Month: July 2024

Precepts

There are basic precepts of foreign policy that govern “civilized” nations.  The first is called “proportional response”.  The idea is that if one Nation (or group) acts against another, the “victim” is allowed to respond in the same way.  If Country A blows up a bridge in Country B, country B can respond, maybe blowing up an airfield.  But Country A’s action doesn’t justify Country B dropping a nuclear bomb – that would be a disproportionate response. 

The second precept is – don’t “cut off the head of the snake”.  It simply means that if a Country kills the leaders of the “other side”, then who can they negotiate with?  A leadership strike only allows for an equal response and an all-out war, war that must end in the total destruction of one side or the other.  Even in the “bad old days” of the Cold War and Mutual Assured Destruction (no matter what, there would be enough bombs left to destroy the other side), killing off the opposition leaders was the last move, because it left no room for a “wiser-heads” to prevail – they would be dead.  The dark joke, “Moscow in flames, bombs on the way, film at eleven” meant that it was all over.

And the third political precept was popularized by Abraham Lincoln.  In the bloodiest days of the Civil War, the awful 1864 campaigns across Virginia from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania to Cold Harbor and finally Petersburg (over 7,600 Union troops killed, near 40,000 wounded); the Union held a Presidential election.  Lincoln asked that the Nation “not change horses in mid-stream”, and re-elect him.  In the bloody summer, it was a real question whether Lincoln or General George McClellan would be President the next year.  Only Sherman’s victory in Georgia (leading to his famous “March to the Sea”) saved Lincoln’s tenure in office.

October 7^th

On October 7^th Hamas, the group running the Palestinian Gaza region, launched a terrorist attack on Israel.  Over a thousand Israelis, mostly civilians, were massacred, many in horrific ways.  Hamas was a “quasi-national” state; governing Gaza with an iron hand, in charge of hospitals and water and trash collection; all of the “things” a government should do.  There is no question that the Israeli government needed to respond, in force, to the direct provocation.  It made sense that Israel should do whatever it could to remove those who planned the attack, and make sure that it never happened again.  It is the basic slogan of the founding of Israel after the Holocaust – Never Again!!

In the past nine months, Israel systematically destroyed Hamas assets and leaders.  According to Israeli estimates, 15,000 Hamas soldiers have been killed.  But Gaza is a tightly packed region, with over 2 million people crammed into an area the size of Las Vegas (three times the population).  And over half of the population is 18 years old or under.  Hamas estimates (and neutral sources agree) that over 40,000 Gazans have been killed.  And since half the population is 18 or under, it stands to reason that many were children. (Note:  Hamas also recruits teenagers as soldiers, so many of the 15,000 claimed by the Israelis were children as well).  

Dis-Proportional Responses

It is a question of proportional response.  Israel is leaving “no stone unturned” in its search for Hamas.  A look at the devastation seems like they’ve left few buildings still standing, either.  Legitimately Israel has a right and a duty to defend and protect its people.  But when does that action go beyond “proportional response” to simple revenge?  The theoretical difference between civilized nation-states and terrorist non-state actors is the willingness to protect civilians and enforce the  “rules” of civilized war.  Israel takes a different view.  They are willing to act as a “terrorist non-state” against Hamas, regardless of the Palestinian civilians in the way.  It’s a short term solution, which is likely to lead to a much longer term problem,  creating a whole new generation of terrorists.  

Yesterday Israel launched an attack on the “political” leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.  (Israel has not taken responsibility for this attack, yet.  Meanwhile, the military leader of Hamas is still in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar).  They identified that Haniyeh was at a home in Tehran; after celebrating the inauguration of the new President of Iran.  The Israeli’s launched a missile, killing Haniyeh in the Iranian capital.  In addition, Israel also dropped a missile on a leader of another terrorist group, Hezbollah, in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.  This was in response to a Hezbollah missile that killed a dozen teenagers when it landed on a soccer field in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.  

In essence, Israel is  “cutting off the head” of Hamas, just as negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza are showing some progress.   Which poses the question:  who does Israel expect to negotiate with, or do they want to negotiate at all?

War or Politics

Which gets us to our third precept:  changing horses in mid-stream.  The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is deeply unpopular (recent polling shows him at 36%, albeit 2% better than his opposition).  As long as Israel is deeply entangled in war, it’s unlikely that the country will hold elections.  Netanyahu has a political interest in maintaining war, and seems to be willing to risk expanding the conflict to include both an all-out war with Hezbollah, and perhaps even the nation-state Iran.

Is Netanyahu a hero, showing stern resolve against enemies of the Israeli state:  Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran?  Or is Netanyahu a political opportunist, using bloodshed and unnecessary violence to maintain his own political power?  Is he willing to risk a regional conflict, an open war with Iran?  After all, he did kill a visiting “dignitary” in the Iranian capital city.  What would the United States do if that happened in Washington?  What would Israel do if it happened in Tel Aviv?  

And the question that arises from all this: will the United States maintain its resolute support for Israel if Iran acts with a dis-proportional response to the missile-assassination?  And how does that impact the American political process?  Did Biden know, or did Trump?

It’s not just Netanyahu that is in “mid-stream”.

Hamas/Israel War

• Political Survival 7/31/24
• The Gaza Reservation             4/7/24
• Vengeance is Mine                 12/27/23
• There is No Peace                   12/4/23
• Israel, Democrats, and 2024   11/19/23
• Zero State Solution                 11/8/23
• Credible Sources                     10/31/23
• Fog of War                              10/20/23
• Truth of the Matter                10/17/23
• Updates and Sadness             10/12/23
• Deserve to Die                         10/10/23

Taking a Side

In our current “A.D.D.”, twenty-four hour news cycle age, this story is already out of date.   Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the Presidential race is truly old news (was it really only last week?).  We are now onto Harris versus Trump, a whole new “vibe” for the 2024 Presidential election.  But, before we eulogize the still alive and kicking Biden into the oblivion of “lame duckness”, there is one issue we still need to deal explore. 

There are plenty of comparisons between our present era and 1968.  They are the two times in my lifetime when America seemed totally divided by insurmountable differences.  In American history, the term “complete polarization” is often applied to three eras:  1860, 1968, and today in 2024.  It’s not a coincidence that all three were Presidential election years.  The ballot decision crystallizes the extreme choice for voters. They were/are forced to take a side:  for or against slavery and secession; for or against the Vietnam War, or for or against authoritarian leaders.

In 1860 Lincoln was elected with a minority of the popular vote (less than 40%) and on a platform to restrict slavery to the states that already allowed it.  Between the November election and the March inauguration, seven states seceded from the union.  Secessionist Edmund Ruffin fired a shell at Ft. Sumter on April 10^th: the Civil War began.

But 1968 isn’t quite as clear.  For many today, that year wasn’t taught as “history”. It was current events, subject to all of the emotion and “skin in the game” analysis without an historic perspective. So here is the “1968 story”, hidden in the “weeds” of history.

Johnson

Democratic President Lyndon Johnson ascended to the Presidency with the assassination of John Kennedy. Johnson in many ways was the diametric opposite of Kennedy.  He was a coarse Texan versus the erudite New England Kennedy, and a master of legislative politics versus Kennedy’s mastery of media image.  He could have been the perfect balance for the President, but instead, the Kennedy’s shoved him to the side once the 1960 election was over.  

When Johnson took office he kept Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest” cabinet.  He used Kennedy’s death to pass civil and voting rights legislation, something that Kennedy himself wasn’t able to do.  Johnson went on to have one of the greatest “legislative” Presidencies in history, second only to Franklin Roosevelt (and now maybe Joe Biden).  But he also maintained Kennedy’s growing intervention into the Vietnam War, expanding American forces to almost half a million troops.

Meanwhile, passing civil rights legislation did not bring racial social equality.  Black Americans were frustrated to the point that there were summer riots:  from Watts in Los Angeles to Detroit to even smaller towns like Cincinnati and Tampa.  In 1967, there were more than 150 urban riots. At the same time, there was a growing movement against the Vietnam War.  American troops were supplied by a universal draft, but the draft was “slanted”, allowing some with more education or financial resources to remain out of the military.  

Getting Clean

The US military was unable to show “progress” on the ground in Vietnam.  Like the more recent war in Afghanistan,  US forces had to “take” the same territory over and over again.  The metric of success became the “body count”; subject to falsification, and unending.  Many American students demonstrated, and college campuses were rocked by violence against the war.

The Democratic Party split, with some legislators calling for an end to the American involvement. (The Republican Party was “all in” for the Vietnam War). Additionally, the Southern faction of the Party were incensed over Johnson’s civil rights successes. In the spring of 1968, Senator Gene McCarthy of Minnesota ran as an “insurgent” for the Presidency against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.  His campaign staff had many college students, who cut their hair and gave up “Hippie-ness” to make a better impression on voters:  they “got clean for Gene”.  It also included many of President Kennedy supporters who felt that Johnson betrayed their leader’s vision.

Assassin

Johnson won the New Hampshire primary, but by less than 50%.  The strength of McCarthy’s movement pushed Senator Robert Kennedy, the President’s younger brother, who was also against the war. He entered the race, splitting the anti-war vote between the two Senators.  Johnson recognized that he was unlikely to win the nomination of his own Party for a second full term, and even if he did, would be fatally damaged in the general election.  So he withdrew, encouraging his Vice President, the former Senator from Minnesota Hubert Humphrey, to run.

An ugly three-way race ensued, with some anti-war voters jumping to Kennedy, and some bitter that he didn’t get in the race sooner.  Humphrey was unable to do much more than echo Johnson’s pro-war views.  Through the last primary in California the race was close, but Kennedy won and seemed to have momentum going into the convention .  But an assassin intervened, killing Kennedy immediately after his victory speech in Los Angeles.

Chicago

That left the convention in Chicago to Humphrey.  Anti-war protestors, denied what looked like a sure convention win, marched in protest.  The Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, used the police to not only control demonstrations, put to punish protestors with beatings, arrests, and tear gassing. And all of that action was “live and in color”, televised to the American public. It was a convention in total disarray, and left the nominee, Humphrey, with little hope of winning the election.  

But the November count was still very close.  Republican Richard Nixon won by less than one percent of the vote.  Humphrey was hamstrung by the third party candidacy of George Wallace in the south, that gained almost 13% of what normally would have been Democratic votes.  And many “anti-war” Americans had no one to vote for at all.

Genesis

America was splintered.  The War in Vietnam would continue for six more years.  Even the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City (held in October) didn’t unite the country. Some Black athletes used the medal ceremony as a moment to silently protest. Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised black gloved fists in salute during the national anthem.   They were immediately removed from the US Team and sent home.

 The one event that pulled the country together was on Christmas Eve, when Apollo VIII orbited the moon.  They showed the world what Earth looked like from a moon orbit for the first time.  Astronauts Lovell, Anders and  Borman read from the Bible’s book of Genesis as earth “rose” above the lunar landscape.   Nealy a billion people on earth watched, and it captivated the nation.  Seven months later, Apollo XI actually landed on the moon.

Biden

The similarities of Biden with Johnson are apparent.   Biden was a successful legislator, made Vice President to a master of media presence, Barack Obama.  However, Obama used Biden to help achieve his legislative goals.  And Biden became President in a crisis situation like Johnson, after the first Insurrection to overturn a Presidential election.  Biden was able to use his legislative prowess to pass a number of legislative plans to improve America.

It wasn’t a war that stopped Biden from running for a second term, it was his age.  As the oldest President to ever serve, his physical appearance and actions made it difficult for voters to visualize him at the end of his second term, at eighty-six.  And his performance in a June debate against Trump confirmed what folks instinctively knew; Biden is old.

So Biden, like Johnson, withdrew.  But he didn’t saddle his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, with an unsuccessful war.  The Democratic Party quickly (two days!!!) rallied around Harris as the new candidate for President.  The Democratic Convention in two weeks will be a coronation of her as candidate, not a divisive morass punctuated with clouds of tear gas.

Harris taking the mantle doesn’t change the existential consequences of a Trump victory in November.  Those that Trump would bring to power have made it clear that they want to change the essential fairness of the American experiment.  (Look at the current Supreme Court majority, or the Heritage Foundation’s plan for the second Trump administration, Project 2025, to see that).

It’s not 1968.  Let’s hope it’s not 1860 either.

When I Grow Up

While I eventually fell in love with teaching; when I was a kid, eleven or twelve, I decided to be a politician.  Maybe it was “programmed” into my head even earlier.  One of my Dad’s oldest friends, Jerry Ransohoff, had me running for President when I was three in 1960, singing:  “Vote, vote, vote for Martin Dahlman, throw old “Ikey” (President Eisenhower) down the sink”.

I know, it’s not a fireman, or a cowboy.  It’s kind of like saying, I want to grow up to be a real estate agent or a produce manager at the grocery.  But the heroes of my youth; the Kennedy brothers, were gone.  Even as a kid, I sensed the void their absence created.  Maybe I could be the one.

