stevenkesslar

Trump launches unprecedented attack on military leadership he appointed I'd say we've reached a tipping point. Not in the election itself. But in the theory that President Toxic is some kind of a political genius. He'll probably go down in history as a senile crook with horrible political instincts who may possible destroy the Republican Party. It will at least take the party a long time to rebuild, if it does survive. If you start the clock at January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, it's actually hard to come up with a list of things he's done that involve politically sound judgment. Yeah, he has a pen. He was able to sign the tax bill Paul Ryan has had a hard on for ever since he was elected. He let Mitch nominate the best conservative judges the Federalist Society could find. He inherited an economy with the lowest Black and Hispanic poverty in US history from Obama, and managed not to screw that up until this year. But what did he actually do? What unique policies of his own - infrastructure, rebuilding broken factory towns, opiod epidemics, or even The Wall - has he won? Pretty much every election from 2017 to 2019 is just worse news for Republicans as this has played out. He sends right-of-center moderates and principled conservatives screaming into the night. And that was all before COVID-10 and a recession that wiped 9.5 % out of second quarter GDP. Is that supposed to make things better for President Toxic? So why am I not surprised that the vet with PTSD interviewed by Lemon in the video embedded in the CNN story above ends the interview by going off about how he just can't wait to vote. That's what America is feeling like. Whatever is happening in that diminishing intellectual and physical space called Toxic Trumpland, it's very clear that much of America can't wait to go vote this moral loser out of office. He'll learn about being a complete political loser soon enough. If there is a sort of genius here, it is President Toxic's ability to pack so many deep and hurtful insults to people whose votes he needs into only two paragraphs. One of the points the vet interviewed made is that people in the military can sniff out a good leader when they see one. So the troops didn't need The Atlantic to know what President Toxic has been saying for years, he argued. So it just adds insult to injury to say the soldiers are in love with him. The goods news: he'll always have Kim, and their tepid love affair. Now he's figured yet another way to insult the military leaders that he supposedly respects. And implicit in it is yet another insult to the troops: your leaders care more about the profits of weapon's manufacturers than your lives. Which will probably just make them feel their Commander In Chief cares more about money than their lives. I'm all for going after the military industrial complex. But this makes no fucking sense whatsoever. His defense for 24 or 48 hours was that this can't be true, because he's the guy who has showered money on the military. Now he's arguing that this is happening because the generals are pissed that he won't shower money on the military. Huh? And other than the war President Toxic almost started with Iran, in part because he ripped up a deal with Iran that some of those top generals told him not to, what war has it been that the generals have been itching to fight under President Toxic's command? This could be a bunch of lies. Or this could be dementia. It just makes no logical sense. A 2nd grader could come up with a better cover. It is consistent with what happened with Ukrainegate. When one outrageous lie doesn't work, move on to the next one. Which often contradicts the lie you told before it.

