“[M]eet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain …”

  • William Shakespeare:  Hamlet; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

The Fifth Election

We’ve just returned from a trip to the United Kingdom; amid the many wonderful experiences we had during our stay, by far the most arresting for me – no surprise to anyone who reads these pages – was a visit to the Churchill War Rooms and the Churchill Museum in London.  (TLOML had to finally drag me out, noting that we were in danger of missing a tour we had paid for 🙂 ).  Certain aspects of our trip are well worthy of a post at some point in the future, but reviewing the War Rooms and Museum exhibits setting forth the details of the fascist danger that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people confronted alone from mid-1940 until the end of 1941 – the period after the Nazis overran Europe until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor finally brought isolationist members of Congress to support America’s entry into the war – is causing me to straightforwardly repeat here what I have indicated in the past:  I perceive former President Donald Trump and his MAGA cohort to be a fascist threat to our way of life.  I thought that if the former president was defeated in 2020, the spell he had cast over so many of our citizens would dissipate.  Given the support he maintains despite his manifest unfitness for office, it would seem that that spell is even more intensely entrenched now than it was four years ago.

You who honor me by reviewing these posts are acutely aware of the many (and frequently wordy 😉 ) notes I have entered here.  That said, if I was to list five entries set forth in these pages for which I have the most regard, “The Fourth Election,” which I posted in two parts in June, 2020, would certainly be among them.  Its thrust was that the need to defeat Mr. Trump in the then-upcoming 2020 election was as critical to preserving the American life as the elections of 1788 (George Washington), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln) and 1932 (Franklin Roosevelt).  I generally feel that I am “cheating” a bit if I quote a previous post to make a substantive point in a subsequent post, but in this instance, I can’t say it better the second time than I did the first.  What follows are excerpts from “The Fourth Election,” edited only to clarify references.  All emphasized text was emphasized in the original.  (I hadn’t initially recalled that it included the longest litany of Mr. Trump’s personality failings that I have ever put together 😉 ).  While, given its publication date, there is obviously no reference to Mr. Trump’s subsequent lying denial of his 2020 election defeat, nor to his subsequent seditious instigation of an attack on our Capitol, nor to the Project 2025 document (which, despite his denials, his actions in his last months in office make manifestly clear that he will implement if he is reelected), this 2020 post’s observations now seem prescient, given the glaring demonstrations we have seen since its posting of the authoritarian dangers a second Trump presidency will present.

The Fourth Election

…

On February 5, 2020, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the United States Senate at the conclusion of his [first] impeachment trial.  Two days after the acquittal, President Trump removed from their respective positions European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondlund and Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, two witnesses whose undisputedly truthful testimony implicated the President in a scheme to pressure a vital but vulnerable ally for his own domestic political purposes.  Four days after the acquittal, the United States Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, said that it was reducing the sentence it was recommending for convicted Trump confidante Roger Stone – described by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon during Mr. Stone’s trial as an “access point” to Russia conduit Wikileaks for the Trump Campaign — after the President tweeted that the 7-9 year term initially recommended by DOJ was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice.”

I tend to buy books in clusters.  Largely driven by these Trump Administration actions … I went to my local bookstore to acquire specific titles that I considered appropriate supplements to my copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer:  Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy; The New Sultan, the story of Turkey’s President (and now autocratically inclined) Recip Tayyip Erdogan, by Soner Cagaptay; Fascism:  A Warning, by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and … a final selection — a volume generally available, but a title that causes you to lower your voice when requesting:  Mein Kampf (in English, “My Struggle”), by Adolf Hitler.

At my last request, the young woman with whom I’d been working glanced up at me a bit sharply, then relaxed; apparently – thankfully — I look like a researcher, not a believer.  She located Hitler’s opus, glanced at the price, added it to my pile, and observed sympathetically, “That’s a lot for such trash.”  Then she added:  “My Dad says I shouldn’t wear this necklace out like this.”  I hadn’t previously noticed, but saw then:  at the base of her neck was a small Star of David. 