Critical Flaw

Well, I wasn’t.  In between my first taste as a “pro” in a Presidential campaign and managing a local race, I stepped into a classroom, and found a whole different vocation to fall in love with.  And in the meantime, I also found the seamier side of politics.  No matter how good a candidate, no matter how right on the issues, no matter how hard everyone worked; without the cash, it didn’t matter.  Cash wasn’t determined by “value”, it was controlled by “powers”, whoever they were at the time.  And while I was great at parsing issues, motivating volunteers, even pretty good at writing; I was (and still am) a lousy fundraiser.  And that’s a critical flaw in a politician.

There are no regrets.  I spent a career with kids; in the classroom, the office, on the track and the wrestling mat and even in the woods (cross country).  There was success and failure, but there was always something learned and taught in each experience.  Just yesterday, I saw a guy  who looked older than me (my first students are now eligible for Medicare) at Kroger.  He still wanted to let me know how his life was going as we stood in the candy aisle.  I know I made an impact.  It wasn’t the “national impact” that a twelve year-old dreamed of, but, as the saying goes, “it ain’t nothing neither”.  

Instinct

But the political instincts I had at twelve didn’t fade.  I still have a “sense” of what works in politics, and what is a political loser.  The “tried and true” axiom of politics is this:  there is a percentage that will vote for you and a percentage that will vote against you.  Those are often “fixed”.  And then there’s those who are undecided. It’s the campaign that can reach the most of those folks in the middle that usually wins.   Every successful campaign follows the same plan. First, they introduce themselves to the voters.  Then they spend the majority of time trying to persuade the “middle”.  And finally, they work like crazy to get their own voters to come out and actually cast their ballots.  My old 1976 Carter/Mondale Campaign boss Mike Jackson summed it up: introduce, persuade, Get Out the Vote. 

I do not understand the strategy of the MAGA-Republican Donald Trump.  He, of course, no longer needs an introduction.  Everyone, probably worldwide, has an opinion about Donald Trump.  He is the most polarizing figure in American politics since…well, at least since the Civil War (look up Edmund Ruffin).  Trump has an enormous following, willing to swallow his every statement, regardless of how outlandish or ridiculous it might be.  That’s his “fixed” vote, his MAGA base.

But that base is a finite number, far less than the number required to actually win the Presidency. 

Traditional political theory would have the Trump Campaign first introduce the Vice Presidential candidate to the American voter, and then try to persuade the undecided voters to join them.  But the Trump team (with their typical arrogance) threw tradition out the window.

Hubris

I guess I don’t blame them.  The Biden performance at the first debate gave them reason to believe there was no need for compromise.  Like sharks in the water (not the electric boat kind) they thought it was over.  It was time to swarm in, double-down on their core voters, and devour the Biden chum.  It was even good enough to overshadow the Supreme Court ruling that gave Trump (and all Presidents) an unthinkable criminal immunity.  Biden got a one-day reprieve, then it was right back to his lost capacity to serve.  It was a losing battle.

Then Trump got the ultimate gift – eternal victimhood.  The assassin at Butler gave Trump a “bloody shirt” (or ear) to wave: the conquering hero that even the dreaded AR-15 couldn’t stop.  It looked like that sad twenty year-old gunman “sealed the deal”.  It didn’t take an hour after the bullets flew, that the MAGA team had their “best shot” up on social media:  Trump, bloody, surrounded by oddly short Secret Service agents, the raised fist; “Fight, fight, fight”.  They couldn’t have planned it any better (not implying anything – just saying). 

So instead of choosing a Vice Presidential candidate that might be considered of the “middle”, a guy like Marco Rubio or even Doug Burgum (the Governor of North Dakota), they went with Ohio Senator JD Vance.  He’s a man of Hillbilly Elegy, Peter Thiel, Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and the “we hate childless cat ladies” right.  Trump ignored the middle, and threw more red meat to the sharks.  And for about two days, they were all riding the “MAGA red wave”.  It looked like a tsunami.

Flip the Script

Then Biden (willingly or not) flipped the script.  He dropped out of the Presidential race.  All of a sudden, the entire Trump strategic plan looked extreme and out-of-date.  The “middle” voters who thought Biden was too old, now were up for grabs again.  The Trump team was over-committed to their own extremists.  Even the bloody ear was questioned – the FBI said (and then recanted under pressure) that it was “shrapnel”, not the bullet, that caused the wound; as if it really mattered.  I guess “I took a shard for you” doesn’t sound as strong as “I took a bullet for you”. 

Now fifty-nine year-old Vice President Harris looks young and energetic compared to the seventy-eight year-old Trump.  And the full weight of “the powers”, the folks who control money,  jumped on her side.  She raised over $200 million in less than a week.  The “Red Tsunami” is stopped, for the moment.  And a “Blue Wave” has surfaced.

Countdown 

It’s 100 days to the November election (though early voting in some states starts on September 20^th).  Unlike my “good old days”,  as much as 40% of the vote will be in before election day.  For Harris, Get Out the Vote starts just after Labor Day.  And the Vice President still has to make her decision about her own Vice President, a decision just as fraught with risk as Trump’s was.  Does she look to the middle, Roy Cooper or Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro?  Or does she match her own views with Pete Buttigieg?  And is a twenty-year veteran school teacher turned politician, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, really in the running? 

At least she has a realistic idea of how narrow this election could be. Democrats don’t need a tsunami (though it would be nice).  Just a solid blue wave will do, big enough to win the Presidency, turn the House and keep the Senate. The stakes couldn’t be higher.  

They Will See We’re Strong

President Biden opened his heart to us last night.  After all of the nonsense about the diabolical head of the “Biden Crime Family”, and then the “enfeebled Biden” who doesn’t even recognize his own wife; we saw the real man.  He is (no eulogies yet) a man who spent his entire life striving for the Presidency. But he’s also a man who spent his entire life serving our country.  And, when those two goals came into conflict, he chose the Nation over himself.  

As he said, “…the defense of democracy is more important than any title…it’s not about me, it’s about you.”  He will continue to serve. He will to try to save our democracy; until that last moment when he leaves a letter in the Resolute Desk for his successor, and walks out of the White House with his head held high.  He’s earned that right, and should have the respect, of all Americans from all sides of our deep political divide.  He made us proud of him, and his Presidency.  And he should make us all proud to be Americans.

While Biden is the President of our present, the future is yet to be decided.  The current Vice President is Kamala Harris, former Senator from California, Attorney General of that state, and District Attorney. She is running against former President Trump, assassination survivor, twice impeached, under indictment dozens of times, convicted of thirty-four felonies, and an adjudicated sexual abuser.  The contrast is stark, more than just race and gender.  It is all about, as our President said, “the defense of democracy”.

The Decision

Perhaps the most important decision (as Biden and Trump are both well aware) is their choice of Vice President.  Who they pick says so much more about what they believe than “performances” in front of rallies or the television cameras.  Trump originally chose Governor Mike Pence of Indiana.  Pence was picked for his stalwart Christianity, the “Yin” to Trump’s “Yang” of questionable conduct. Pence was a sop to the Christian right that saw Trump as an “imperfect vessel” for their societal religious goals.  And it worked.  Pence rallied them to Trump, and served as his greatest supporter until the mobs surrounded the Capitol on January 6^th.

Surprising to many, Pence stood for the Nation over his loyalty to Trump.  And the President left him to the hangman.  It is by the grace of Pence’s God and luck that the mob didn’t reach him, and he helped lead the Congress back to work hours later.  Not surprisingly, Pence is not supporting Donald Trump anymore.  

Second Chance

Trump wasn’t going to make that “disloyal” choice twice.  This time he chose the junior Senator from Ohio, JD Vance.  Vance is a “convert”, a man who was a self-declared “Never Trumper” eight years ago, but turned into Trump’s most loyal follower.  Vance is young (39), with a compelling “rags to riches” story, and dependent on the backing of the super-rich founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel.  His first elective office was in 2022, when he defeated Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan for the Ohio Senate seat.  Before that, he was a venture capitalist, a best-selling author, and a US Marine.

What does Vance bring to the Trump ticket?  His age:  he contrasts well to the aging Trump (78).  And his ideology; while Trump is “opportunistic” in his beliefs, Vance has made himself a true-believer in the far-right, Heritage Foundation defined vision of a Christian Nationalist America.  And Vance is a product of the Midwest, a Middletown, Ohio boy, made good.  

Trump’s Gift

But JD’s only political action in Ohio was his one run for Senate.  He moved back from San Francisco in 2016, first living in Columbus and then moving to Cincinnati.  While Vance was able to win the Ohio Senate seat, his political “roots” in the state are shallow.  And since Ohio is no longer considered a “swing state”, with all but a few statewide offices controlled by Republicans, it’s hard to understand how he broadens Trump’s appeal.  Instead, Vance is a “gift” to the right, already firmly in Trump’s camp.  

That might have been a good idea if Trump actually was looking at the landslide victory that his team thought was coming against Biden.  While that never was supported by polling, certainly Biden’s withdrawal and Harris nomination changed the political landscape.  Now Vance’s draw to conservative, white, men doesn’t really change the political dynamic.

Harris’s Choices

President Biden broke precedent by choosing Kamala Harris as his Vice President.  She was the second woman to run as Vice President for a major political party (Democrat Walter Mondale picked Congressman Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984), and the first Black and West Asian.  But, as Biden made it clear, he chose Harris because he wanted someone who could bring all of those differences to the table, and was prepared to become President if needed.  It wasn’t so much about the political support Harris could bring in 2020, it was about what her service as Vice President would mean.

Practically, Harris has about a week to make her Vice Presidential decision.  Former Attorney General Eric Holder is already “vetting” candidates, the deep dive into the background of each possible candidate to determine their political fitness.  In this narrowly divided electorate, the choice of running mate may be the determinative factor in the outcome.  But, in the final analysis, as both Trump and Biden discovered, their choice as Vice President may well be their most important Presidential decision.  

There are several candidates for the job.  Colorado Governor Jared Polis, not on the “short list”, joked, “When they decide they want a 49 year-old, bald, gay, Jewish governor; give me a call!!”

But his joke outlined Harris’s dilemma.  First, she wants to choose someone who could be President of the United States.  Then, she wants someone who can lend votes to the excruciatingly close race that looms in November.  So, if not Polis, who fits the bill?

Shapiro

Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro has to be near the top.  Pennsylvania is a “must-win” swing state; Shapiro has an entire career of winning elections there.  Harris needs a running mate who can  help “prosecute” the case against Trump:  Shapiro, 51, the former state Attorney General, has deep roots in Pennsylvania politics and is already making the case against Trump.  He is a conservative Jew (a form of religion – not his political stance) which would make him only the second Jewish person to be nominated by a major political party (Joe Liberman ran with Al Gore in 2000). 

Buttigieg

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, 42, demonstrated an ability to get things done in the high-visibility infrastructure plan of the Biden Administration.  And he’s come through in crisis situations:  the Minneapolis interstate bridge, the Philadelphia highway overpass, the Baltimore harbor; all came to quicker than expected resolutions.  Pete is a former Presidential candidate (2020), and was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.  

He doesn’t bring a “state” to the table (though he and spouse Chasten now have a home with their two children in all-important Michigan).  What he does bring is brilliance.  He has been the administration’s “point man” to Fox News, and often defends the President in the toughness venues.  He is the “smartest” person in almost every room.  And he’s “young”, appealing to a demographic that Biden didn’t reach.  Pete would also be a “first”, the first openly gay man to be a Vice Presidential candidate.

Kelly

Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona doesn’t have a “deep” political career.  He won the highly contested Arizona Senate seat in 2020.  His entre into politics was his marriage to Congressman Gabby Giffords in 2007.  When Giffords was injured in an assassination attempt, Kelly picked up her political mantle.  Before that, Kelly was a 25 year career Naval aviator, who flew combat missions in the Gulf War.  He earned a spot in the 16^th class of astronauts, and was a Space Shuttle pilot and commander on four different missions.  He spent over 54 days in space.  

While Kelly doesn’t have the deep political roots in Arizona, he has made his Senate “bones” as a strong proponent of immigration reform, a key issue in the 2024 election.  And, since Arizona has a Democratic Governor, becoming Vice President wouldn’t upset the narrow balance of political control in the US Senate.

Cooper

Retiring Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina (67) would be a marked contrast to candidate Harris.  He has been a career politician in North Carolina, first winning a state legislative seat in 1985.  He was the Attorney General of the state for sixteen years before serving eight years as Governor.  Not only is he a strong political force in a possible swing-state, but would be a “balance” to Harris in age, race, gender, and political career.

It’s the biggest decision a candidate for President gets to make.  It might be as meaningful as Kennedy picking Lyndon Johnson, or as meaningless as Bush picking Dan Quayle.  But in our current political divide, when the past two Presidents have been determined by 77,000 and 45,000 votes, every decision might be deal-making; or deal-breaking.

Cincinnatus

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was a patrician of the Roman Republic.  Legend has it that he was first elected dictator by the Senate of Rome in 458 BC to defend against the threat of invasion.  He took command of the Roman Army, and in fifteen days defeated the enemy.  He then walked away from his absolute power and returned to his farm.  Almost twenty years later, he was again called to defend the Republic.  This time it took twenty-one days, but again, after victory Cincinnatus voluntary gave up his absolute authority.