I keep reading stories like this one in conservative rags, thinking there might be something that signals a shift away from Biden. But this is a good example of a disease that seems easy to catch these days: right-wing logic that basically amounts to wishful thinking. The Inevitable Implosion of Biden’s Campaign It is doomed by a strategy based on a progressive myth about Trump’s base. I guess the idea is that even though Biden has led President Toxic by 5+ % in the horse race poll averages and favorability polls all year, at some future point - but before November - he is going to implode. Sounds like wishful thinking. The whole argument doesn't quite make sense. If we assume that President Toxic's base is "only" 25 % working class, that's actually a lot. So if 2.5 % of that base peels off, that's the end of President Toxic. I'm pretty sure that since 2016 some of the older White men in that 25 % are no longer with us. And based on 2018, we know some switched to Democrats. There's also a lot of young voters of every race that are now aged roughly 18 to 22. Meaning they can vote for President for the first time. I'm not sure there's a lot of new older White men who weren't around in 2016. Meanwhile, North Carolina is saying requests for absentee ballots are through the roof. I read it's something like a 5-fold increase for Republicans, and a 30-fold increase for Blacks. Nobody knows what it means. But it doesn't sound like good news for Republicans. So there may be an argument about how President Toxic's base is going to sneak out of nowhere and expand rapidly, much like COVID-19 has. But this is not that argument. Biden's positions on all the issues cited above have been the same all year. So I assume the people that prefer President Toxic's views have been the people that are with him all year. That's not an argument for the "collapse" in Biden's poll numbers, which have actually not collapsed. Take a look at 538's generic Congressional ballot poll averages. I suppose if poorly educated Trumpians want something to think wishfully about, they can say that the lead Democrats have over Republicans has "collapsed" from a little over 9 % in July to a little over 8 % today. Then again, the Democrats have had a solid lead over Republicans for the roughly year and a half those polls cover. Not good news for Trumpians. And the lead has actually been slowly but steadily widening for the last year and a half. Again, not good news for Trumpians. There may have been a progressive myth that imploded. But, if so, that was during the primary. I think I was right to think all last year it was a good thing the Democratic primary race would be settled in the Rust Belt. That isn't quite true, because it surprisingly got settled early in March on Super Tuesday. But Michigan and then Wisconsin confirmed that the progressive/democratic socialist dream was not to be in 2020. I think why that's so is a question for lots of analysis after the dust settles. I'm intrigued with the idea that Bernie beat Hillary among non-urban Whites without colleges degrees in 2016 mostly because they couldn't stomach Hillary. And man of them may have viewed Bernie as more conservative - not less. So in 2020 when they had the chance to vote for an old White guy that is definitely more conservative for Bernie, they jumped at it. What's yet to be seen is whether Biden can keep them in the general, or even peel off more. It's probably best to just bag the concept "working class" altogether, I think. The objective descriptor that seems to be more useful in understanding things is "Whites without college degrees". The label speaks to education, and the importance of education in driving employment and good incomes. These were the people at the core of Bill Clinton's two victories. And at the core of Hillary's loss. Mostly, all indications are that Biden will do significantly better with this group than Hillary did. So much for "implosions". Biden outlines post-Labor Day strategy to win White House That sums it up nicely for me. Until proven wrong, I will continue to think that the most important things Biden needs to do to close the deal is focus on the economy, stupid. I suspect the kernel of truth in that Spectator article is that Whites and Hispanics and a small number of Blacks without college degrees who are in the "working class" bucket do worry about jobs, guns, and Democrats going too far. November will tell us the parameters for how many of these folks want to be in the Democratic tent. And how many are now the core of the Donald Trump (Sr. or Jr.) Republican Party. I'm not sure it's not a good thing for many of them to populate the Toxic Trump Party. If they love guns and fear The Green New Deal, and will vote for any old White man like Bernie or Biden over Hillary or Elizabeth every time, Democrats are arguably better off without them. Until proven wrong, I thing Rahm's "metropolitan alliances" are the thing to focus on. And I actually think Democrats have a better chance of building a progressive party that can win majorities if we go that route. I read an interesting article recently I can't relocate by an academic who said that in 2020 Democrats are lucky, because President Toxic is alienating suburban "housewives" he doesn't understand. She argued soon enough the Democrats' luck will run out. And we'll have to face our own ignorance of the suburbs as they actually exist today. She focused on zoning and housing. Her point is Millennials are - who'd a thunk? - making the same housing choices as their parents. They want to live in single family homes that are safer, and have more space. To them, The Green New Deal apparently includes aspirations to own a home. So this multi-family housing/high density push is an argument Democrats can't win, she thinks. People who left cities and moved to suburbs simply can't be convinced it would be better for those suburbs to be like the cities they left. This makes sense to me. Every year or two there's some Big Lie the media persuades us is the truth. 2006: Home prices never go down. 2008: Frugality is in and the rich will stop flaunting their wealth. 2010: Home prices will never recover to 2006 levels. So this stuff about Millennials being into a "sharing culture" and not wanting to own things like homes has never been an idea I've believed. I figured growing older and having kids would straighten that out. So I agree this is, as the author describes, a "time bomb" for Democrats. But that's a battle (or bomb) for another day. Zoning is of course typically a local issue. But I'd be happy if the 20's is when we bring back Clinton's homeownership strategies from the 90's. And this time toughen the laws to make sure the predatory lenders and Wall Street derivatives peddlers can't fuck it up again the next time a Republican wins. Speaking of Big Business, two more tidbits that are good news, and related to all this at the margins. Pro-business Chamber of Commerce is backing 23 vulnerable House Democratic freshmen for reelection I usually don't agree with the Chamber of Commerce. This cycle, we're strange bedfellows. Most of the Democrats on that list were freshly minted in 2018, and won in districts President Toxic carried in 2016. I don't know about the American Spectator. But it seems like the Chamber of Commerce sees the handwriting on the wall. As do I, hopefully. The ones on that list in California are the ones I've been sending money to. And on the flip side, there's this: How New York City’s Democratic Socialists Swept the Competition All this suggests that after the dust settles, the Democratic tent is going to be bigger, and messier. Good for us Democrats! If there was a notion that there was a latent democratic socialist majority in the farms and broken factory towns of Michigan or Wisconsin, that's what imploded this Spring. One of the reasons I feel better about Biden is that governing a tent full of urban progressives on the left and Chamber types on the right will be difficult, and perhaps impossible. Biden's unique skill and reason for survival has always been that he is good at feeling and negotiating his way toward the center. And usually he has done that by coming from the left. (I know, I know. For some he is a right-wing fascist war monger.) The best case scenario is he does what Bill Clinton did. By making things better for most people, he could end up nudging the center to the left, like Clinton did. Like Clinton, that will mean that lots of his party is to his left. If we're going to have an implosion, that's the one I'm most worried about. An implosion of governing, not campaigning. But that's a worry for another year. After President Toxic is flushed back down into the sewer.

Probably very few, actually. At this point, I think most have been indicted, convicted, or sent to prison already. And with all due respect to Steve Bannon, I really don't need to see the pictures of that.