That is where we are today.  Throughout President Trump’s term, we have seen countless instances of his deliberately sowing seeds of division among us, his lying, racism, religious bigotry, sexism, xenophobia, bullying, instability, narcissism, erraticism, avarice, pettiness, and flouting of norms, rules, and laws, his virulent attacks on the principled who disagree with him, a free press, and free speech, and his collaboration with foreign enemies for his own ends.  Even so, never seriously did I contemplate the potential for his dictatorial inclinations until – after he was acquitted in the Senate — he dismissed Messrs. Vindman and Sondlund and meddled in Mr. Stone’s sentencing.  Since that time, the Justice Department has sought to drop its prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn (after Mr. Flynn twice pled guilty), Mr. Trump has dismissed four Inspectors General (dismissals U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney called “a threat to accountable democracy”), he has issued an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship after Twitter added corrective links to his completely unsubstantiated tweeted claims of fraud related to mail-in voting, he has called upon the nation’s Governors to “dominate” protestors in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, and on June 1 had peaceful protestors cleared from Lafayette Square, in part through the use of chemical agents, in order to provide himself with a photo opportunity. 

The above list isn’t exhaustive, but it is indicative.  Clearly Mr. Trump has considered himself unfettered since his acquittal, and has felt free to exact revenge and pursue vendettas against those he considers to have wronged him or his entourage.  Does anyone think that Mr. Trump will be more restrained if he is re-elected?

…

Former President Barack Obama is reportedly fond of a statement by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  With all due respect to Messrs. King and Obama, I consider the sentiment poppycock.  What is right and just is not inevitable; it must be defended.  Messrs. Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, and Messrs. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur didn’t prevail in their struggles because they were right; they won because they had more troops and better weapons than the enemy.  I would submit that this is the Fourth Election in which the American way of life is at stake.  We citizens have only votes to defend the freedom this nation provides.  The existential threats [existing as of the 1788, 1860, and 1932 elections] were brought about by outside circumstances beyond the control of the Presidents called upon to address them; in this election, [Mr. Trump] is the existential threat.  His presidency has revealed both the strength and fault lines within our system of government. 

…

Although perhaps those that read these posts are already aware of this, it is nonetheless worth noting that Messrs. Hitler, Putin, and Erdogan all first assumed their leadership positions by Constitutional means in what were then actual democracies; none had to overthrow an established order before beginning their accumulation of control over their respective nations.  While I draw a measure of solace from the manner in which [former Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper and [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark] Milley have recently distanced themselves and the military from Mr. Trump’s Lafayette Park stunt – one can’t be an autocrat without an army – there are plenty of other Defense Secretary candidates and Generals from whom Mr. Trump can choose from if he is re-elected.  I have seen a number of pundits suggest that Mr. Trump’s presidency is “over.”  I suggest that we need be watchful, lest his dictatorship start.

In normal times, I consider politics to be the “sports page” of world affairs:  Who’s winning, who’s losing, who might employ what strategy.  Today, in the United States of America, politics is where the substantive battle to protect our way of life will be fought.  Although the ammunition in this contest must remain ballots, the struggle to protect the ideals upon which this nation was founded is every bit as much at issue in the current campaign as it is on Ukrainian lands.  The political exchanges we will see over the next two months – and given our experience with the 2020 Election, perhaps all the way to Inauguration Day – will determine whether the American experiment in democracy survives.

Joe Biden Can Have the Last Word

First, an aside regarding Vice President and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris’ selection of a running mate.  Reports are that Ms. Harris intends to make her selection in the near future, and of course the Noise, probably foolishly, wishes to get in its two cents before she does.

She should name PA Gov. Josh Shapiro, 51, as her running mate.  I have never seen Mr. Shapiro speak, but it’s seemingly by far the wisest choice based upon reputation and Electoral College math.  Mr. Shapiro is reportedly very popular in Pennsylvania, and the Keystone State, with its 19 Electoral College votes, is the one upper Midwestern “Blue Wall” state for which Democrats have no effective counter if they lose [i.e., Ms. Harris could lose Michigan (15) if she wins Georgia or North Carolina (each 16, although both are obviously more difficult electoral challenges for her than Michigan) and could lose Wisconsin (10) if she wins Arizona (11; again, admittedly a longer political stretch.)]  An additional plus is that Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas.  Without getting into the substance of what our Israel-Hamas policy should be, I would suggest that a Harris-Shapiro ticket would allow the Democrats to have it both ways:  Ms. Harris, who looks (although she is not) a bit Middle Eastern, can declare that Israel has the right to defend itself while expressing concern about Palestinian civilians while Mr. Shapiro loudly proclaims Israel’s right to defend itself.