Cincinnatus was a prime example for the first American President, George Washington.  After serving in the office for two, four-year terms, Washington chose not to seek a third election victory. He left the American capital in New York to return to his “farm”, his Mt Vernon plantation in Virginia.  This established the American precedent of a two-term Presidency, set into Constitutional law after Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms in office. (And it inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to write “One Last Time”, as Washington explained to Hamilton the importance of teaching America that the country was more important than any individual –  “♪Teach them how to say goodbye♪” ).  

It is still the height of civic courage and sacrifice; the understanding that sometimes the civic good is served best by giving up power.  Cincinnatus and Washington are the exceptions:  politicians willing to walk away from the political authority they worked to achieve.  And now add to that list, Joe Biden.

Biden

Cynics will say it’s not the same.  They will claim that Biden didn’t give up anything, that he had no chance to win re-election in the first place.  They’ll smugly note, that the whole reason for former Speaker Pelosi’s orchestrated pressure campaign was that Biden was going to lose.  But Joe Biden has come “off the mat” before in his life. In his mind, if Harris can win, he can too.  After all, he is the President of the United States, channeling Harry Truman in 1948 (of the famous “Dewey Wins” speech). 

In normal times, I suspect Joe Biden would have continued his candidacy.  But, as Senator Robert Kennedy stated; “There is an old Chinese curse, may he live in interesting times.  Like it or not, we live in interesting times”.  The election of 2024 is the existential threat, democracy versus autocracy. The side of democracy must take its best possible shot.  Biden recognized that he wasn’t that.  It was a personal decision, to give up the job he spent most of his life striving for, and more importantly, give up the opportunity to continue the great work he is in. It had to be devastating.  But in our “interesting times”, Joe Biden made the right decision for his country, even if it was an absolute personal sacrifice.

Eagleton

And for MAGA-Republicans who now are so fascinated with the internal workings of the Democratic Party (the same MAGA-Republicans who brooked no dissent in their own political convention); here’s the deal.  Both political parties have for years had contingency plans for a crisis change in candidate.  It happened in 1972, when the Democratic Party nominated George McGovern for President and Senator Tom Eagleton as Vice President.  Within a week, it came out that Eagleton had been treated for depression with electro-shock therapy. 

In those times, any hint of a mental illness was automatically disqualifying from political office.  When Eagleton’s private medical records were revealed, he resigned from the ticket, and the executive committee of the Democratic Party appointed former Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver as the Vice Presidential candidate.  There was absolutely no controversy in the appointment, no question of whether Shriver’s name could replace Eagleton’s on the ballot.

And leading Republicans themselves considered removing their candidate for office in 2016.  When the “Access Hollywood Tapes” were revealed, some Republicans looked for ways to strike Donald Trump from the head of their ticket.  But instead, they chose to allow him to remain, assured that he would lose to Hillary Clinton.  Unfortunately, FBI Director James Comey, unintentionally (I presume) had other plans. He fatally wounded the Clinton candidacy with the “Weiner Computer” leak.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Trump Strategy

Besides, part of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, was the “success” of the MAGA-Republican strategy. The Trump campaign spent millions of dollars convincing some Americans that Biden was enfeebled.  Biden certainly didn’t help with his “performance” in the debate against Trump.  That was the main “spear” in the armament of the Trump Campaign, and they threw it early in the battle.  The impact was so successful, that Biden himself recognized the “political reality” it created, and withdrew.

Now Trump and his acolytes (Stephen Miller, for example) are screaming that the Democratic Party can’t “ignore the fourteen million votes” that Joe Biden received in the primaries.  But they are the ones who spent millions to disqualify Biden. They are “reaping what they sowed”.  And, for the record, the Convention delegates in both parties are elected to “represent” their states in choosing the candidates.  The whole basis of representation is to use their judgment to make their best “choice”. Their pledged candidate Biden asked them to choose Harris.  She already has more than enough delegates committed to guarantee her nomination (sorry, Joe Manchin, you are truly a non-factor).  

President Joe Biden will remain in office until January 20^th, 2025.  Hopefully, he’ll have the historically unusual opportunity of turning over the Office to a President of his own party (that hasn’t happened since Reagan left, succeeded by George HW Bush in 1989).  Either way, Biden doesn’t have a “farm” to return to.  His home in Rehoboth Beach will have to do.

Block

I was not a successful high school “math” student.  In fact, I was a “math block kid”.  If you put a number on the blackboard (chalk dust and “sqeeeeeeek”), I usually froze.  But I still had to make it through Geometry class.  And while I don’t remember much, other than Coach Parker licking that chalk dust off his fingers, there are a few things that still stick.

In solving a geometry problem you have different sets of data.  The first set is the “givens”, the things that are true about the problem.  Those “givens” are inflexible, a “given this, then solve that” sort of thing.   In looking at the American electorate of 2024, we need to start with those givens, or in more modern political parlance, the “baked-in” parts of our voting equation.

Baked-In

We know (it’s given) that the United States is about 45% Republican and 45% Democrat.  But that given isn’t quite as monolithic as it sounds.  Really about 35% of today’s Republicans are MAGA Republicans, and really about 40% of the Democrats are “Yellow Dog Democrats”. The remainders  just “usually” vote for their party, but aren’t “diehards”.   Regardless, the Presidential race will be determined not by that 90%, but by the 10% remaining.

We also know that there’s not a lot of people, even in the 10%, who will make a binary choice between Trump or Harris.  Some will vote for Trump or choose an independent like Kennedy or Oliver (Libertarian). Or they will sit out the election all together.   On the other side, some will vote for Harris, or Stein or West, or more likely, choose not to vote at all.

So the strategy for both sides should be:  make sure you get your 45% out to vote, then convince 5% plus one to choose your side.  And that would make perfect sense if this was a simple algebra equation (yep, I switched math classes), one where the greatest sum wins.  But we don’t choose Presidents that way here in the United States.

Fifty-One Elections

While the popular vote has its place, in the end the US holds a series of fifty-one separate elections,  to choose electors from each state and the District of Columbia.  Those 538 electors are the ones who decide the President and Vice President.  In all but two states, if a candidate wins the majority of popular votes, they get ALL of the electoral votes.  And this means that in a large sense, the votes of a whole lot of people really don’t matter all that much (ask Hillary Clinton).

Maine and Nebraska divide their electoral votes.  The state popular vote winner gets two, and then the vote winner of each Congressional District in the state gets one.  So Nebraska usually is four for Republicans and one for Democrats (Omaha).  Maine is usually the reverse – three for Democrats and one for Republicans (Northern Maine). 

Let’s take California.  In 2020 over 17 million people voted in the Presidential election.  Biden got over 11 million votes, and Trump 6 million.  That result was really “baked-in” before the election even started. California is a secure Democratic state.  So Biden got all 55 of California’s electoral votes, and the 6 million folks who voted for Trump, got cancelled out. 

Conversely, South Carolina, the state where the 2020 Democratic primary put Joe Biden in control, had a 72% turnout in the general election.  Out of almost 2.5 million votes, Trump got 55% and Biden 44%.  So Trump got ALL of South Carolina’s 9 electoral votes, and Biden’s 1.1 million votes didn’t change a thing.

Change Horses

All of this creates a whole new “given”.  Given that most states in the US are clearly one party or the other, then getting their electoral votes is simply “defending” the base.  Which means that the Presidential election all comes down, not that 10%, but to the few states where it’s uncertain which candidate will win. It’s the 10% voter who lives in a swing state that makes all the difference.

We all know the litany of “swing states”:  Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.  And we all know the “possible swing states”; New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Carolina (Democrats have aspirations for Florida and Texas, but they haven’t come true.  And, sadly, Ohio doesn’t seem to “swing” anymore).  That’s where the Presidential elections in the past decade were won or lost; the swing and “possible” states.  All the rest are “givens”.  This election will be decided by the very slim margins that determine the outcomes in those swing states.  In 2016, it was about 77,000 votes that decided for Trump.  In 2020, it was around 45,000 that decided for Biden.    

So why all of this talk about the “math” of Presidential elections?  Because when Democrats changed “horses in mid-stream”, switching from Biden to Harris; it’s wasn’t just about the 10% in the middle.  The question came down to the targeted swing states:  which candidate, irrespective of age, is likely to eke out a win in the swing states that will decide our next President?

Slivers

There’s different pivotal groups in those states: White men, Women, Black voters and young and old voters.  Biden’s “super power” in 2020, was his ability to maintain his 45%, then gain votes beyond with older Americans, and particularly among middle aged white men.  (Middle aged white men are notoriously Republican these days, but Biden was able to win a greater share than most Democrats).  As the last two elections were won “on the margins in the swing states”, Biden was able to do what Hillary Clinton could not.  His super power made the difference in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

So the question is:   now that Democrats changed candidates, what is the impact on these “slivers of slivers of demographics” in the swing  states?  Our first given (or hope):  assume the already chaotic Democratic Party chooses not to commit political suicide by having an open convention.  (It’s not that Dems shouldn’t be “democratic”, it’s that the wounds opened in the contest would never heal before election day).   Given that, now Democrats turned to the serving Vice President as replacement, what difference will Kamala Harris make?  

Super Powers

Certainly the Vice President would have less appeal to older Americans than the President did.  And it’s just as certain there will be a “negative” impact by the first Black and West Asian woman to run as a major party nominee for President.  Before you throw down the “racist/sexist card”, the facts are just the facts.  There are many Americans who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she was a woman, or Barack Obama because he was Black.  Those voters haven’t disappeared – though it’s more than likely those folks are voting for Trump anyway. 

Harris has a different “super power”.  She is likely to increase the turnout among the Black community, among White suburban women, and with younger voters as opposed to Biden. She might perform a mathematic miracle by changing the “given”, and making the 45% greater by getting normal non-voters to the polls. So while Biden influences the 5%, Harris may bring more voters to the equation all-together.

Bring More to the Table

She will have to.  Harris won’t cut into the Western Pennsylvania (White men) vote like Biden did, but she may well increase the vote from Philadelphia (Black) and its suburbs (Women) enough to offset the difference.  She could run even stronger in Georgia than Biden.  And Harris won’t run as well as Biden in the rural country of Wisconsin.  But she might be able to drive up the vote in Madison (University of Wisconsin) and urban Milwaukee.

So here’s the simple math (thank goodness for simple!). It takes 270 Electoral votes to win the Presidency. The “base” Democratic electoral votes – just the “safe” states; add up to 223.  Add Pennsylvania’s 19, Michigan’s 15, and Wisconsin’s 10 and there’s only  three more votes needed. Enter Maine, with a likely 3 of 4, and the Democrat is President again.  (Watch who Harris chooses for her Vice Presidential candidate. Don’t be surprised if it’s Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania. He checks a lot of the boxes).

It’s hard to believe, but Democrats still have an easier path to the Presidency than MAGA-Republicans. Trump’s base is unassailable, but it’s also difficult to grow.  Nothing he’s done so far, including surviving an assassin, is making his base bigger.  But the MAGA base is motivated:  they will show up.  Democrats have the ability to expand the number of voters, just like Biden did in 2020 (he received the most votes ever cast for a President, almost 12 million more than Obama in 2008).

For Harris, where does that expansion have to occur? It better be in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – then hold the rest. 

 That’s the “given” we all have to face.

Democrat versus Republican

Nixon, Reagan, George W Bush:  for me, a lifetime Democrat, all of  their elections were disappointments.  I can remember each well.  In 1968 it took until Wednesday morning to determine the winner between Vice President Humphrey and Nixon.  I was sitting in my seventh grade history class on the second floor of Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering, Ohio. The Principal came on the PA and announced Nixon’s victory.  Kettering, a suburb of Dayton, was overwhelmingly Republican back then, and the whole school burst out in wild cheers and applause.  All I could do was put my head down on the desk in sadness.

One of my early professional political jobs was as a field coordinator with the Carter/Mondale campaign in 1976.  I remember the joy of walking across Cincinnati’s Fountain Square at four in the morning after that election night, exhausted from the efforts, but ebullient in the victory over Gerald Ford.  Four years later, I was a teacher in Pataskala, and could do little but despair as Carter became as trapped as the fifty-two Iranian hostages, unable to free himself to wage a serious campaign against Reagan.  And the Reagan era had all of the horrors I anticipated.  Reagan destroyed labor unions, armed America with expensive and outlandish weapons, and “freed” public education by taking away Federal funding.

Thumb on the Scale

And then there was 2000.  I was still in Pataskala, but Mom and Dad were “snow-birds” in Florida.  I spent Thanksgiving week there, watching the desperate ballot counts, eyeballs on  the hanging chads, over and over.  Clearly, Florida was within any “margin of error”, and the Gore and Bush legal teams both went to great lengths to support their candidate.   Bush was willing to pull any lever, push any button, walk across any line; his team would do whatever it took to win.  