Could LeBron James Defeat Donald Trump? In securing major concessions and expanding voter participation, NBA players may have ended up changing the way 2020 plays out. This is probably one of the best developments since the Black Lives Matter movement rose to a whole different political and moral dimension this year. I've already said I think we have arrived at the new Moral Awakening I've been anticipating (or at least hoping for) for most of this decade. I think BLM, a movement for both racial and economic justice, existed mostly at the periphery of our political culture until 2020. The fact that it is now front and center, and driving the election debate, is one indicator that lots of people woke up about something. All the news with Black athletes (and White allies) and the NBA is another indicator. This is unprecedented. Athletes doing politics is not new. But the fact that James can call Obama, a former Black President, and Obama can advise James to double down and make this all about voting and access to voting? That's new. We have never been here before. Nobody, not even the people in the middle of it, have a clue where it's going. But it is all very, very, very good news I think. One of the things that I'm enjoying about 2020 is that my ignorance about all kinds of things relating to race is being exposed to me on an almost daily basis. So on this one, I feel ignorant. I don't have a clue whether, or how, this will impact the election. I don't think Biden can say or do anything that will be particularly compelling to the segment of the Black population that Charlemagne Tha God probably speaks for. I don't know whether Blacks, or anyone who follows basketball, will listen to basketball players about the urgency of voting. I guess we'll all learn together on Election Day. But the idea that American sports arenas may now be symbols to Black youth of a ladder up - both by way of athletic prowess, and the urgent need to vote? I just love it! With all due respect to Rev. Sharpton, when the violence started, I kept wondering: where are the Black pastors? So one piece of personal ignorance that was partly cleaned up is that I learned this is not Dr. King's movement. The women who founded Black Lives Matter are, in fact, women. The real wake up call to me was when Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told people to go home. She was the first voice I heard that gripped me in the way MLK does. She cited MLK, and everything she said was eloquent (and seemingly effective, in stopping the looting that was happening in Atlanta). But the moments that were most moving to me were when she looked at the camera as spoke as a Black Mom. Rev. Sharpton is himself a bit of an anachronism. I mostly hear him on Morning Joe. That's typically a good place to hear the voices of Never Trump Republicans. The fact that the Black guy who used to BE the cutting edge is now, in part, the one who explains it to White Americans like me is interesting. I did not need Rep. Clyburn to explain to me why there is no real distance between Joe Biden and the Black community on the crime bill. In fact, I'd like to see Clyburn and his fellow South Carolina native Charlemagne have it out. Because I do think Charlemagne probably speaks for lots of younger Blacks who do see distance between themselves and Biden on the legacy of the crime bill. Which leads to the next area where I feel ignorant. It's reasonable to think that White America would react to all this by voting for President Toxic as a "law and order" quasi-Nixon. And that may still happen. So far, though, there's little to no indication of that. In fact, it's the opposite. Majorities or pluralities see Biden as better able to deal with race relations and public safety. They believe President Toxic is the one who will lead to more violence, if re-elected. Who knew? Apart from race, I do think the fact that so many people see President Toxic as a poster child for chaos and corruption is a big part of his problem. But on race, it could be that America knows that since the 1980's Trump has basically been preaching about how Whites should hate "those people." His theme of "Jobs Not Mobs" in both 2018 and 2020 is the same hate and fear, different century. Why is it working less well today? The simplest explanation might have come from Republican Tim Scott, in his RNC speech. In explaining how he was elected to the US House and then Senate in a crowded field of Republicans, including a Thurmond, he credited it to "the evolution of the Southern heart". I can go with that. Were it not a partisan speech, Sen. Scott easily could have taken out the word "Southern", added President Obama, and spoken about the evolution of the "American heart". Or even the "White American heart". I think some of that is what's happening today. And if it is, we can thank Dr. King and fighters like John Lewis for that. President Toxic may be a fighter. But on race relations, I think he only makes matter worse. My reading of the polls is that most Americans agree. If the American heart evolved, President Toxic's heart has not appeared to evolve with it. Scott is a shining light in the Republican Party. If the GOP had chosen him as their leader in 2016, or if the collapse of the Toxic Trump Republican brand leads them to choose him in the future, I think both the Republican Party and the United States will be in a much better place. That said, some of his "radical socialist" rhetoric was just laughable. Since I'm praising him, I feel like I have to offset his rhetoric with reality. There's only two Presidencies under which Black poverty went down in my adult lifetime. It went from 33.4 % (1992) to 22.5 % (2000) under Clinton. W. ended up leaving Obama with a Black poverty rate of 24.7 % (2008). Obama and Biden brought Black poverty from a high of 27.6 % (2011) to a new all-time low of 22.0 % (2016). You can blame Obama and Biden for not doing better. But they got handed The Great Recession to start with. And they handed President Toxic the lowest Black poverty rate ever. President Toxic could take credit for continuing - not achieving - the lowest Black poverty rate in US history, which hit 20.8 % in 2018. By the time the 2020 poverty rate is measured, though, his legacy will probably not look very good. The gloomiest projection I've seen is that COVID-19 could force Black poverty back up to about 32 %. Meaning all the gains made since 1992 under 16 years of Democratic Presidents would be reversed. The flip side of the poverty equation is this. The HEROES Act passed by Pelosi's House and blocked by Republicans in the Senate could lower Black poverty to 10 % by one estimate. That would truly be a historic low. That would have involved continuing the $600 a week benefit through December, a second round of stimulus checks, and increases in the SNAP (food assistance) programs. If President Toxic's Republicans really wanted to brag about lowering Black (and Hispanic and White) poverty, they should have been supporting this - not killing it. My point is that I think part of the change in the American heart is that people understand the links between poverty, crime, and success more than ever before. Sen. Scott was never a criminal. But he talked about how his Grandfather never learned to read and write, and he himself was a failure in school at one point. I feel I was ignorant about this as well. Meaning I didn't know how open-minded and open-hearted Whites, especially college-educate Whites, would be. Black conservatives and ex-cops like the one I started this thread with describe many of the Black men and women killed by cops as "the criminal of the criminals". Or, in a word, "thugs". That gives any White who wants one a "get out racism free" card. And if we're talking about policing, it's baked into the cake that we won't be talking about the La David Johnsons of America - the Black Army Sgt. who was killed by Islamic militants in Niger in 2017. We'll be talking about Blacks who have likely had some association with criminals, and a police record. They are perfect candidates for the game of "Whack A Black". No matter what they do, there will always be a reason to justify why the use of deadly force was appropriate - after the fact. Black conservatives will say they just don't get why so many people want to wear t-shirts that, in their eyes, glorify "thugs". Last night, despite my better judgment, I looked at Daddy's "Racism is OK" website for the first time in months. There was a predictable argument from one of the predictable conservatives that goes like this: 1) If no one had called the cops because something bad was happening, they would not have arrived at the scene and shot Jacob Blake. 