[The swing state theory outlined above could also suggest Ms. Harris’ selection of NC Gov. Roy Cooper as a running mate; I’m not as keen on Gov. Cooper since his age (67) would blunt Democrats’ sudden youth advantage against former President and MAGA Nominee Donald Trump and I think Mr. Cooper’s presence on the Democratic ticket would be significantly less likely to secure North Carolina against Mr. Trump than Mr. Shapiro’s will to win Pennsylvania.]

Now, on to the delicious irony that by withdrawing from the presidential campaign, President Joe Biden now holds perhaps a decisive opportunity to cap over half a century of service to America.  I have often suggested in these pages that the outcome of this election – i.e., the future of our democracy — will not be decided by the rabid bases of either party but by the mostly suburban moderate Republicans and conservative independents in the swing states who are disturbed by Mr. Trump’s undemocratic inclinations, erratic impulses and hateful passions but, according to apparently all polling, were even more concerned before the President stepped aside about his physical capability to lead us for another four years.  I would submit that these voters, despite the alt-right propaganda machine’s best efforts to demonize Mr. Biden, think of the President as a fine man, a good guy who means what he says, who is now simply too old to carry the burdens of the presidency for another four years.

Mr. Biden has steadfastly maintained until this past weekend that he was the best positioned Democrat to bring about Mr. Trump’s defeat in November.  He might not have been then.  He is now.

The accolades that have poured in for the President since he announced his withdrawal as a patriot who has placed the good of country over his personal ambition are indications that Mr. Biden has transformed himself overnight, among the decisive moderate segment of our electorate, from doddering power seeker into America’s Eminence Grise (“Gray Eminence”) – its wise advisor.  These moderates may or may not agree with all of Mr. Biden’s policies, but I doubt that they’re notably concerned about his mental acuity today and I would suggest that his credibility with these people as both the sitting President of the United States and one wishes what is best for our his people – who now has nothing personally to gain by what he says – has likely never been higher than it will be for the remainder of his term.

One of the great fears of the Kennedy Campaign in 1960 was that the Nixon Campaign would have then President Dwight Eisenhower – the leader of our victorious forces in Europe during World War II, then finishing eight years as president in which he presided over our nation’s 1950s economic boom, and significantly more popular with Americans than either man campaigning to replace him – stump for his Vice President, Richard Nixon.  Although Mr. Eisenhower was reportedly willing to campaign – he apparently deeply resented John Kennedy’s criticism of his record — he never went on the road, because the Nixon Campaign never asked.  In campaign post-mortems, accounts varied as to why Mr. Eisenhower wasn’t more effectively deployed.  Mr. Nixon maintained that he didn’t want to overly stress Mr. Eisenhower, who had suffered a heart attack during his presidency (and at 70, was considered pretty old 😉 ); others suggested that Mr. Nixon, chafing at having had little influence during his eight years as Vice President, wanted to win the presidency on his own.  Either way, Mr. Eisenhower’s absence from the campaign trail was arguably a pivotal factor in Mr. Nixon’s narrow defeat.

I am confident that Ms. Harris will want Mr. Biden on the road.  I am equally confident that Mr. Biden will want to be on the road.  This promises to be a quiet six months on the world stage.  Russian President Vladimir Putin (with the prospect that a Trump presidency that will ease if not ensure his takeover of Ukraine), Chinese President Xi Jinping (with the prospect that an isolationist Trump presidency will ease his takeover of Taiwan), Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (undoubtedly cognizant that Mr. Biden, free of political ramifications, might, if provoked, use American power to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability), and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un (who is well aware that his nation will fare better with Mr. Trump, a gullible fool, as president and likely also fearful that Mr. Biden, free of political restraints, might act to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capacity) are all unlikely to do anything provocative.  Clearly, absent bipartisan measures that might be required to address a domestic disaster such as hurricane damage, no legislation will pass Congress.

Mr. Biden is more fluent, a more effective speaker, when he speaks from the heart, and now free of the responsibilities of leading a campaign, relieved of the awareness that any gaffes he makes on the stump will be the entire focus of a ravenous media, I expect him to pull out all stops.  He needs to hold nothing back; he has the rest of his life after January 20, 2025, to relax and enjoy his family.  Wrapped in the trappings of the presidency and the aura of a man who has been willing to put country ahead of personal gain, I would submit that his declarations about what another Trump presidency will mean for America will carry tremendous, possibly decisive, weight with moderates.  While only the Vice President can assure undecideds that she is qualified for the presidency, I predict that Mr. Biden will be the Vice President’s most effective surrogate, will be a more effective cajoler of swing state swing voters than Ms. Harris herself.