It didn’t hurt that the Florida Secretary of State was a Bush campaign chairman, and the Governor was his brother.  But what really threw me, was that the Supreme Court took a side based on partisan lines, five Republicans out-voting four Democrats on the Bench to put Bush in office.  I didn’t foresee the Justices putting their thumbs on that political scale. 

Only on December 13^th, when Al Gore went on national television to tell us to let it go, did I even tolerate the results.  And it wasn’t until the weeks after 9/11 that I finally accepted George W Bush as the “true” President of the United States.

America’s Creed

Nixon, Reagan, Bush:  each of their elections “hurt”.   But I never thought that any of them, even Richard Nixon, represented a threat to our American democracy.  We were of different political parties and different ideologies; but we were all still a part of the American experience.  While I often disagreed with what they did, I could see that we had a common interest in the process of making “a more perfect union”, the American Creed.  It was sometimes the only saving grace of those years.

American Creed – 1917

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

Republican or Democrat, Clinton or Dole, even Dukakis or Bush; we all still had that common creed.  We were all Americans, “…Dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal”.  Sharing that belief, we could sometimes reach out beyond partisan differences.   When Bush spoke on the “pile” in New York the week after 9-11 he said:

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

 We weren’t Democrats or Republicans then; we were Americans. 

Trump’s Acceptance

Thursday night I watched most of Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech at the MAGA-Republican Convention in Milwaukee. There is a new “vibe” in Trump’s World.  Trump implied that he is now “anointed” by God, who directed the bullet, or Trump’s head, away from certain death.   The MAGA crowd looked up at him in religious awe.  Trump called on America to unite with him, his unsaid statement; “this is God’s will”.  

That portion of his speech was beautifully choregraphed and written.   He laid a gentle kiss, a blessing, on the helmet of the firefighter who died in the attack protecting his children.  And then it was off on the campaign rant, everything about our horrible economy (the day after the Dow Jones set a new record over 41,000 points); unbelievable inflation “like no one’s ever seen” (except for the late 1970’s, when inflation was over 10%); and raging crime from immigrants (violent crime has dropped 15% this year alone).   And, we also got to listen about “…The late and great Hannibal Lector”, a fictional character who ate people.  Trump implied that it is the Hannibal Lector’s of Central and South America that cross our borders illegally.

His Will

My final take from Trump’s hour and a half speech (at least the first hour I could stand to watch) is that he wants an America of “us” and “them”.  It isn’t about unity, it’s about submission.  Submit to the MAGA vision of modern America as a “hell-hole”, and 1950’s America as a “paradise”.  Submit to the loss of freedom for all but those who match the MAGA model; no room for the migrant, or the LGBTQ, or those who aren’t Christian Nationalists, or are looking for “black jobs”.  It’s a unity of conformity, not a unity of spirit or the American Creed.

Take Trump’s rhetoric, and add to it the structure of the 2025 Project (or the 47 Project) and there’s a formula for the radical alteration of America, into some different Nation, with some different Creed.  For that reason, this election is much more critical than Nixon versus Humphrey, or Reagan versus Carter, or Bush versus Gore.  This one will determine the path of Americans for generations.

There may be no turning back; it’s Trump’s will.

Schiff

Congressman Adam Schiff of California is a formidable politician.  Schiff was the “face” of the Democratic opposition to President Trump in the House of Representatives.  As head of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff fired the opening Congressional salvos against Trump with the Mueller Hearings.  When Colonel Vindman came to Congress with his report of Trump’s “perfect” phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, offering aid in exchange for “dirt” on Biden, it was Schiff who held the first hearings.  That led to the first impeachment of Trump, with the Congressman as the lead House Manager in the Senate Trial.

Schiff was not part of the second Trump Senate trial, though he still was a pivotal voice in bringing the House to vote for a second impeachment.  After a contested primary this spring, when Congressmen Katie Porter and Barbara Lee split the all-important California Democratic progressive vote, he is now poised to become the junior Senator from California in November.

Mentor

Schiff is his own man.  With a Stanford undergraduate and Harvard Law degrees, he became an Assistant US Attorney, then served four years in the California Assembly.  He was first elected to Congress in 2000, and came up through the ranks in the Democratic delegation.  And he certainly had help.  Schiff became a trusted associate of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become Speaker of the House, and also from California.  Pelosi trusted Schiff so much, that she put him in charge of the most momentous House actions of this century, the “Resistance” to Trump’s Presidency.

So it was with some shock that I read Adam Schiff’s statement asking Joe Biden to withdraw his candidacy for the 2024 race (CNN).  The Congressman made it clear; he thinks that Biden can’t win the Presidency, and was risking Democratic control of the House and the Senate as well.  So why would Schiff, already a “safe” Senate candidate, step into the Presidential fray?  (And it’s not so he can run for President.  At best he’s third in line for that candidacy just including Californians!)

Speaker Emeritus

It’s been a long, crazy week.  But it was only eight days ago, that Speaker Emeritus Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and said that she would “support” Joe Biden’s decision, whatever it was, about running for President.  That statement sounded good for Biden. But the reality was that Biden was clear that he intended to run.  When she was questioned about it, she reiterated that she would back whatever decision he made.  “The World” took note of the former Speaker’s carefully parsed “support”. It gave fuel to the fire consuming Biden’s candidacy.

In the past week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, another Pelosi acolyte, had “frank conversations” with President Biden. He conveyed the House Democrats concerns about his candidacy.  Last weekend, Senate Majority Leader Schumer had a similar conversation with the President.  And behind the scenes, Nancy Pelosi was doing what she does best.  She was counting “votes”, getting a “whip count” of Democratic support, and perhaps more importantly, financial support for both Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic ticket.  

We don’t know the results of Pelosi’s “count”, at least not directly from her.  But we can take a very educated guess.  There is only one reason that Adam Schiff would weigh so dramatically into the Presidential fray. He is telling us, and the President, where the most politically savvy Democrat of all, Nancy Pelosi, stands.  I’m sure Jeffries and Schumer told the President a similar message.   

Money, Money, Money

Like most things in life, it all comes down to money.  While Democrats are quick to trumpet their “small donor” fund raising, in the end, they too are dependent on “mega” donors to fund the billions of dollars needed to win the Presidency, the House and the Senate.  The pressure is high:  Elon Musk just pledged $45 million a month to the Republican absentee-ballot campaign.  

President Biden was in Las Vegas this week, to speak to the NAACP and the Unidos-US annual conferences. While there, he was told by longtime fundraiser Jeffrey Katzenberg, that the money has dried up (Deadline).  What went on in Vegas, didn’t stay there,  and neither did Biden. In another hit to his campaign, Biden contracted Covid, and was forced to abandon his schedule and fly back home to isolate.  As Trump’s Vice Presidential pick JD Vance took the stage in Milwaukee to resounding cheers and the approving eye of Trump himself, there were dark pictures of Biden walking alone across the tarmac in Delaware.

Changing Horses

There is no “revolt” coming at the Democratic Convention.  Such an event would set the stage for a Trump election.  Instead, the “wise elders” of the Party are making it clear:  if Joe Biden continues to run, they see no path to victory.  

Abraham Lincoln was running for re-election in 1864, during the worst of the blood-letting of the Civil War.  There were some calls by his own supporters for the Republican Party to find a new candidate.  Lincoln weathered that storm, and later told the following story.

I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.

Don’t kill the messenger, Adam Schiff . He is simply delivering the verdict of his octogenarian mentor.  It’s not that the “elders” won’t stay on the “Biden Horse” in mid-stream.  It’s that they think that Biden is going to drown, and take the rest of the Party, and the country, down with him.

But, it’s still up to him.

There’s a scene in the George Clooney movie, “Ocean’s Eleven”.  Don Cheadle is one of eleven thieves tasked with breaking into a vault.  His job: to handle the explosives blowing the vault door.  Cheadle blows the door, and  enters the safe – then an alarm goes off.  He turns to his compatriots and says: “Oh leave it out! You tossers! You had one job to do!”

One Job

It’s a tough job, being the Secret Service.  There are constant threats to their “protectees”, from social media “death sentences”, “wacko” emails, phone messages and even good old snail-mail letters. And, of course, there are the ones that never make contact, never emerge until they act.  The Secret Service has “one job” to do, neutralize those threats and keep the protectee safe.  And they have to be right, every time.   The attackers only have to “make it” once for the Secret Service to be a “failure”.   And the constant pressure of the threats doesn’t change.

The “threat environment” is always bad.  When I was working the Carter/Mondale Campaign back in the 1970’s, the memory of the Kennedy and King Assassinations was fresh. Those were by a single gunman, the “lone wolf”.  The Service advanced teams would come into town and create a list of everyone that authored crank letters, made crazy phone calls, or somehow seemed to be a danger.  The local police contacted all of those folks, most of them just crackpots, and made sure they were “controlled” while the protectee was in town.   

All Hands

And when the President was in town, it was an “all hands on deck” moment for all Federal agents.  Not only the Secret Service, but  FBI, US Marshals, DEA, ATF and all other Federal alphabetical enforcement personnel were dragooned into service, along with all the state and local authorities.  And it wasn’t just the black-suited “bodyguards”. 

 When candidate Jimmy Carter was in town, I was a junior staffer trying to clear a path through the crowd.  As I backed up, my elbow bumped into an unshaven guy in an old army jacket behind me. It hit something hard, on the side of his chest – a shoulder holster with gun.  As I turned around to see, we locked eyes.  All I knew what that I was between a gun and the path of the candidate.  The guy slowly raised the lapel on his threadbare coat.  The Secret Service “badge of the day” was underneath – he was one of them – Whew!!!

Coordination

When a candidate comes into town, there’s a whole series of groups that need “coordination”.   There’s the campaign:  first the national advance team, then the actual “main” team travelling with the candidate.  Then there’s the state and local campaign folks, working with the national team, figuring out where and how the event can play out.  Then there’s the myriad of law enforcement agencies.  All of those have to be coordinated – no surprises from any level when the candidate is actually there.  Everyone with close contact has to be vetted, every transportation move thought out, motorcade routes (and alternatives) mapped, and all the “what-if” scenarios thought through.  

Local hospitals are put on alert, trauma surgeons called in for duty, emergency department rooms isolated and prepped.  All for maybe an hour on the ground, and at the height of a Presidential campaign, four, five or even six locations per day.  That’s two Presidential candidates, two Vice Presidential candidates (just announced; Ohio’s Senator JD Vance the Republican running-mate), their wives and even adult kids.  All happening at the same time, all over the country, event after event, every day now from August to November.  And for the Secret Service, the end of one event is just the moment when it’s time to get in the car, or on a plane, to the next stop.

1968 -1976

Threats are magnified by the polarization of our Nation.  There is MAGA, and there are the Never-Trumpers, and there the Democrats.  There are few left in the middle, few who can “see both sides”.  Both MAGA and Democrats are claiming the “end of democracy as we know it” if the “other side” wins.  Cries for unity, by either Biden or Trump, are pretty hollow.  Unity means agree with us, or YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.  

America has been here before.  1968 was a year of riots: race riots as the promise of Civil Rights remained unfulfilled, and student riots against the Vietnam War.  Even the Democratic Party was riven:  the Democratic President, Johnson, was prosecuting the War to its fullest (and the Pentagon was lying to the public about winning).  And Democratic candidates running against him wanted the United States out of the war, now.  The Republican candidates were just as dedicated to the War as Johnson was.

It was also a year of political assassination – Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy.   And while there were the same calls for American unity, they also had the same “price tag”:  unity and agreement weren’t the same then, or now.  

And in my year in Presidential politics, we were all very aware of the dangers, not just of division, but of attack.  It never got so ugly with Carter and Ford that polarization was the issue.  Even at the campaign level, we still communicated with the Ford Campaign to “smooth out” issues.  We didn’t always agree, nor were we always happy; but we always felt like we could “call again”.  

The Service

It’s going to take a while, but in the final analysis, the Secret Service will admit that they screwed up in Butler, Pennsylvania.  Whether the Service had “responsibility” for the buildings outside of the “security perimeter”, or whether state or local police were delegated the role; in the end, it was the Secret Service’s fault.  After all, “they had one job”.  They failed to prevent the attack; they’d didn’t keep the shooter off of the building, nor did they “neutralize” him when he was in their sights, before he took his shot.  As John Wayne would say; “My fault, your fault, nobody’s fault…” it was their job. 

And for those of you who think Trump’s death would end MAGA’ism, I believe you’re sorely mistaken.  Trump’s death would make him a martyr to his cause, one that would be a rallying point for decades to come.  Smarter, more devious individuals would take up the “fallen” MAGA Flag, and use it to drive their divisive plan through.  Trump doesn’t need to die, he needs to be defeated, again, once and for all.  Then the United States can move past him, just as we did McCarthyism and Secession.  

 This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory…  – Franklin D Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address

Paralysis

The Democratic Party (my Democratic Party) is paralyzed.  We are paralyzed by fear, “…nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror…”  The public emotion that FDR faced in 1933, and what we Democrats face today, isn’t all that different.  Roosevelt looked out at a Nation shaken by economic collapse, wondering whether the American experiment in democracy would survive or live up to its promise.  Today, Democrats look at the possibility of Donald Trump winning back the Presidency, now made even more possible by the assassination attempt. With him comes the atrocity of Project 2025 and the likely end of American democracy. Democrats are responding with that same kind of fear.   We want and need, to be sure that our candidate for President can win.  