2) If Jacob Blake had obeyed them, they would not have shot him. That's all quite true, probably. It's also true that if all people were perfect, we could defund the police 100 %. Because there would be no crime, ever. Back on the Planet Earth, to me this is a recipe for empowering police to shoot and kill whoever they want. And it especially empowers Whack A Black thinking among aggressive and/or racist cops. By this standard, cops had complete justification to shoot and kill me several times in my life. Like when they responded to a call about a burglar in the house and I answered the door with a knife in my hand. It was actually a screwdriver, I owned the house, and I was preparing the floor for a handyman coming at 6 AM to lay carpet. But someone who thought I was a burglar called the cops. True, when they said "Put the knife down" I said, "Officer, it's a screwdriver, I'm working on a rental property, and I am bending over to put the screwdriver down." I did not seriously think the cops would shoot me. That right there may make me NOT BLACK. One way or the other, I don't buy the idea that any of this empowers a cop to shoot me, or Jacob Blake. The same predictable conservative on Daddy's "Racism Is OK" website argued exactly the opposite about the White vigilante who killed two protesters. By the same logic, if the vigilante hadn't driven to Wisconsin, he wouldn't have had to kill anyone. If he didn't have a gun, he wouldn't have to defend himself from people who who were upset that he had a gun. Or because he had already used the gun to shoot someone. But no. In a battle between a skateboard and an AR-15, obviously the White vigilante had no choice but to pull the trigger. The main difference between the two situations is that the cops actually do have to show up in situations like this. It's their job. And part of the job is that their lives are at risk, they are trained in the use of force, and it is expected that some people won't obey them. There is no similar justification for a 17 year old White vigilante carrying a gun around to defend whatever he thinks he is defending. It is not his job. So you have to feel really good about White vigilantes with guns to argue that he really needed to be doing what he was doing. Spending 30 minutes reading stuff like that reinforced that I have no need to get into such debates. What I need to do is send as much money as I can to Democrats, or volunteer, and definitely vote. Hopefully, we can throw President Toxic into the sewer he came from. And get serious about the huge problems facing us. Including income inequality and racial inequality, which are related to each other and to the violence.. The conservatives (especially the White ones) will always argue the cops and White vigilantes were right, the Black thugs were wrong, and that's that. In 1915, this thinking was immortalized in The Birth Of A Nation. The vigilantes were the KKK, and the thugs were any living Black, primarily in The South. This thinking worked fine in 1915. It does not appear to be working as well in 2020. So we're going to learn soon whether 2020 is a somewhat less racist remake, or something better and more just. If it's the latter, I think that's because most Americans know that racism is a real problem. And that dealing with it will necessitate serious initiatives about poverty, education, and economic empowerment. After I thought about it, it struck me that the Blacks who spoke at the RNC actually reinforced what Black Lives Matter and Democrats are saying about racism and the economy. This was not a gathering of Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. One takeaway from several speakers is that success rests on being a good athlete, and being friends with Donald Trump. As Sen. Scott described, his is mostly a story of political empowerment, not economic empowerment. Understandably, he did not focus on how Republicans fought tooth and nail for decades against everything that made his political success possible. I thought it was very graceful and effective of him to simply speak about "the evolution of the Southern heart." But most of the Black cast of characters who spoke at the RNC, or who have defend President Toxic, are Black conservative athletes and entertainers. Jack Brewer. Herschel Walker. Diamond And Silk. Mike Tyson. Kanye West. (Is he a conservative? Or just a gadfly?) They represent a particular path to economic advancement for African Americans that starts with the phrase "exception to the rule". There is only one LeBron James. That brings us right back to where I started. I'm grateful Black athletic superstars like LeBron James are taking an unprecedented stand against racism. There's three specific things they add to this political debate, that I hope helps tip it toward success. First, they add a successful, powerful, and respected Black male voice. Again, with all due respect to the women who started Black Lives Matter and the women who run cities like Chicago and Atlanta, the outspoken Black athletes tend to be men. Many if not most of them came up from poor inner-city neighborhoods. So a small minority of Black conservatives or cops are saying these Black men being shot are "thugs". This activism puts the faces of Black men who are icons - not 'thugs" - in the front line of the effort. Second, if Sen. Scott is right and there has been "an evolution of the [American] heart", I think these athletes are speaking to that evolution. If all of them thought this was only about a small group of "thugs" who are "the criminal of the criminals" who get shot by cops, I just don't believe they'd be risking their jobs and reputations over it. Granted, if they lose some of their income over this they're still super rich. Just like when they started charities focused on issues like education and poverty, they were still super rich. What their actions say to me is they are bearing witness to the fact that, despite their success, systemic racism is a huge problem in America. To quote President Toxic, what have they got to lose? They actually have a lot of things to lose by speaking out. So I have to assume they are doing so because, unlike Trump, it's not just about money and power. They know what it was like to grow up around poverty and racism. It seems like the majority of America is on the same side as "thugs" like Jacob Blake, anyway. But it makes it easier when that means you are on the side of LeBron James, and very successful and respected Black men like him who have climbed the same ladder as Jack Brewer. Third, precisely because they are the exceptions to the rule who made it to the top, just like Sen. Scott they are excellent leaders to speak to what actually needs to be done. According to the NCAA, the odds of making it from high school athletics to the NCAA are under 10 % for almost all sports. For basketball, it's 3.5 %. The odds of going from NCAA to pro sports are about as low. For professional men's basketball, it's 1.2 % If I'm reading the NCAA numbers right, out of a pool of over 500,000 high school basketball players something like 50 of them ended up being drafted into major pro basketball every year. Meanwhile, that NCAA link says this: Black professional athletes probably have a particularly good idea of how challenging Black economic empowerment is precisely because they are among the success stories. I hope President Toxic loses, and Sen. Scott and Jaime Harrison make South Carolina the first US State to elect concurrent Black Senators, who happen to be members of different political parties. That would be a really good sign of progress and, to quote Scott again, "the evolution of the Southern heart". Then we can really start to get to work on moving forward. I'm grateful that LeBron James and his baskbetball buddies have put their heart into this. I think it is potentially going to make a big difference. And one final image, with all due respect to Sen. Scott. That's the image that I'll always remember from the 2020 Republican Convention. Not Tim Scott, not Jack Brewer, not even Ivanka or Melania. Right after President Toxic equated the Democratic push for "economic and racial justice" with tearing America down, the tv camera panned to some of the most powerful Cabinet members sitting in the front row. They are White, male, and very rich. So if you want to talk about who's got power in President Toxic's America, that's it. I don't see Jack Brewer in that crowd, or in the Cabinet. It did look at least somewhat different when President Toxic's favorite person to hate, Barack Obama, was in charge. We have a ways to go just to get back to where we were.