If Mr. Biden does enthusiastically engage in the campaign as I anticipate he will, and if Ms. Harris does win the presidency, Mr. Biden’s last contributions to our nation will have been to protect democracy and lay the path for our first woman president.  In my view, he will already go down as our most important president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  However, speaking as one old Irishman about another, perhaps none of these achievements will be as sweet for him as the knowledge that he did, indeed, have the last word; that he beat Donald Trump one more time.     

2024 Presidential Electoral Maxims and Realities

I have been somewhat taken aback by Democrats’ hemming and hawing about whether President Joe Biden should continue his candidacy against former President Donald Trump in the wake of what, by all accounts, was a disastrous debate performance on June 27.  For those who believe both that the President’s campaign has sprung a fatal leak and that the fate of our democracy depends upon defeating Mr. Trump, such dilly-dallying is inexplicable.  I’ve been considering a number of maxims I accept in reflecting whether I was too hasty when I declared in these pages after the debate that he should step aside.  Let’s review them.

If they’re talking about Biden, Trump is winning.  If they’re talking about Trump, Biden is winning.  Right now, they’re talking about Mr. Biden’s age, frailty, and acuity.  They’re not talking about Mr. Trump.  Progressive pundits keep declaring that attention should not be centered on Mr. Biden but instead upon Mr. Trump’s evident authoritarian and aberrant inclinations.  Such assertions ignore reality.  Mr. Trump has said and done so many outrageous things over the last nine years that the public is inured to them.  To think that the former president will say something between now and Election Day that will materially affect the trajectory of the race is simply Woke naiveté.  

The first party to break out of the “Double Hater” (a media description for the majority of Americans who polls indicate don’t want either man for the next four years) Paradigm will win the White House.  By rejecting former SC Gov. and U.N. U.S. Amb. Nikki Haley, the Republicans have already blundered away (or were bullied out of) their opportunity to present voters a fresh face.  Now, it’s the Democrats’ turn – one way or the other.  We’re conditioned by our commercial culture to be attracted to the new.  The public interest and excitement that would be generated by a different Democratic nominee cannot be overstated.  The day before he went to prison 🙂 , the Washington Post quoted Trump advisor Steve Bannon:  “Trump’s [presidential debate victory] was a Pyrrhic victory. … [If Mr. Biden withdraws] [y]ou’re going to take out a guy [we] know [we] can beat … and we’re going to have a wild card.”

 A vote for anyone except Biden is a vote for Trump.  The election will not be decided by the bases of either party.  It will be determined by the votes of swing state undecideds.  If those who detest Mr. Trump but consider Mr. Biden physically unable to serve another four years decide to either vote for a third party candidate or stay home, Mr. Trump wins.

Democrats have the more popular side in most of the substantive issues now facing the country.  Apparently true; in the abortion issue, Mr. Trump’s offhand comments about revising Social Security and Medicare, his obvious past kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his obvious incitement of the January 6th insurrection seem to provide Democrats an extremely strong hand to persuade decisive swing state swing voters that the former president is morally, substantively, and intellectually unfit to serve another term.  (Democrats arguably even have the means to blunt Republicans’ potent immigration thrusts by noting that Mr. Trump publicly took credit for scuttling a bipartisan immigration bill.)  But this only underscores the President’s weakness as a standard bearer because polls uniformly indicate that he is losing.