Joe Biden stumbled in the worst possible way in the Presidential Debate, now three weeks ago.  His “one job” was to show America that his eighty-one years of age does not impact his ability to govern and campaign.  He failed miserably.  In the debate, he seemed confused, unresponsive, and most importantly of all, unable to prosecute the case against Donald Trump.  As Biden himself would say, “It was a big F-ing deal”.  He blew it.  It shook Democrats to the core.  We felt that deep, ugly, empty feeling that we woke up with on the morning after the 2016 election.  It led to this terror, the terror of the possibility of Trump winning.  And, reasonably, many asked what alternatives there might be to Joe Biden.   

Baked-in

President Biden spent the last three weeks trying to convince us (Democrats) that the Debate was an aberration, not a new reality.  Those efforts, more than twenty campaign speeches, one-on-one interviews, a full NATO summit, the NATO press conference, and the post assassination attempt calls and speeches; lead to the following conclusions.  

First, Biden is an older version of himself.  He stutters, he over-thinks answers to questions, he gets names wrong (Putin for Zelenskyy, Trump for Harris).  It’s what he’s been doing for his entire very long political career.  Joe Biden was never an orator like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.  Look up the word “gaffe” in the dictionary, and there’s Joe Biden’s picture.

But those issues were “baked-in” to Joe Biden.  It’s not fair to complain that he’s doing what he always did – those flaws were already “litigated” back in 2008, 2012, and 2020.   

Answers

Second, the questions that was answered this week are; can Joe Biden still “think”; can he prosecute the case against Trump, and can he still lead our Nation.

In his press conference after the NATO meetings, Biden showed a complex and thoughtful thought process.  He gave us a vision of the world, balanced between Russian expansionism, NATO unity, Chinese economic needs, and America’s strength.  His answers were insightful and complicated, and his explanations were cogent.  

In the post -Trump assassination attempt speeches and statements, Biden showed his continuing leadership. He put aside his vast differences with Trump to show not only concern, but to lead a Federal process to improve protection for his opponent and himself.

The President can still “think”; he still has a broad and deep grasp of the problems of the world.  And in his campaign appearances with the AFL-CIO and in Michigan and last night’s interview with Lester Holt, Biden began to articulate the case against Donald Trump.  It isn’t as forceful as many Democrats would like, but he is laying out his reasons, and raising the stakes.

Bring Back Obama

After three weeks, we know that Biden can still do it.  So why are some Democrats still calling for Biden to “take his laurels and leave”?

It goes back to the “nameless terror” we felt both that Wednesday morning in November 2016 and Thursday night just three weeks ago.  It comes from staring into the abyss of another Trump Administration, this one without “guardrails”,  better organized and programmed to alter America beyond recognition.  When Biden released that terror on debate night, it sent Democrats on a fruitless search for a new candidate, any candidate, to lead us away from our nightmare.

We search for a brilliant, articulate, “super star”, to make this election unquestionable.  We long for a candidate who is a “sure thing”.  To put it bluntly, we don’t want Biden, or Hillary; we want Barack Obama back.  And that’s not going to happen.

Frankly, Biden might well be a “better President” than Obama.  When you look at legislative success and improvements made, Biden is a better “legislator” than Obama ever was.  Of course he is:  Biden spent thirty years in the United State Senate.  He was a career legislator.  He intimately knows the process of getting things done in Congress.  Biden is like Taft was to Teddy Roosevelt, or Johnson (the Great Society and Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts) to John F Kennedy.  Obama is the orator, the leader, the ground breaker.  Biden is the grinder, the man who gets things done.  It’s no wonder folks love what Biden did, but don’t credit Biden for doing it.  He doesn’t have  the star power of a Roosevelt, Kennedy, or of Barack and Michelle.

Divide and Lose

Democrats are looking for a “star”.  It’s not Biden, or Vice President Harris.  And while there’s a huge “bench” of possible candidates, raring to go in 2028; it’s really not their time.  Here’s why.

If Biden were to “retire” from the race, almost 4000 delegates to the Democratic Convention, delegates pledged specifically to Biden, would be “free”.  The maelstrom of a truly open convention, where  delegates would be required to choose a “runner-up” candidate, is likely to leave the Party divided and broken.  The list of possible candidates is long:  Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, Moore, Buttigieg, (among others). That process looks like the quickest way to get Trump elected in 2024.

If Biden were to “command” his delegates to vote for Vice President Harris, most would obey.  Harris could also tap into the over $200 million in Biden/Harris campaign funds, something that other candidates could not.  And Harris is the obvious heir-apparent, Biden’s specific choice to follow his Presidency.  The “maelstrom” would be avoided, and the Party united. But while I like the Vice President, she isn’t the “star” Democrats seek.  And with her Presidential candidacy comes the unspoken worry:  is America ready to elect a Black woman as President?  Are Democrats willing to take that chance, here, now, in the face of Trump?

On Us

And so, my fellow Democrats, let me mis-quote another of our favorite Presidents:  “…ask not what the Presidential candidate can do for you, but what you can do for the Presidential candidate”.  Stop looking for a “knight in armor” to come and rescue us from Trump.  The safest, sanest thing to do is to nominate Joseph R Biden, gaffes and all.  Nominate Biden knowing that he’s an effective President but not a “star”.  Nominate Biden, then get to work as FDR said, “…(W)ith that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory…”

It’s not just on Joe Biden.  It’s on each of us.

Assassin

The goal of an assassin is to change history in one fraction of a second.  In less time than it takes to hear the crack of the bullet, the path forward is unalterably changed.  My generation is well aware of that deadly impact.  In just two months, we lost Martin Luther King Jr, the leader of the Civil Rights movement, and Bobby Kennedy, a Senator running for President.  Our world might have been a very different place if either Ray or Sirhan missed their shot.

Last night a twenty year-old white man from suburban Pittsburgh tried to kill Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.  There are so many questions:  what were his motives, why wasn’t the site line to Trump’s podium covered, what kind of weapon did he use and how did he get it?  What we do know is that Donald Trump “got lucky”; a fatal head shot missed by mere millimeters.  Trump ended up with a bloody ear.  Some spectators were not so lucky. One died, two others were critically injured.

Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, missed his target.  But his actions have dramatically changed the nature of our path.  Crooks, in his failed attempt, gave Donald Trump a “bloody shirt”.  

After the Civil War, politicians running for office would call on “revenge on the South for the deaths of the Union soldiers”.  That campaign rhetoric was called “waving the bloody shirt”;  sort of “elect me and I will get revenge”.  And, of course, many of the candidates had their own “bloody shirt”; wounds left still evident from the War.

Bloody Shirt

It has a literal meaning as well.  Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States from 1901 to 1908.  He chose not to run for a second term in office.  William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s friend, became President when Roosevelt left office.  But after four years, Teddy was not satisfied with Taft’s performance, and ran against him for the Republican nomination.  When he failed to get that, he ran under a third Party banner, the “Bull Moose Party”.

Roosevelt was to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee.  As he got in his car to go to the auditorium, a shot rang out.  Roosevelt’s secretary grabbed the gunman, preventing a second shot.  But the first made it home, and Roosevelt found a small bullet hole in his chest.  But his lungs remained clear, and he determined to continue his speech.

His first words to the audience were shocking:  “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”  He then pulled out the folded fifty-page draft of his speech, covered with blood with two bullet holes in it, and showed them his blood soaked shirt.  The double-thickness of the document and his thick spectacles saved him worse injury.  He then went onto to give a speech (albeit shorter than intended).  It included the phrase,  “…it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”.

Roosevelt went to the hospital for treatment after the speech, and fully recovered from the wound.  His second run for President was unsuccessful, though his candidacy did split the Republican vote and elected Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

God Alone  

Today is not the day to compare Donald Trump to Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, or Teddy Roosevelt.  But social media is already filled with pictures of the bloodied former President, raising his fist to the crowd and urging them to “fight”.   And his social media post this morning emphasizes his avowed “place” in history:

 “…(I)t was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness”.

Trump has his bloody shirt.  The campaign of 2024 has shifted again.  We don’t know what path this assassin has placed our nation on.

Leaks

First things first:  the Trump campaign; the one defeated in the “Most Important Election in a Century” in 2020; publicly says they want to run against Joe Biden again.  Think about that.  The Trump campaign let that “secret” out to Tim Alberta, reporter for The Atlantic.  Other reporters were amazed that the Trump campaign managers would “leak” such information.  Unlike the “old days” of 2016 and 2020, when the campaign was a clown show, Trump 2024 campaign staff is smart, professional, and ruthless.  

So why would they “leak” this to the press?  Why would they tell the world, “We want to run against Biden”?   Why would they lend their voice to the political melee surrounding the Biden candidacy?  Maybe they were just being honest.  Or, perhaps they wanted to set up a “fallback position”, an excuse if they would happen to lose to a different Democratic candidate.  But neither of those positions fit the Machiavellian reputation of the new leaders of Trump world, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. 

They told Alberta that their entire campaign was premised on making Biden appear feeble, demented, and unable to govern.  The Trump campaign has already spent millions of dollars to emphasize the current President’s flaws to the American people, on television, and perhaps more importantly, through social media.  They’ve targeted this dark information to the critical swing states:  Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.  In a year were fully 90% of the vote, perhaps even more, is already “baked in” for one candidate or the other, it is in those few states that the electoral vote will make all the difference.  Just like it did in 2020.

The Strategy

This election is about two things.  The first is the battle for the few undecided voters left.  And the Trump strategy for those voters makes sense.  Persuade those few that the current President is unable to lead, versus their strong, domineering leader.  Even if they don’t switch from Biden to Trump, maybe they chose a third-party candidate, or simply chose to not vote at all.

And the second is the battle of turnout.   Trump voters are committed, they will turn out.  But if Biden voters feel they don’t have a chance, or that Biden himself is a shell of the man they chose in 2020, the theory is that they won’t go to the polls. Add to that the Republican National Committee strategy of spending millions of dollars to make voting more difficult and dissuade Democrats from casting a ballot, and Trump wins the turnout campaign.

That way, Trump wins the undecided, and he wins on turnout.  What was a narrow Biden victory in 2020 becomes a Trump “landslide” win in 2024 (though the definition of “landslide” in our current politics is a win of two percent).

Alberta tells a story of a Trump Campaign that acts like the Covid vaccine.  Sure, it’s effective against one strain of the virus, but if a different iteration of the disease appears, the vaccine is useless.  LaCivita and Wiles’ strategy against Biden falls short against another candidate, say Kamala Harris.  But if that’s really true, why would the Trump campaign weigh-in about Biden’s fitness to continue?  After all, their “thumb on the scale” has an obvious impact on the Democrats who are actually making the decision. It might not be the effect that the Trump campaign is hoping for.

Kryptonite

Let’s take the Trump managers’ reputation at face value.  If they are so Machiavellian, then why would they lay out their strategy so clearly?  Democrats are determining whether to “switch horses in mid-stream”, and the Trump folks are literally saying, we want Biden.  Doesn’t that just become another “nail in the coffin” in the Biden candidacy?  Wouldn’t that make Democrats more likely to say, let’s find another candidate, one that the Trump campaign isn’t prepared for?

Or is that exactly what the Trump team wants.  Biden was Trump’s “kryptonite” in 2020,  perhaps he is again.  The exact nature of Biden’s “super-power” is clear:  he appeals to all of the regular Democratic base (minorities and women) but also is able to cross-over to some of the white men that used to be part of the old Democratic  fabric.  They are the so-called “Reagan Democrats”; lost to the Democratic Party for a whole generation.  Joe Biden is an “old white guy” and a staunch Union supporter.  He runs better with older white men than any other Democratic candidate in a generation. And where does that marginal difference in white men have the most impact?  The old “labor” states of the Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.   

So, is the Trump Campaign really convinced they can withstand Biden “kryptonite” this time?  Or is the Alberta “leak” a whole subversive strategy, first to lend more chaos to the “Chaos Party” of 2024, the Democrats, and second, to find a candidate that Trump matches up better against.  Are the Trump managers trying to get rid of Biden by saying he’s the one they’d rather run against? 

Nailed It

The Democrats have a lot to think about in the next few days.  The President, minus one name flub, gave an hour-long masters level course on foreign policy last night at his post-NATO summit press conference.  He did just what you’d want an “agile” politician to do – he answered the questions he wanted to, and dodged the ones he didn’t want to answer.  And he got in his political barbs:  Trump cheating at golf instead of working, and the “2025 Project” horror show.   He nailed the base Democratic point:  Trump will take your freedom away.

Biden made it clear he was staying in the race; literally daring anyone who wanted him out to a floor fight at the Democratic convention.  It’s a fight Biden will win, but a fight the entire Party might lose in November.  Any way you think about that 1968-like disaster, it’s playing into the Trump Campaign’s hands.  Democrats must avoid that catastrophe. So the decision is Biden versus the doubters, and it’s now.  