On reflection this makes me fell better. At least they were all men. I hope this doesn't sound terribly sexist. But regarding Elizabethan English, I'm with the character Melissa Leo played in that scene from The Fighter. I just don't like the idea of uppity women showing me disrespect. And telling me how to talk proper.

First, kudos to President Toxic for getting that moment right. You didn't cite the quotation. While I can't confirm it, either, it sounds very believable to me that Trump said this to a grieving husband: "“I’m so sorry for your loss. Shannon was an amazing woman and warrior.” I personally find it just as easy to believe this other story from 2017 that has now been resurrected: Myeshia Johnson: Soldier's widow says Trump made me cry Let's add a few caveats. First, this confirms President Toxic at least called and tried. Second, all this has to be filtered through loved ones that are in the middle of an ocean of sadness. I won't dredge them up, but if my memory is correct I recall reading some really sharp things the families of one of the Benghazi dead said about Hillary. I can't even remember what they said. But I do remember thinking that while I can understand why they felt that way, it just seemed really unfair to Hillary. Third, this is not really about President Toxic's empathy. His lack of empathy is a given. Those polls I cited to death from YouGov make it clear that even Republicans see Trump's lack of empathy as one of his biggest weaknesses. What it's really about is President Toxic's shitty leadership. And his basic views of the military, and the broader idea of serving your country. The Atlantic is arguing he is simply unfit to lead. He is certainly not fit to be Commander In Chief. The interesting thing about your rebuttal is that it had almost nothing to do with anything The Atlantic said. Or, if it did, it was all by implication. The Atlantic is part of the "vicious crowd". The Atlantic is practicing McCarthyism. Sorry, but I don't buy it. You can change the subject and say the Taliban skinned Russian soldiers alive. That's a horrible thing. But it has nothing to do with The Atlantic story. Back to the facts: Here's Trump, verbatim, in one of his many statements lately saying that it is a "hoax" and "fake news" that he made "negative statements" about "fallen heroes", or that he called them "losers" or "suckers". And here's President Toxic, verbatim, making "negative statements" about "fallen hero" John McCain. Including calling him "a loser". President Toxic called McCain a "loser". That's just a fact. So this isn't McCarthyism. This is listening, and believing what I hear with my own ears. You can cut President Toxic some slack, and argue that in context the word "loser" was a specific reference to McCain losing the 2008 Presidential election. The more damning statement is this: "John McCain is not a war hero. He's a war hero, but that's because he got captured. I like people who don't get captured." That's entirely consistent with the core of The Atlantic's article. He did call McCain a loser. He did say McCain being captured and tortured is not heroism, and in fact is something he doesn't like about McCain. If those are not "negative statements" about any member of the military that was captured in the line of duty, then I guess I need Baby Glenn to define what "negative statement" means. Back to your Russian soldiers being skinned alive by The Taliban. You may think it's horrible. And I may agree. But President Toxic sees it differently. At the very least, he does not view them as heroes. He does not like that they got captured. That's different than saying they deserved to be skinned alive, because they let themselves be captured. But that's how some of these military sources are describing how President Toxic really thinks. They deserved what they got. It's quite easy for me to believe they are telling the truth. I simply have to listen to what Trump said. And how he is now lying about what he said on camera. There is one other way to give President Toxic the benefit of the doubt, and argue he is NOT a liar. And that road follows the path that he was actually telling the truth when he said, "I know a lot about crazies." Because he is crazy. Meaning, he actually does have dementia. Dementia runs in his family. And some forensic psychologists say he displays many very concerning signs of dementia. His inability to remember what he actually said would be one concerning sign. So would the lack of critical thinking skills involved in not realizing that it's easy enough to just roll the tape and see what he said, on camera. I'd add the patently false portrayal of Gen. Kelly's last months in office. You can argue that Trump is lying. Or you can argue Trump actually believes what he said about Gen. Kelly: that he was "totally exhausted" and "unable to function". That is, in itself, a "negative statement" about a military leader, made in the context of Trump saying he doesn't make "negative statements" about military leaders. Like the mysterious people on airplanes and the "darker forces" and various other whacko conspiracies, it does have lots of glimmers of the dementia I watched my Mom live through for a decade. It's anyone's guess whether President Toxic is a pathological liar, or is suffering from dementia. Neither are very good for the military or the nation.

Trump continues counterattack on military comments That headline made me wonder. Where is Ronald Reagan when you need him? And I have to wonder if this was a Freudian slip on Mnuchin's part. I can believe that either way. If I believe Gen. Kelly's military pals who are obviously leaking this, what our Commander In KFC said is unbelievable. And what President Toxic is now saying about his support for the military does sound unbelievable. Journalism’s New Propaganda Tool: Using “Confirmed” to Mean Its Opposite And, sorry, I can't resist the temptation to get a dig in at supposedly progressive journalist and champion whiner Baby Glenn Greenwald. He needs to go away. I continue to believe someone should give Baby Glenn a coloring book and a few crayons, which seems to be the level of complexity his mind can handle. Now that he's doing it again, I also wonder whether he needs to just take his coloring book and go sit on the lap of his Daddy, Vladimir Putin. That's probably the least likely explanation for his behavior. It's probably just a combination of ego, bad judgment, and wanting to be in the spotlight. my contempt for him is mostly about Russiagate. If Baby Glenn had argued the Democrats are taking this way too far relative to other critical national priorities, I would have at least respectfully disagreed. Instead, his language was as good as right wing hogwash. He said this was a big nothingburger. Any Trumpian could just listen to Baby Glenn whine and pout and conclude that The Deep State was real. And Russiagate was 1000 % bullshit. On a level of journalism and fact checking, which is what Baby Gleen likes to claim he is good at, his statements about the clear facts of Russiagate were wrong, wrong, and wrong. The Democrats who voted to impeach clearly see it that way. But so do the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee who put out the bipartisan report documenting some of those facts. Decades from now, most Americans will probably see President Toxic as a crook, and probably agree with Alan Lichtman that impeaching President Toxic was a big nail in his political coffin. So who, and what, is Baby Glenn fighting for? So now Baby Glenn is whining and pouting some more. Baby Glenn has a kernel of a good argument. It is logical to argue that sources like Deep Throat should attach their name to anonymous allegations. I'm sure Richard Nixon felt that way. To hold Baby Glenn to his own standard, who does he name? You can read the article. But on a factual level, he is saying The Atlantic is "supremely dumb" because Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton "deny" that the report is accurate. Sorry, Baby Glenn. But even Kellyanne is having a hard time with that logic. Here's a compare and contrast between two takes on this story: Fox News and Bloomberg Bolton defends Trump against allegations he disparaged war dead | Fox Exclusive Bolton Calls Trump Comments on Military 'Despicable' If Accurate I included the headlines because they are so dramatically different. And I don't even think the first one is accurate. I'm okay with the word "defended". But only if what follows is that Bolton "defended" President Toxic's statement that his decision not to go to the cemetery was a weather call. He even qualified that by saying he could only comment on what he heard while he was in the room. Mostly, Bolton threw lots more fuel on the fire. The word he chose - "despicable" - is consistent with Biden's comments and speaks for itself. If you watch the whole Fox story, this is stating the obvious. It's classic Fox propaganda parading as news. And this is the Brett Baier version, who I mostly see as a decent journalist. There's no mention of the tweets from their own Jennifer Griffin posted above. The Atlantic article, which is based on at least four years of statements an incidents regarding President Toxic's contempt for the military and the concept of serving your country, is reduced to one minor incident from a few years ago in France. It is the most easily denial part of the story. And Bolton's statement, which is not a denial, is portrayed as a denial. If that Fox News clip above is all I knew, I actually wouldn't know what to make of it. I posted Fox for one other reason. Bolton is cunning. So you could take his "denial" as a bit of a poison pill. The new thing I heard is that President Toxic did not go to the cemetery in France based on the "because of John Kelly's recommendation ... It was an entirely weather-related decision." In the context of Bolton's statement, that mostly sounds like Bolton just letting the facts as he knows them be the facts. But it puts Kelly in the center of at least two critical incidents: the cemetery in France, and the cemetery his own son is buried in. That's another lead for a good journalist to follow that leads right back to Gen. Kelly. It makes his silence even more deafening. Implicit in this story is that what President Toxic says in public does not reflect what he really thinks about the military. And that, for whatever reason, Kelly is one of the people he expressed his real views to. I can only speculate about why Baby Glenn is again backing up and illogically trying to rationalize their comic book view of reality. In a story in which he argues that The Atlantic, WaPo, AP, and even some part of Fox are using the word "confirmed" to mean it's opposite, Baby Glenn managed to use the word "deny" to mean the opposite. In fact, John Bolton confirmed some key elements of the story: that President Toxic is a bad leader, who holds the military heroes like John McCain in contempt. Bolton says he thinks our Commander In KFC doesn't understand what military service means to the people who serve. He said if the parts of the story he can't personally confirm are true, Trump is "despicable." I'll end with Bolton verbatim from the Bloomberg clip: "There's no surprise that President Trump went out of his way last night here in the US to deny that he had said it. But, you know, his credibility is pretty thin in my view." My translation: Bolton is saying he think President Toxic's denial is bullshit. Whoever gives Baby Glenn his coloring book should make sure one page includes the word "D.E.N.I.A.L." in big letters. Baby Glenn doesn't seem to know what the word means. Whatever value he added to progressive causes or journalistic truth and integrity in his Snowden glory days is now just history.