The most important last:  former President Bill Clinton’s oft-stated observation:  Elections are about the future.  Mr. Biden keeps talking about what a good job he has done.  Even so, those who appreciate what he’s done are understandably focused on where we go from here.  (Recall that less than three months after the Allies defeated the Nazis, the British people voted out Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Conservative Party, believing the Labor Party could better lead the United Kingdom in the postwar era.)  Even before the debate, virtually all Biden supporters whom I spoke to expressed severe reservations about his age.  (“He’s so old,” with a shrug or shudder.)  They truly doubt his ability to effectively conduct the presidency until he’s 86.  This is unlike the misgivings spawned by former President Ronald Reagan’s feeble first debate performance in 1984; in that contest, the majority of public didn’t tune in with the preconceived notion that Mr. Reagan was too old to serve another term.  Mr. Biden’s performance merely confirmed and reinforced doubts that were already there; his ability to reassure the public through subsequent appearances is accordingly significantly less than Mr. Reagan had.  I’m personally appalled by Mr. Biden’s excuses that on the most important night of the 2024 presidential campaign, he maybe had a cold, or was exhausted, or had jet lag (a week after his last trip), or didn’t follow his instincts, or whatever.  I don’t think his performance can be dismissed as one bad night – as one might a poorly-delivered stump speech among dozens of others.  The Debate was the night.  And he bombed.  It is not unreasonable for voters to want a leader who’s able to respond best when most challenged.  While Mr. Trump is also obviously slipping physically and mentally, his animated manner makes his decline less apparent to the casual observer.

Sports presents trite (in this context) yet perhaps apt allegories.  Jackie Smith is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his performance as a tight end over the 1960s and 1970s; yet all the casual football fan remembers of Mr. Smith is that he dropped an easy pass that cost the Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl XIII.  Bill Buckner had an outstanding career, with over 2,700 career hits and records for most assists by a first baseman in a season; yet all the casual fan recalls is that he let a ball roll through his legs that cost the Boston Red Sox the 1986 World Series.  Sometimes, one big event outweighs all else.  Cruel?  Certainly.  Reality?  Without doubt.

The upcoming presidential election will be decided not by diehards but by casual fans.      

Now, to the realities.

Mr. Biden has a hammerlock on the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.  While I put little credence in the President’s claims to Congressional Democrats that during the primaries, Democratic voters spoke “clearly and decisively” on his behalf – in the wake of his debate performance, I’d like to see how the President would now fare against a credible Democratic opponent – it cannot be denied, as the President also noted in his communication, that he is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.  He will be the nominee unless he voluntarily chooses to withdraw. 

You can’t replace somebody with nobody.  The best argument I have heard for the President continuing in the race is that Democrats are most likely to turn to Vice President Harris if he withdraws.  While I’m ready to be convinced otherwise, I’ve heard of no polls indicating that Ms. Harris would fare better against Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden in the swing states (her ability to run up bigger totals than Mr. Biden in deep blue states – which will show up in national polling numbers – is irrelevant.)  While I understand that any attempt to bypass Ms. Harris might trigger a revolt by the Democratic Party’s powerful constituency of color, if former President Barack Obama shares my concerns about Ms. Harris’ electability, Mr. Obama is going to have to take a hand here.  (This note is long enough without my spouting about the pros and cons of other potential Democratic nominees.  I can name at least two that I think could beat Mr. Trump in Wisconsin; for each of them, MD Gov. Wes Moore would be an excellent running mate.)

Mr. Biden is apparently choosing to pass the buck to the Lord Almighty.  During an interview with George Stephanopoulos following the debate, Mr. Biden declared, “I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”  While the President is by all accounts a man of deep faith, the rather flip nature of his comment invites a response which I – and I suspect he – heard in our youth:  “The Lord helps those who help themselves” – which I would suggest that in this context, means He expects the President to use his power of discernment to determine and take the steps which will best enable America to preserve its democracy.  In retrospect, the Biden Team’s decision to hold a debate before the Democratic Convention has unwittingly provided Democrats the opportunity to change course that would not have been evident or available otherwise.

I prefer to post on either Friday or Monday, and targeted this note for today for much of the week; I concede that I now feel a bit caddish about its timing, like I’m piling on when it is reported that quite a number of Democrats are going to call for the Mr. Biden to step aside in the near future.  That’s as may be.  I continue to believe that the President should end his candidacy.    

If Mr. Biden persists, the fate of our democracy will rest on his ability to fulfill his now-shaky pledge to defeat Donald Trump this November.  In the end, he might be right; recall that the specter of Donald Trump stilled what all forecast to be a “Red Wave” in the 2022 federal election cycle.  Although I believe that the President is a genuinely good man who means well, if he loses, the consequences of his decision to stay in the race – a decision that a close friend described to me as “pure hubris” last weekend – will fall upon all of us; but among those opposing the authoritarian impulses of Mr. Trump and his MAGA cultists, the responsibility for the destruction of our democracy will ultimately rest with Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and with him alone.