And Joe Biden has already decided.

Fifth Grade Teacher

So let’s say a public school district is looking to hire a fifth grade teacher.  Sure, they want the best teacher than can get.  And since teaching jobs, despite the relatively low pay and benefits, are still at a premium, there are dozens of applications, dozens of resumes to read.  The personnel department starts the “process” by reading, and setting up two piles.  Pile one:  those rejected out of hand, just on the “qualifications” or lack thereof.  Pile two:  those that make the cut, and might be called in for interviews.

Who doesn’t make the cut?  Let’s start with the basics:  do they have a criminal record (deal-breaker), do they have a history of multiple bankruptcies (not always a deal-breaker), do they have any hint of sexual misconduct with minors (always a deal-breaker).  

And then there’s the “search”, a Google and social media search of the candidates.  What comes up?  Is the candidate an extremist, or publicly uses profane or lewd language?  Would the school district be embarrassed by anything that comes up in the search?  If so, no reason to continue; another addition to pile one.  

Public Persona

Some might ask, why look at the “public persona” of a teacher candidate?  Privacy rights advocates might say it’s “NOYB” (none of your business).  As long as the candidate can do the job, in the classroom, then what happens outside the workplace isn’t a concern.

But the candidate is being hired as a “public” official, in a true sense.  They are going to be entrusted with as many as thirty kids, for seven hours, day in and day out.  Those kids (and their parents) can run the same Google searches.  What happens when they find out that the teacher is also a stripper (that happened), or arrested for drug dealing (that happened too), or has pictures of drunk and disorderly behavior (yep – that one too).  Are those parents willing to entrust their child to that person?  Would you entrust yours?

Imperfect Vessel

Thans goodness Donald Trump isn’t a stripper (there’s a vision you’ll never get out of your head – Hah!!) .  And he doesn’t deal drugs, and supposedly, doesn’t drink.  But he should never had made it to pile two in any public service job, much less on the ballot for President.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon, a documented liar, a businessman who went bankrupt six times, a man who committed sexual battery and consorted with a known child molester.  There are pages of reasons, not even political, why Donald Trump should not be hired as a fifth grade teacher, much less as President of the United States.  And yet, he’s still on the ballot.

I know, I know.  There are a huge number of Americans, over 40%, who give Trump a “pass”.  They see him as the “imperfect vessel”, the damaged goods that still represents their views of how America should be governed.  They have “forgiven him his trespasses”.  As the Trump folks said: all of the “trespasses”, from Stormy Daniels and Access Hollywood, to business bankruptcies and fraudulent college classes; were “absolved” by the 2016 election.  By winning the Presidency, Trump got a “clean slate” according to them.  

Too Busy

2020 was a referendum on Trump’s term in the White House:  he failed.  And since then:  the litany of Trump’s failures, indictments, convictions and “improper behaviors” is even longer than it was before 2016.   The “imperfect vessel” is now leaking like a sieve.  And the question remains, where is the outcry to “get him off the ballot”?

Wait a minute; there’s the media:  The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, all the mainstream news organizations.   Are they leading the way in calling out the complete fallacy in letting this man run for President?  No, they are too busy deciding that the other candidate, one of the most successful Presidents in modern history, is too old for the job.  (This just in, the New York Times editorial board must have read my mind, they are calling out Trump – about time!!).  

Geese

My London-born Mom used to use an old English expression:  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.  Here in America we say it a little different, “What’s fair is fair”.  I watched the Trump-Biden debate a couple of weeks ago.  I think there is plenty of room for question about President Biden’s fitness.  But for sure, Trump’s performance also raised a lot of questions.  

And with his record, there needs to be another old American concept – equal time.  With all of the scrutiny of Biden, where’s all the outrage about Trump?  Just because he’s been “absolved” by his MAGA following, it doesn’t mean that his record, and his actions, are now just “forgiven trespasses”.  

So worry about Biden, talk about Biden, even do those ugly things some of my Democratic compatriots are doing:  hand wringing, bed wetting, pearl clutching (I hate all of those terms).

But sure as Hell, don’t let Trump off the hook.  He couldn’t get a job as a teacher, or, even nearer to my heart, a dog catcher.  That headline on the Front Page needs to be just as big as Biden’s.

Non-Objective 

Data drives our society. We are computer driven, and it’s impossible to “crunch” non-objective sources.  If  something can’t be boiled down to numbers, then it can’t be understood.  So everything:  children’s learning, Presidential candidates, calling plays in the National Football League; are forced through the “black-box” of data collection.

We saw it happen in public schools in the late 1980’s with the beginning of statewide public school testing.  I remember committees of teachers taking days out of the classroom, away from their kids, and working on curriculum to “pass” the tests.  Those scores became the primary source of data on educational progress; honestly, more important than student grades.  Get a ‘C’ or ‘D’ in a class, the kid still passed.  Fail the “Student Achievement Test”, and regardless of grades, the kid might be held back, or at the high school level, not even graduate.

And since there was all that “objective data”, the Achievement test results soon infiltrated into teacher evaluations.  If kids did well on the tests, then the subject teachers were obviously “good teachers”.  And if they did badly, regardless, then the teacher’s “need improvement”.   Teachers wanted to keep their jobs, so not surprisingly, they taught kids to do well on the tests.  It was in their best interest, and the kids.  But was it the “best” way for students to learn; did it prepare them for their future in life work or higher education?  It really didn’t matter; the “data” was there, regardless of whether that data was a valid measurement of education or not.  And that “data” drove everything else.   

Garbage In

It’s still the way public schools work. (Here is Ohio’s “interactive page” with my school district’s “report card”).  In most schools, high stakes testing still drives education, even though the ability to pass a test doesn’t necessarily apply to success in future employment.  There are a few courageous school districts that “opted out” of the tests, but they took their chances on losing state funding. Because the test results can go on a “spreadsheet”, because it’s easy to see, the “data” becomes the most important “evidence”.  What really “good” teachers do, is get the kids through the tests, AND teach them what they need to know for the future.  But it’s a lot, and forces them to teach in ways that aren’t necessarily in the kids “real” best interest.  

Sabotage

We crave for a way to make decisions based on “data”, rather than experience, or non-objective factors. Football coaches use “data analytics” to decide whether to run or pass, go-for-it on fourth down or punt.  Someone, even during the game, is “crunching numbers” in the stadium.  

I’m not a “Luddite”. (Named for the bands of workers who broke the machinery that was taking their jobs in the early 1800s.  Some workers in France threw their wooden shoes into the machines.  The shoes were called “sabots”.  Thus came the modern word, “sabotage”.)   

And I’m sure that NFL coaches use any way they can to get one-up on their competitors.  But it’s important that the “data” that goes into the crunching is valid.  Back in 1974,  I was taking computer programming, tapping out programs on green screens in “Basic”.  We had an expression:  GIGO.  It meant that if your program was garbage, all you would get was garbage results – Garbage In, Garbage Out.  So if the data isn’t valid, or really doesn’t measure what it’s supposed to measure, then it’s GIGO.

Garbage Out

So let’s look at a modern “polling” question, asked quite frequently to provide the “data” to drive who should be the Presidential candidate:

“On a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree, respond to the following question – Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective President.” (NYT).

Joe Biden is eighty-one years old.  He has all sorts of physical problems that old men have, including spinal arthritis, acid reflux, A-Fib, peripheral neuropathy, and seasonal allergies (WH).   He looks, walks, and talks like an old man.  Certainly all of those issues impact his ability to be President. But does that mean he is or isn’t “effective”?  That’s a totally different question.

If I were taking that survey, I would “mildly agree” with the question.  But the answer to that question doesn’t “drive” my answer to the decision all Americans have to make:  Trump v Biden.  Yes, Joe’s old, and he’s for sure going to get older.   But it’s Biden versus Trump, and I’ll take Biden every time, even if he’s “too old”.   There’s no other practical choice to stop Donald Trump; only a couple of years younger, and already exhibiting his own symptoms of old age.  

Who’s Talking

And there’s a lot of other questions about the “polling” that’s driving the argument to “drop Biden from the ticket”.  As Biden himself reiterates, the polling has been wrong, over and over again.  In the past the polls under-estimated Trump support.  But they also under-estimated strength of pro-choice voters. And since polling is not just counting numbers, but  “crunching”  them through a model of what the pollster “thinks” the electorate looks like, it’s easy to miss “closet” Biden or Trump voters.  

In today’s highly polarized society, where even a casual overheard conversation or a bumper sticker can result in confrontation, how many people are willing to “tell where they stand” to the pollsters coming up on their cell-phones?   How many are keeping their views on the “down-low”, ignoring the repeated text, email or phone messages to “participate in a poll”.  

Sure polling data is “all we’ve got”.  But garbage-in, garbage-out is still true.  Just because we have “data”, doesn’t mean it’s accurate or meaningful, and doesn’t mean we should make decisions based on it.  

This decision is too important. It has to be right.  

Bad Old Days

There is an old saying from the “bad old days” of the Southern Democratic Party.  It went: “I’d vote for an ‘old yeller dog’, as long as there’s a D (Democrat) beside it’s name.”  And, to be honest, I am pretty much of a “Old Yeller Dog Democrat” myself.  I can count on one hand the number of Republicans I voted for in the almost fifty years that I’ve cast ballots.  In fact, I can count on one hand, with three fingers and a thumb to spare.

Why is that?  Why don’t I “vote for the person” (vote for the “man” in the old days) not just the Party?  Because, despite George Washington’s dislike of partisan politics, our Federal and State governments are organized by political party, not individuals.  To get anything done in our current structure it requires a majority:  of the State House of Representatives, or the State Senate, or the House and the Senate in the Congress and now, sadly, even the Supreme Court.   And that majority consists of folks with like-minded ideas organized by political party.

Party not Person

So voting for the “person” doesn’t mean much, if that “person” can’t get anything done.  Or worse, if the person, as wonderful as they may be, still votes to put a political party in power who doesn’t represent your ideas.  Need an example?  

There’s Larry Hogan, running for the US Senate in Maryland.  Maryland is a moderate/Democratic state, and when Hogan was the Republican Governor, he was a moderate, down the middle, kind of leader.  But if he were elected (not likely; the latest polling; down by eight), he would still organize and vote Republican.  He would support the MAGA Agenda in the US Senate, even if that’s not really what he, as a “person” agrees with.  So a vote for him is a vote for that agenda.  

National Agenda

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the personalities of the 2024 Presidential election.  Right now, one side is running a twice-impeached, indicted in two state and two federal courts, convicted of 34 state felonies, seventy-eight year old, former President.  Oh, and when he goes “off script” in rallies, he talks about shark attacks and electric boats, and sometimes can’t remember where his sentence is going.  And when he stays on script, his plans are authoritarian and he wants to be a “dictator for a day”.  And he lies, a lot, factual lies that he pushes out so fast, it’s near impossible to fact-check. 

The other side is running an eighty-one year old current President, finishing one of the most successful (legislative) terms in office since Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.  His problem:  age is catching up.  He walks old, he talks old, his voice is old; and when he gets tired, he acts old too.  When he’s “off script”, he sometimes gets lost (though he doesn’t seem to worry about the shark v electric boat crisis).

It would be easy to say, “a pox on both your houses” (one of Mom’s expressions) and either make a symbolic stand and vote for an “alternative” candidate (Kennedy, Stein, Oliver, West), or simply skip the Presidential vote all together.  But not choosing between Trump and Biden is more than just demanding “better choices”.  It’s not taking a stand; a stand for one political party or the other.  By “dodging” the binary choice, you are simply saying that you’re OK with either party’s agenda being in control. 

It’s About Issues 

As an “Old Yeller Dog” Democrat, I’m not OK with that.  The MAGA agenda, that has co-opted the Republican Party of my father, is not “OK”.   It’s against almost everything I’ve stood for in my sixty-four years of political life (yep, I started young).  They’re pro-rich, against the poor.  They’re racist, trying to maintain white control even as our nation becomes a majority-minority population.  The MAGA agenda doesn’t care about the environment, or the cost of health care, or the rights of those who are “different” than them. 

That’s not the scariest part.  The MAGA agenda would allow Vladimir Putin to conquer Ukraine, and set up a world confrontation of Russian expansionism.  It would allow Israel to suppress all of the Palestinian people, a tactic that will ultimately result in greater bloodshed for both.  And it would ultimately destroy the “Pax Americana” that has kept the world from global conflict for almost eighty years.

And, with the ready assistance of the United States Supreme Court, the MAGA agenda would  weaponize the Justice system against anyone who stands in their way.  You think that Biden’s Department of Justice “went after” Trump?  Wait until you see what Attorney General Jim Jordan (or the like) does against any political opposition to the MAGA views.  As Trump said, “…and when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”  That attitude will be writ large, in a second Trump Administration with practical immunity for every action.