Survey Of Texas Voters So this is just another post about poll data, in this case about Texas. The fact that it's a toss up between Biden and President Toxic is interesting in and of itself. But I'll focus on other data is probably way stickier than the horse race poll about where Texas and America is headed. There is almost no identifiable allegiance to any particular party anymore. The only segment that identifies strongly with a party is Black voters, who are 66 % Democrats. Among Whites, a very bare majority of exactly 50 % call themselves Republicans. @tassojunior keeps saying "Independent" does not necessarily mean centrist anymore. He's right. My guess is a lot of the Black and Hispanic Independents are younger Texans who voted for Bernie. Even more encouraging news for my party is that when asked who they plan to vote for in Texas State House races, 49 % say Democrat. That included overwhelming majorities of Hispanics and Blacks. 48 % say Republican, including 56 % of all Whites. I'm not even sure that makes Texas a "red" state anymore. Sen. Cornyn is doing about 10 points better than his Democratic opponent. Which is to say he's also doing about 10 points better than President Toxic. I'm not watching every Senate race. But in the ones I am watching, Trump and the Republican Senate candidate are usually within a few points of each other. So this will be interesting to see. In 2016 there was no ticket splitting between President and Senate. Every state that voted for President Toxic elected a Republican Senator. In 2018 it was almost the same - all "red" states elected a Republican - but there were a few exceptions, like Jon Tester and Joe Manchin. In terms of having governing majorities that can actually do things, I think this matters a lot. If Texas votes for Biden and Cornyn, and Montana votes for Trump and Bullock, it suggests there is some kind of center that can potentially work with a Democratic President to get things done. This poll says 10 % of Blacks in Texas will vote for President Toxic. I'm going to assume that if Blacks in Texas are leaning one way ideologically, it's slightly to the right - just because it's Texas. So the Rasmussen poll that says that it's a toss up in Pennsylvania because President Toxic has 27 % of the Black vote there just makes no sense to me. Maybe it's true. But I find it hard to believe Blacks in Pennsylvania are about three times likelier to support President Toxic than Blacks in Texas. Nobody knows who will vote in this election, and how they will vote. As a Democrat, I think it's better to assume that President Toxic may have a big lead in initial returns. He'll declare that's because he won. As mail-in ballots are counted, the chorus will be, "Fraud, fraud, fraud." That said, Texas suggests it doesn't have to be that way. In the July party primary run-off, 43 % voted in person early, 42 % voted in person on Election Day, and 11 % voted absentee. In the Presidential election, 53 % plan to vote in person early. 20 % plan to vote in person on Election Day, and 15 % plan to vote absentee. Twice as many Democrats will vote absentee as Republicans - 22 % to 11 %. Meanwhile, 26 % of Republicans plan to vote on Election Day, compared to 15 % of Democrats. So voters clearly have gotten the memo. 4 in 5 won't wait until Election Day to vote. No surprise, the 20 % who do plan to vote on Election Day is slanted to Republicans. My impression is that most states count the votes received early before Election Day. It seems they are often released to the media as soon as the polls close. So one big variable is whether those absentee ballot voters get their ballots in early. But, in theory at least, Biden could have a small lead right out of the gate in Texas. The 68 % of Texans who say they plan to vote before Election Day either in person or absentee lean toward Biden. So President Toxic could end up winning Texas only after the Republican-leaning votes cast on Election Day are counted. Again, I think 100 % of Democrats should be in a panic and prepare for the absolute worst. But it's possible that President Toxic could be losing in some states that maybe could be turned around as more ballots are counted. There's one other thing I find interesting about this poll that is an abstract point about ideology and mandates. I'll return to my pal Alan Lichtman. His core belief is that every Presidential election is simply a thumbs up or thumbs down referendum on the performance of the party in power. If we don't like what we got, we'll try something else. For 9 election in a row, that theory has been a good enough way for him to predict in advance who would win. If you buy that, it's hard to buy the idea that elections are "mandates" for conservative this or liberal that. Reagan didn't win in 1980 because of a mandate for conservatism. He won because people decided Carter sucked as President. Same with Obama in 2008. He won because people were sick of W. and Iraq and The Great Recession. That said, it's hard to argue there wasn't such a thing as "The Reagan Revolution". Or that Reagan didn't kick off an era of governing conservatism in US politics. But I think the two theories can be reconciled. I've looked at poll data for Reagan's eight years, and Clinton's eight years. The poll data suggest to me that voters became more conservative AFTER Reagan was in power, not before. Same with Clinton. There's poll data that suggests over the course of eight years Clinton nudged both the average Democrat and the average Republican to the left. That would explain why W. could only get elected right after Clinton if he ran as a "compassionate conservative". In some alternative Earth, maybe compassionate conservatism could have been a winning ideology. But in the world we live in, it never really was. Never Trumper Republican Stuart Stevens blames that on W. "having to be" a war President. That's debatable. He didn't "have to" invade Iraq. I've posted charts like this one, which measures public trust in government, a bunch of times. It correlates with what I said above about shifts in ideology, or "mandates". My belief has changed on this, partly due to Lichtman. I now believe that if there is a mandate, it is basically a mandate to "get shit done". That's hazier in an era like now when many people see the government as The Deep State. But I'm with Lichtman. Even most of those people expect results. Not all of them are authoritarian followers who believe that Daddy will always do the right thing, even if means 200,000 dead Americans. So it's no coincidence that the two Presidents who poll data says most moved the ideological needle in my lifetime - Reagan to the right and then Clinton to the left - are also the only two Presidents who left office having restored a significant amount of trust in government. In my crude language, people believed they got shit done. Most people did not feel that way about Obama. 2010 and 2014 were not examples about how he sold America on liberalism, and Obamacare. I'd argue the single most important factor to explain all that was ........................................... wait for it ...................................... it's the economy, stupid. David Axelrod privately predicted 2010's shellacking early in 2009. Because he knew Democrats would have to own, and pay for, the economic free fall they did not cause. That chart above could be taken as a sufficient explanation for why Hillary was swimming against the tide in 2016. And why President Toxic will lose in 2020. The only good news in that chart is that, hopefully, we've hit bottom. And this is as low as trust in government can go. Back to Texas. What jumps out at me is that if Biden does win Texas, which is possible, this explains why. It won't be a mandate for anything, other than change and some other President who will do the job better. It's of course more complicated than that. Texas is moving toward a tipping point. The last Democrat to win Texas was Jimmy Carter. Biden winning Texas would be as much of a reversal as Reagan winning what used to be the Democratic Deep South. That said, if a mandate for progressive politics was building in Texas, like Bernie was banking on, he would be the Democratic nominee. Part of my read of Super Tuesday is that people were almost desperate to vote for someone - anyone - who they thought could actually just be competent in the job. Biden hasn't really closed the deal on his own competence, either. Even if Biden does win Texas, it suggests that it has very little to do with a "liberal victory" or a "mandate for liberalism". I believe it would be a mandate to get shit done. And if Team Biden can't manage to get shit done, 2022 will be 2010 all over again. I'm reading that conclusion into these numbers. But that is what they say to me.