We’ll see what happens.

Mr. Biden Must Step Aside

We didn’t watch the debate.  We had an important conflict, so we recorded it, and I could have watched it by now; but the unanimous assessments of pundits across the political spectrum has made it unnecessary.  I see no need to watch a guy for whom I have genuine respect, who I think has done a really good job as president, embarrass himself.  Over the last several days, these pages joined hundred of pundits in suggesting what strategies President Joe Biden might use to debate former President Donald Trump.  He apparently didn’t effectively execute in any manner.  It doesn’t matter why it happened – I understand that the President’s apologists are claiming he had a cold – it happened. 

Describing the first – and ultimately, pivotal – 1960 debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Theodore White wrote over sixty years ago in The Making of the President 1960: 

“There was, first and above all, the crude, overwhelming impression that side by side the two seemed evenly matched – and this even matching in the popular imagination was for Kennedy a major victory. [Emphasis Added]”

By all accounts, the “crude, overwhelming impression” left with voters last night was that the 81-year-old President is not up to another four years.  It doesn’t matter if, as a number of commentators have indicated, that former President Donald Trump repeatedly lied (since I didn’t see the debate, I need to take that one on faith, but it doesn’t take a lot of faith  😉 ).  Mr. Trump will undoubtedly gain some percentage of the heretofore undecided voters dismayed by Mr. Biden’s seeming infirmity, but I am going to guess that Mr. Biden’s greater political wound will be the irretrievable loss of those swing voters who can’t stomach Mr. Trump and were as of last night’s debate willing to be convinced that Mr. Biden could serve another four years – but will now stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.  Mr. Biden needed those voters to overcome Mr. Trump’s rock-solid cultish support.  I don’t think even a bravura performance by Mr. Biden in the men’s second debate can overcome the disastrous impression left by his first performance (most commentators at the time considered the last three Kennedy-Nixon debates a draw); even if Mr. Biden does well, there will undoubtedly be the lingering suspicion in the minds of some moderate voters that maybe the President is on uppers, as the Trump Camp claims.

Democrats now face two obvious challenges: 

First, to convince a sitting President who has already secured sufficient committed delegates to secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to release his delegates, and withdraw from the race. 

I am confident that it would be hard for anyone who has experienced the power of the presidency of the United States to accept the notion that s/he needs to voluntarily step aside (particularly if one believes, as I understand the President does, that his beloved son would never have been prosecuted had he chosen to forego a second presidential campaign).  However, given the vehement and unanimous view among his supporters about the probable impact of his debate performance, the President needs to do what he’s always done – put the country first.

Second:  Whom to nominate in the President’s place:  a candidate who can hit the ground running – i.e., who already has some national presence — and defeat Mr. Trump. 

It’s clearly way too early to speculate widely on potential replacement Democratic presidential nominees.  That said, if one believes, as I do, that in the current environment no Democrat can win the White House unless s/he wins Wisconsin, it cannot be Vice President Kamala Harris.  I suspect that in the coming days, Democratic WI Gov. Tony Evers will be telling major national Democratic politicos a version of what I consider the most vital fact about Ms. Harris:  not even one of our most progressive friends living in Madison, Wisconsin – perhaps the most progressive enclave between the coasts — thinks that Ms. Harris can beat Mr. Trump in Wisconsin. 

At the same time, to win 270 Electoral College votes, Democrats must find a candidate who will secure the enthusiastic support of the African-American voters and other voters of color, whom they cannot afford to alienate through any seeming slight to Ms. Harris.

While this note seems an extremely abrupt, heartless about-face about the President, a cold-blooded dismissal of a good man who has served the American people well for over half a century, what has persuaded me without even watching the debate of Democrats’ need to seek a different nominee was the reaction this morning of MSNBC’s Morning Joe’s decidedly-liberal panel.  It was apparent that they had genuine sorrow for a fine gentleman whom they know personally and have real affection for – but now no longer believe can defeat Mr. Trump. 

Mr. Trump is still Mr. Trump.  He must be defeated.    

The only good news for Democrats – a point that I’ve seen made elsewhere – is that because this debate was so early, it’s not too late to make a course correction.  Mr. Trump remains beatable in at least the northern swing states – if the Democrats are able to unite – quickly — behind the right candidate.  They’d best get to it.

We’ll see what happens.