Empty Vessel

And finally, the “smart folks” behind MAGA’ism are making sure they’ll never be defeated again.  You don’t have to read the entire 922 page Project 2025 plan, the executive summary will do.  It’s a plan to co-opt the United States government, to do to the civil service what Trump has done with the Supreme Court:  implant MAGA loyalists at every level.  It’s not about expertise, it’s about ideological loyalty to the “cause”.  And that’s the scariest thing of all.

To be frank, Donald Trump is the “empty vessel”, filled with right-wing idealism that pledge allegiance to his candidacy.  Joe Biden is not an “empty vessel”, he is what he always has been, a moderate/Democrat.  If he were to step away from the Presidential election,  Vice President Harris or others would stand in basically the same place.

But it’s not about the personality or even individual political views.  It’s about the choice between democracy and authoritarianism; about the reality of a Nation where one person is now, in fact, above the law.  As Superman would say, it really is about; “Truth, Justice, and the American way”.    What will we look like in 2032.

Don’t like Biden? Think he’s too old?   Pretend he’s an “Old Yeller Dog” —  and vote.

This is a Sunday Story – no politics today. Just a story about Jeeps!!!!

Watkins Cross Country Team Shirt – 1998

New Jeep

I bought my first Jeep Wrangler (TJ) in 1993.  It was white, with a black soft top and what Jeep calls “half doors”.  That meant that the bottom halves of the two doors were metal, white, actual doors, while the top halves were black canvas on a springy metal frame.  The canvas tops had clear plastic windows set into them.  So you could unzip the window, pull it inside the door in the Jeep, and have an open window; fall, winter and spring.  And the summer, you took the top halves off and set them in the back of the Jeep.  The half doors came off too (as long as you didn’t want side mirrors).  As my Marine friend said, you could hang your leg out like it was an old Vietnam era Jeep.

Now I paid bottom dollar for my brand new TJ.  It cost extra for the rearview mirror and the back “tumble” seat.  There wasn’t a radio, but that was OK.  I put my own sound system in all of my cars anyway.   And what I didn’t realize when I bought it, was that Jeeps came with drain plugs in the floor.  Top off, doors off, windows off; if you got caught in the rain (or tried to drive across a shallow lake – yep!!) then all you had to do was pry the drain plugs out and tilt the car downhill.  The water ran right out.

The Cult

That Jeep was the “bomb”.  Even in the winter, the heater made up for the drafty windows and the four-wheel-drive kept going in the snow.  The only time I really got cold, was when it was twenty below zero with thirty mile an hour wind.  My friend Mickey and I decided to go to a movie since it was a “snow day” from school ( a “freeze day” really).  I will admit, driving around I-270 in the Jeep was a near-outdoor challenge.  

What I didn’t realize in ’93 was that buying a Jeep put you into a cult, sort of like when we bought the camper twenty-five years later.  Jeep folks (that’s Wrangler-type Jeep folks, not those Comanche, Wagoneer or Liberty drivers) recognize each other, especially back in the 1990’s when there weren’t so many of us.  It was an insider code:  see a Jeep coming, give the “peace sign” above the steering wheel.  Kind of like the Harley motorcycle guys and their clenched fist, but more subtle.  

You could tell who had been in the club the longest.  Those CJ people (Jeeps of the 1980’s) called the windows “side curtains”, and didn’t mind that their Jeeps only had three speeds.  And they might never put a full top on their Jeeps, just a “bikini” top to keep the rain off of the inside of the windshield.   Jeeps were more like four-wheel motorcycles then, good for three-season driving. 

Four Wheeling

Getting caught in a rain storm without a top was one of the “funnest” things to happen in a Jeep, as long as it wasn’t too cold.  You drove fast, that way the rain swept over the windshield and not down on you.  It was only when you stopped that the “drenching” would begin.   Of course, there are no “inside” windshield wipers.  You had to have a towel ready to clear your view.

 And the first time I hit a giant puddle at fifty miles an hour (on Palmer Road) without the top – I was more than surprised.  Oh, the Jeep handled it fine, but the water went over the front, over the windshield, and right on top on me, just like those wet roller coaster rides at the amusement park.

I did off-road the Jeep, but I wasn’t into the crazy “rock climbing” kind of stuff.  After-all, the Jeep was my day-to-day vehicle.  I couldn’t risk flipping it over, or breaking an axle.  So while I might fly through dirt paths (or no paths) I liked the Jeep because it made driving fun. There was really no where I couldn’t go, no field I couldn’t cross.  And when it actually got “almost” stuck, there was always Four-Wheel Low.  First gear might go three miles an hour, but you could “creep” out of almost any mess.

That is, except for the time I decided to do “donuts” in the school parking lot after a big snowfall.  I was spinning around, having a ball, when the whole Jeep slid on top of the four-foot snow drift.  All four wheels were spinning, four wheel drive or not.  As I was sitting there, contemplating what to do next, a kid from across the street came over with his Massey Ferguson farm tractor: “Mr. Dahlman, you stuck?”  It only took a few minutes to hook up the chains and drag me out, but he got the “honor” of telling the story the first day we were back in school.

Jeep-ese

Speaking of kids, several learned the arcane art of driving a stick-shift, out in the school fields and woods in my Jeep.  One took it to Prom, roof on, of course (wouldn’t want to ruin her prom dress!).  And the Jeep even carried fifteen foot pole vault poles, slung on top of the roll bars.  It looked like some weird missile launching system – but it got us to Cleveland and back for the track meet.

I learned all sorts of new terms with the Jeep.  “Seat belt tan”, was when you drove around too long with the Jeep’s and your top off.  “Bug Destroyer” was the vertical windshield on a Jeep – it killed everything in its path, and often had to be ice scraper’ed off even in the summer – cleanser just wouldn’t get it.  “Cell phone privacy”:  it was near impossible to have a phone conversation with the top off at seventy miles an hour.  “I’m in the Jeep, I’ll call you back later”, was all you could say with a hurricane in the background.

And finally “just a car”, when it came to driving on ice.  Four-wheels spinning on ice weren’t a whole lot better than two.  Ice required an attitude adjustment.  You couldn’t drive like a “Jeep” anymore.

Old Jeep Disease

I drove that Jeep until it got “old Jeep disease”.  Rust ate through the body.  By 2008 I was near “Fred Flinstoneing” it, with holes in the floor and the door panels.  So I began a search for my next vehicle, which turned out to be – a white Jeep with a black top, two-door; this time a 2004, designated by Jeep as a “YJ”.  I sold my old Jeep to one of my best 400 meter runners, who ultimately sold it to the father of another runner, who took two years to completely rebuild it.  I still occasionally see the old TJ on the road, looking proud, better than it did when it came off the lot back in 1993. 

I’m still driving the “YJ”.  It’s summer, the top’s been off for a few days, and the “summer, all canvas” doors are leaning against the fence.  I only need doors if I’m going on the highway, where side mirrors are particularly useful.  Now that its twenty years old, it too is getting “old Jeep disease” and the heater isn’t great.  

But the floors are still intact, and it still drives like a Jeep.  And there’s a new “Jeep thing”; the little rubber ducks on the dash.  The original idea was that Jeep “people” would see another Jeep they liked, and pass on a duck to it.  Some people get completely carried away, with dozens of ducks all over the place.  I’m not that far gone.  But I do have a duck “family”; Mom, Dad, older son and two duckings, “floating” on the dash panel below the rear view mirror.  They all “magically appeared” in parking lots across Ohio.  Some “Jeepers” respect an old YJ, still going strong.   

And I keep my ducks “in a row”.  After all, it’s a Jeep!!

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23
• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24
• Jeeping – 7/7/24

Designated Survivor

Jenn and I have been “bingeing” the TV series Designated Survivor.  The show first aired from 2016-2019, and is kind of a cross between two other shows of the early 2000’s. The West Wing was the political White House drama starring Martin Sheen as the President. The show aired for seven years (and helped me survive the George W Bush administration).  Twenty-Four ran for nine years around the same time. It was an action drama where Kiefer Sutherland was an intelligence agent who broke every rule to save the Nation.  A season spanned twenty-four hours, thus the name.  I was (and still am) a West Wing guy, not a Twenty-Four guy, more interested in Aaron Sorkin’s incredible dialogues, than the Fox explosions.

In Designated Survivor, Kiefer Sutherland returns as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development left out of the State of the Union address, when the Capitol is destroyed, along with the American government.  By default he is the President, and faces all the challenges of rebuilding the federal system, finding the terrorists who destroyed the Capitol, and other crises.  In this drama, FBI investigators work directly for the President, thus “marrying” West Wing drama with Twenty Four action.

West Wing Moment

West Wing quotes are still rife in our political life today.  Forty through sixty year-old politicians and news commentators grew up watching the West Wing, Democrat and Republican alike.   In fact, one of the ways news commentators describe the current Biden dilemma, is that it isn’t likely to create, “… a West Wing moment, when the Democrats come together to pick a new candidate…”.  

But I heard an even more apt quote that applies to Biden on Designated Survivor last night.  The political operative on the show, said that, “A crisis either lasts one news cycle or ten.  If at lasts one cycle, we can move on.  If it lasts ten, it will define your Presidency”.  

Defining Biden

I hoped that the Biden campaign would work past the incredibly bad debate performance of just last week (believe that, it was only a week ago!).  There was a clear strategy:  get the President out; to rallies, interviews, unscripted settings. Prove that he’s not the “lost old man” that we saw on the Atlanta debate stage.  But they didn’t do that.  Biden did a couple rallies, but then “sheltered in place” either at Camp David or the White House.  Is this because he’s developing plans, or because he really is the “lost old man”?  

This crisis lasted more than just a news cycle.  The question of Joe Biden’s fitness even survived Monday’s outrageous Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump was virtually immune from any criminal prosecution, and the Fourth of July holiday.  Here on the Fifth, it’s still leading all of the news shows, not just on Fox, but on CNN, MSNBC and the big three broadcast networks as well.  It has “defined” the 2024 Presidential race.  

I still believe that this is not “our” decision.  Only Joe Biden and those around him know his real condition.  But they are faced with one stark fact. He’s an eighty-one year old man, running for four more years in the hardest job in the world.  The “prima-facie” case is that he is already too old, and will be far-far too old, by the time 2028 rolls around.  And, even if he just had a “bad night” at the debate, it’s likely there will be more bad nights in the future, not fewer.

One Term Presidents

After the debate, I vowed that I wouldn’t jump on the band wagon of those that want Biden to retire.  But here we are, with a crisis that extends a whole week, and seems to only be growing worse.  I still feel that this truly is Biden’s call, not ours.  But I would be remiss if I didn’t go the next step, and try to “game out” what happens if Joseph Robinette Biden, 46^th President of the United States, determines not to run for a second term.

It has happened before.  In the pivotal year of 1968, Lyndon Johnson determined not to run for a second term in the White House.  We were in the middle of the Vietnam War, with the Democratic Party completely split over the issue.  Johnson was faced with fierce opposition, first by Senator Gene McCarthy and his “Children’s Crusade”.  In the New Hampshire primary, McCarthy came within seven percent of the serving President, sending a clear message to the White House.  A few days later, Senator Robert Kennedy entered the race, further dividing the Democrats.  Soon, Johnson withdrew.

Instead, his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey (of Minnesota) entered as Johnson’s “stand-in”.  The race soon came down to Kennedy versus Humphrey, and was leading to a split convention.  But Kennedy was assassinated in June after winning the California primary, and while the Democrats nominated Humphrey for President, their convention in Chicago was completely divided by both opposition candidates and students marching (and being beaten by police) in the streets.  Republican Richard Nixon ultimately won a narrow victory over Humphrey, and the course of the Nation was altered.

2028 Campaign

Johnson pulled out of the race in March.  If Biden were to pull out, it would be only weeks before a convention.  All of the delegates are chosen, and the vast majority of them are pledged to vote for Joe Biden on the first ballot.  There are several candidates (Moore, Buttigieg, Whitmer, Harris, Newsom, Warnock, Polis, Pritzker, Brashear, Shapiro, to name a few) who might consider running.  Without a primary season to sort this out (our 2028 Democratic future) how would the Democratic Party not splinter by region, race, gender, or view?

The answer is that President Biden would have to “anoint” a candidate, one who would not only win against Donald Trump in 2024, but likely govern until 2032.   And that “anointed” could only be the current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.  There are several reasons who Harris is the ONLY one.

It’s Harris

First, Biden has already made the decision that Harris is prepared for the Presidency.  It’s the choice he made in 2020, and stood by for the past four years.  And Harris has done everything to demonstrate that she is prepared to be President.  

Second, there is a practical financial matter.  Harris is the only other candidate that could collect on the Biden campaign war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars.  That money was raised for the “Biden-Harris” campaign, not a “generic Democrat” campaign.  Any other Democratic candidate would be so far behind Trump on the fundraising curve, that raising enough money would seem insurmountable.

And third, there is the reality of the makeup Democratic Party.  There are two huge constituencies in the Party, women, and people of color.  For the serving Vice President, a woman of color, to be passed over by a brokered Democratic Convention in August of the election year, particularly for a white male, virtually guarantees a split in the heart of the Party.  At the least it would diminish turnout in this “margins” election.  At worst there could be an actual split or even a walkout.  Like 1968, Chicago could prove to be another Democratic disaster.