Speaking of which, Mayor Pete is on the transition team, and he'll very likely be a Cabinet Secretary. Pete and Chasten are among the stars of 2020. That makes me proud to be an American, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There goes Joe being all touchy again. If you don't ask about it, I won't tell.

I actually found it rather charming. Let me slip into something more comfortable. We can be like two queens having a nice long chat.

@AdamSmith noted in a different thread that history has a way of turning on itself, in response to my point about 2004 and the "Swiftboating" of John Kerry. I'm continuing this here, since I didn't realize there was a thread on this subject. Here's another weird turn of history: Evidence piles up that the phony Atlantic story about Trump and troops was a slime job to boost Biden It's a thoughtful enough article if you care to read the whole thing. Maybe about 20 % of it reiterates that that this obviously can't be true, because people around President Toxic say it's not true. The other 80 % is about how this is all part of a .......................................... wait for it ......................................................................... vast left-wing conspiracy. Who'd a thunk that if we waited a generation, right wing rags like American Spectator would be repurposed as the new and conservative Hillary Clinton? This is a perfect metaphor for Trumpism. Because the argument collapses on itself. It's fine to argue that The Atlantic is one of the vague dark forces out there. But they might want to at least mention that three other major media outlets have confirmed the general thrust of the story. And, yeah, granted. Two of the other three are no doubt part of the vast left wing conspiracy. So why bother with those facts? But who'd a thunk that, nowadays, even Fox News is part of the vast left wing conspiracy?

There's something else I like about the idea, as an intermediate term political strategy. I like the idea that the message it sends certain (Tea Party/Trumpist) Republicans is, "Fuck off. You have no say. Shut the fuck up. What you think doesn't matter. In other words, fuck off." Now let me walk that back. Some parts of the US political system are clearly designed to foster moderation and protect the interests of minorities. We know, of course, that the Founding Fathers weren't particularly interested in "minority rights" if that meant their slaves. But smaller states having the same number of Senators who serve six years terms, and the Electoral College, fall in this category. So does the filibuster. In theory, it makes sense to say if we're going to make some big change like Medicare or Obamacare it ought to be able to get 60 votes. All that depends on the notion that compromise and getting things done is a priority. Or, it depends on the notion that the goal is the opposite. We're just looking for ways to obstruct and get nothing done. So I'll give a short rendition of a few pieces of history that I think most Democrats would agree with. Some Republicans blame Bill Clinton for poisoning the well. If they argue that Bill Clinton's cock poisoned the well, I'd agree with them. If we're talking politics, they're dead wrong. It's the opposite, I think. Clinton was a master at making offers Republicans could not refuse. When Kasich and other Republicans (Morning Joe) talk wistfully about that time like it was a Golden Age, I agree. A lot of important shit got done. It involved lots and lots of compromises. So my vote for Asshole Of The Decade who poisoned the well back then goes to Newt Gingrich. I view Tea Party the same way. Democrats can say that Mitch McConnell was already vowing complete obstruction the night Obama won. Republicans can say Obama was arrogant and he sucked at schmoozing or even tolerating people who disagreed. My view is all you have to do is follow the laws. Immigration reform passed 68-32 in the US Senate in 2013. Meaning McConnell didn't vote for it, but he didn't obstruct it. Obama said publicly that he didn't like some parts of the law, but that's what compromise was about. He wanted to sign it. It died in the House. And that was all on the Tea Party's Freedom Caucus. That's fact. The theory I buy is that by around that time Republicans like Boehner were starting to understand that they could no longer control their base. One Republican Senator expressed it this way: "We used to be the party of the Chamber of Commerce. Now we're the truck driver party." My personal breaking point was Justice Rapist. By that point I'd heard a mouthful of attacks by supposedly sensible Republicans against "RINOs" like Kasich and McCain, some of which I've posted here. I know why Justice Rapist was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Having fought good fights for good laws on Capitol Hill, I saw that nomination as a complete abortion of both process and truth. They lied, they lied, and they lied. In any other Presidency, they would have withdrawn the nominee for another conservative. So when I say "Fuck off", I don't mean the Kasichs and the McCains - or the Republican Govenors like DeWine or Hogan. I mean the Toxic Trump wing of the Republican Party. After what I feel is decades of lies and obstruction, I don't give a flying fuck what they think, or how they feel. Even though I feel like I'm right, I actually don't even give a shit if I'm right. The # 1 rule of organizing to me is, "the action is in the reaction". These assholes spent several decades getting me (and, I think, the majority of Americans) to this point. So if they don't like it, they only have themselves to blame. This is not a good political argument to make to moderates. And there is no assurance that we can steamroll who I view as the assholes in the room. But I've eliminated working with them and compromise as an option. I'd rather take the risk of trying something else. And I'll mention in closing. The idea that it's okay to steamroll most Republicans, including ones like Kasich, through things like ballot initiatives makes more sense to me given the nature of this fight. To me, it is a fight for democracy itself. Moving to a popular vote could in fact have some unintended negative consequences. But the idea that the candidate who gets 2 million more votes than the other one is the winner is not an obviously bad idea. I think it's actually important to let Republicans know that the lesson we've learned is there is just no point in working with or talking to some of them. The ones who want unity and compromise - like Kasich, and Hogan - are quite capable and quite good at letting people know that's the kind of Republican they are.