America’s Choice

All in the face of the most important Presidential election since the election of 1864.  Like that critical moment in the middle of the Civil War, the Nation is at a turning point.  Will we be a Nation moving backwards (Project 2025) or a Nation moving forward?  Will we turn to authoritarian leaders, or “double-down” on democracy?  What is the future of the American experiment? And even more importantly, will we give Donald Trump, now immune from criminal prosecution as President, the power of the Presidency to alter our Nation?

It’s Joe Biden’s decision, but it will be America’s choice.

America’s Birthday

It’s the Fourth of July, the “birthday” of the United States of America.  And, of course, even that date has some controversy (it is the United States).  The Declaration of Independence was voted on in the Second Continental Congress on July 4^th.  Twelve of the thirteen colonies agreed, but the delegation from New York abstained.  They had no instructions from their legislature, and didn’t join until July 9^th.  

And then there’s the “signing” argument.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were adamant that most delegates signed the document on July 4^th, but historians argue that other signatures were added on in July and even in August.  It’s hard to argue with the firm views Jefferson and Adams. After all, they were there; historians were not.  And so the Fourth of July is the “accepted” date.

That was two-hundred and forty-eight years ago.  From the very beginning, the Fourth was celebrated by fireworks.  John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail after the Congressional vote:

[This day] ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Here in my town, Pataskala, we celebrated with fireworks on Sunday, June 30^th.  Jenn and I sat on the back deck and watched the show. It’s not quite like being in the crowd at the park, but, we kept close to our dogs inside. They don’t like booms and whistles.  

Red, White and Blue

It’s been a week of ups and downs for American patriotism.  It started with the absolute joy of American athletes making the Olympic team, proud to represent the USA in Paris at the end of the month.  I watched record performances in track and field, with Sydney McLauglin-Levrone breaking her own world standard in the 400 meter hurdles. And a sixteen year-old high school kid, Quincy Wilson, earned a place in the men’s 4×400 relay.

I also saw amazing feats of skill in gymnastics.  Simone Biles, all  four feet eight inches of her, soared over twelve feet in the air straight from the mat.  The “thrill of victory” was clear. So was the “agony of defeat” outlined in the grim smile of Shane Wiskus, the Minnesota born 2021 Olympic gymnast.  He was relegated to alternate role on the team by a five one-hundredths of a point difference in computer scoring.  The smallest point deduction in gymnastics is one tenth of a point – but the computer model “doesn’t lie” – so Wiskus gets to practice, watch and wait.

Birthday 250

As I watched the fireworks in this small town, I couldn’t help but think what the 250^th Birthday might be like, two years from now.  With so much on the line in this year’s election, it’s hard to tell what the future holds.  Of course we will celebrate in two years, “…from one end of the continent to the other…”. But what will our American government look like.  

Kevin Roberts, the President of the conservative Heritage Foundation made it clear what his vision is.  He hopes to fill a Trump Administration with Heritage members and fundamentally change the American government, much as the Federalist Society took over the US Supreme Court.  The Heritage “Project 2025” would use the Federal government to make fundamental changes in America.  As Roberts ominously  stated:  “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

They certainly have the Supreme Court behind them, and the huge thumb of right-wing media on the scale as well.  It makes the 2024 election feel like so much more than just two old white men running for President.  What was it Superman used to say?  2024 feels like an existential determination of what “Truth, Justice and the American Way” really means.

Roberts laid down his gauntlet:  he will have “his” revolution, bloodless or not.  2024’s not about Trump, or Biden.  It’s about what the United States of America, and in extension, the world, is going to be like.  Will we be celebrating the 250^th anniversary, or will we be in mourning for the loss of freedom Project 2025 promises?  Who will be welcome in the Park to watch the fireworks, and who will be relegated to watching from outside?  

Protect Freedom

It’s almost like “regular” political arguments are no longer important.  More or less taxes, wider or narrow roads, the price of milk and eggs; all those issues seem to pale before the threat to freedom that the Heritage Foundation offers.  Their vision of America is one we left behind with “Wally and the Beaver” back in the 1950’s.  But even worse, they hope to write that vision into stone; in law and practice; to weave it so deeply into our society that it will outlast my generation, the next and even more.  

If you didn’t see fireworks this year, there’s still time.  The Fourth is today, there are small communities all over firing off their salutes to America tonight.  Celebrate the freedoms we have.  But when you see that “best firework”, (for me, the huge gold chrysanthemum blast), and listen to the “ooh’s and awe’s”, remember what we really celebrating – freedom.  

And vow to do something to protect that freedom come November 2024 – and beyond. 

Hard to Say

There is a TV  commercial that aired during the Olympic Trials (Gymnastics, Swimming, and Track and Field; a lot to watch).  It has folks who speak English as a second language, first talk about the “hardest things to say in English”.  Several talk about linguistics, the difficulty of saying the word “sixth”; and the words the sound the same, like “scissors” and “Caesar”,  but mean two different things.  But then the topic changes, to the hardest emotional messages to say in English. “Goodbye”, “I was wrong”, “I am sorry”, and “I love you” are some of the phrases so tough to say.

Well, I need to say something that is incredibly difficult to say; both to you, and to myself.  I was a fool.  I was a fool to expect anything different from the Supreme Court than what we got yesterday. A fool, to believe that this Supreme Court would stick to what they believed.  I thought that they believed in the Founding Fathers, and in the sanctity of what the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights said.  In fact, I thought that was the entire basis of “originalism”. The law: their theory that the law is “as written” with the “original intent” of the authors. For the past fifty years, I believed that was their guiding principle.

No Man Above the Law

And I had a further “foolish conceit”.  I thought that there was a level of our national leadership who understood that MAGA-Trumpism was simply a “story” to gain votes.  I anticipated that the Justices on the Supreme Court would pay lip service to Trump, but would stand with the Founding Fathers, their “original” legal foundation.  But again, I was a fool.

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court, a topic I’ve spent a lot of time on for the past few weeks, ruled that the United States in NOT a Nation where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.   The Supreme Court created a whole new status of American:  one who is literally immune from the law in his/her official capacity; the President of the United States.  As noted conservative jurist Michael Luttig stated:  “Today our country is changed.  We are no longer a Nation where no man is above the law”.

Founding Fathers

There was no need for this.  The Nation managed to get through two-hundred and thirty-six years of Presidents, from Washington to Lincoln to the Roosevelts to Barack Obama, without criminal immunity.  And we even managed to get through “bad” Presidents;  Hoover, Filmore, Harding and Richard Nixon.  But now, all the rules are changed.  A President is even “presumed immune” in their private conversations and public speeches, even if they are acting in “bad faith”.  

And, looking back at the Founding Fathers themselves, there is no question.  Their greatest fear was the unchecked Executive, the President who “would be king”.  There is absolutely no way that Madison, Washington, Franklin, or even Alexander Hamilton; would have wanted a President to have some form of blanket immunity from criminal responsibility.  Today’s “Originalists” on the Supreme Court did the thing they argued most against.  They “legislated” and created a Constitutional right out of “whole cloth”.

Signs

So how did those six Justices, led by their Chief, John Roberts, author of the decision, find themselves as “living Constitutionalists”, their own arch-enemy?  

This is the center of my own foolishness.  The signs were all there:  Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife was a leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement.  She organized, called, and donated to the attempt to stop the legal transfer of power after the 2020 election.  And Justice Samuel Alito literally flew the flag of “rebellion” outside of his homes during January of 2021.   They are true believers in the fundamental “canons” of MAGA lore:

• The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump
• The Justice Department is being used to keep Trump from gaining office again
• Joe Biden is an illegitimate President of the United States
• The entire “main-steam media” is arrayed against Trump, and the United States voter
• “The left” is only interesting in using minorities to gain political power, and wants to create a socialist state, antithetical to their view of what America is.

Sure, I figured Thomas and Alito were that way.  But I didn’t think that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and most of all, Chief Justice Roberts were “all-in” for MAGAism.  I thought, wrongly, that they would stand for their own “originalist” ideology.  I was a fool.

Foolish Ways

And I keep falling back into my “foolish” ways.  After the stunning announcement by the Court yesterday, you would have expected the entire Republican leadership to jump on board, with statements from Speaker Johnson to Chairman Jordan, to Leader McConnell, praising the decision.  But we heard little from them yesterday, and my “head” reasoned that they see the reckless and dangerous immunity decision for what it is. But they don’t.

They’ll fall in line, probably today.  From Johnson to “Old Turtle” McConnell, they too are believers.  And as soon as I get that through my foolish head, then I can think more clearly about the existential threat America faces today.  It’s not Trump:  as the Bible says in Second Corinthians (or, as Trump said, “two” Corinthians) he is “the imperfect vessel”.   But with his victory in 2024, they will “fill” his Presidency with their plans to alter America to some land very different to the one we live in today.  It’s not “just” the 2025 Project, but it’s the alternate vision of America that it represents, a vision so powerful that even the Justices of the Supreme Court are willing to give up their own fundamental principles to achieve it.

Ain’t Your Side

There is no middle ground.  America is so polarized, that even the Supreme Court is now firmly on a side.  Whatever you used to think about America’s leaders standing for something more than “what’s good for them”, stop sharing my foolishness.  There is no center, no Roberts standing in between right and left.  There is only victory or defeat in November for one side or the other.  

Depend on one other thing:  the Supreme Court is not an “impartial arbiter”.  They too are on a side. And, if you’re a Democrat, if you see a future America as a multi-cultural nation; they ain’t on your side.  Don’t be a fool.

Lost Faith

I’ve lost faith in the Supreme Court.  They used to be the final arbiter, who would do “what’s right” for the American people and the law.  Sure, there were the “bad” decisions:  Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson and Korematsu, for example. But the Court ultimately rectified them.  And even when the Court split down party lines in Bush v Gore and determined who the President of the United States would be, it was easy to say that they had to make some call, or there would be no President at all.  

But now there’s the actions of Justices Thomas and Alito, flaunting their immunity from codes of conduct and accepting millions of dollars in gifts. (It makes the behavior that caused Justice Abe Fortes to resign in the 1960’s; penny-ante.) And there’s the “deconstruction” of the administrative state by this Federalist Society majority, over-ruling the “Chevron” case this week. Their actions make it clear. 

 This Court has an ideological agenda, beyond and outside the law.  It can be depended on to drive our Nation back to the “bad old” 1950’s in every way imaginable. (Or, perhaps worse, forward to the “2025 Project”).  In the end, the “Robert’s Court” will bear the same stain as the “Taney Court” of the 1850’s; the one that took the wrong side before the Civil War.  This Court (Justices Kagan, Jackson and Sotomayor excepted) is on the “losing side” of the arc of the American moral universe bending towards justice.

Perfidy

That doesn’t get into the absolute lies that Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch told in their Senate hearings.  They all pledged to pay respect to precedence, to the rule of “stare decis”. But, they clearly do not respect the past, unless “stare decis” only applies to laws passed prior to 1860.  Look out Sherman Anti-Trust Act, they’re coming for you next! 

And it doesn’t include the perfidy of Senator Mitch McConnell, who refused to allow President Obama’s legal nominee for the Court to have a hearing, then rammed through President Trump’s nominee in less than six weeks.  Were McConnell’s legislative machinations “legal”? Unfortunately, they were.  But they were not in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution, or the “norms” of American government and Senate.

Franklin Roosevelt had it right in the late 1930’s.  The Court is stale, dominated by an ideologic legal theory that seeks to undo our modern world.  And every Justice is appointed for life, with no Constitutional way to remove them or force retirement, short of death or behavior so egregious that two-thirds of the Senate would agree to convict on impeachment (something beyond possibility in our polarized age).  

Reform

Federal Judges can take “senior status”, a form of working retirement, at sixty-five years of age with fifteen years of service.  And in the next year, we will have four Justices of the Supreme Court reach seventy.  They are appointed for life.  They can’t be forced to quit. 

 But there is no Constitutionally assigned number of justices on the Court.  Nine Justices is simply a “number”, set by statutory law.    That number has been both fewer and greater in the past (the precedent).  So, the simple answer is this:  for every Justice seventy or older, the current President can appoint an additional Justice to the Court.  The number of nine Justices is just a law, a law that can be changed.   If President Biden could do this – there would be four new Justices on the Court next year, four Justices to balance the Federalist cabal that is now altering our Nation; four Justices to reassert the modern American view of citizenship and personal rights. 

 All it would take, is a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate (willing to break the filibuster rule), and the signature of the President.  And for those who decry this idea as a “politicization” of the Court, that ship already sailed.  It sailed when McConnell pulled his shenanigans, denying Garland a hearing, then rammed Barrett through.  It’s time for Democrats to “ante up”, and get in the “Supreme Court” game.   And it’s not a new idea – checkout the “Judicial Reform Act of 1937”.   In 2025, we deserve a “New Judicial Deal”.  

Just one more reason that the election of 2024 is so important.