I assume you mean distance. Completely off topic, when I read "disremove" my mind immediately flashed to my favorite scene in The Fighter. Leo and Bale deserved their Oscars just for this scene. ""I've been doing this over 15 years. She comes in, disrespects me." "She don't mean no disrespect." Anyway, I agree. I don't mean history no disrespect, either.

Well, I wouldn't have posted it if I thought it was easily disprovable bullshit. After all, that would be terribly unfair to a decent and truthful man like President Trump. Actually, the reason not to do it is that this kind of thing can blow up in the face of the ones who started it. Which is what's so interesting about this. Presumably the people who started it are some of the most respected military leaders in the country. I'd love to find out whether The Atlantic went to them, or they went to The Atlantic. I suspect it's some of both. General Kelly's silence is deafening. All the denials from the Likely Liars like Pence and Pompeo only makes the fact that Kelly is not denying it more obvious. And if President Toxic expects that Kelly will do the valiant thing and tell the truth, which will clear President Trump's highly respected name, why is he trashing Kelly? The shit he is saying about Gen. Kelly actually CONFIRMS that he is more than capable of trashing military leaders his bone-spurred little brain has zero respect for. As much as I respect him, I'll reiterate that I'm not that hopeful that a conservative thought leader like George Will can purge the Republican Party of its self-destructive factions when President Toxic loses. But conservative military leaders? That's a different thing. Mattis weighed in already, publicly, in June. But his words come to mind. Be nice to every President in the room. But also have a plan to kill him. That's what this feels like to me. This could go on for the next two months. At some point, maybe Kelly will speak up. Or maybe someone else will. The longer Kelly waits, the more it sets him up to say, "Yes, it's true. The President said that about my son. But I felt I had an obligation to be silent out of respect for the Constitution, which mandates that the military is subordinate to the people." That's a twofer. He tightens the rope around President Toxic's neck for his contempt for the military. And he also reminds people that President Toxic has contempt for The Constitution, too. Biden may not have dementia, but I'm beginning to think I do. My recollection is that the Swift Boaters killed Kerry's campaign, and that happened in September. In fact, according to Wikipedia, they started the ads on August 4, 2004. And the attacks and rebuttals on Kerry's military record ran through August, culminating in the RNC in late August/early September. General Election 2004: Bush v. Kerry I'd take a glance at the 2004 Bush/Kerry horse race polls. When I looked at it I immediately assumed that the huge spike in early September was the "Swift-boating" of Kerry. But that's wrong. Like I said, that started in early August. What moved the dial was the RNC. It was a tie through most of August. Right after the RNC W. opened up an 8 point lead. It makes sense. Nicole Wallace keeps saying they knew that if 2004 was a referendum on W. or Iraq, he would lose. They had to make it a choice election. The RNC allowed them to do that. I have a few other reasons for bringing this up, one of which is obvious. That did not just happen in 2020. If President Toxic is going to make this a choice election - like between "Jobs And Mobs" - the RNC was his shot. If he was going to surge into the lead, like W. did in 2004, we would know by now. It just didn't happen. Poor decent, honest Donald! Why can't a nice fella like him ever catch a break? My biggest fear all year long is that 2004 was the precedent for 2020. An unpopular President loses the election but wins because of the Slavery Is Good Electoral College. Then even though his awful record makes clear he should lose his bid for a second term, in my mind, somehow he barely manages to win re-election. That could happen. But if you look at the 2004 horse race, there's no comparison. First, before the clock started W. was at one point (right after 9/11) viewed more favorably than any modern President. Second, all through Spring and Summer 2004 the race was close, and who was in the lead flip flopped - just like Kerry on Iraq, I guess. Third, the fact that he surged right after the RNC suggests that a decisive chunk of America was actually open to hearing what the incumbent President had to say. None of that is happening in 2020. And time is running out for President Toxic. Maybe we'll end up thinking of this as the Osama Bin Laden election. A stealthy and capable military came in with guns loaded. They took out a bad guy. It was a team effort. But we'll never quite know who took the kill shot. Poor decent, truthful Donald. Can't a good-hearted fella ever catch a break?

That right there is what I worry about. As well as Putin. Door to door, face to face GOTV is probably a no no in the areas that are strongest for Democrats. Meanwhile, in these small towns and rural areas that's where it's probably safest. Apparently President Toxic's followers are doing a ton of door to door right now. I'm assuming they are looking under every rock to find non-voters they can get registered to vote for President Toxic. So there's all the normal GOTV stuff, like you said, and then all these other huge unknowns. And it could work to the Democrats' disadvantage. I have read things that say some of this could bite Republicans in the ass, too. If people can and do vote by mail, it doesn't matter how big a mess the polling places are for that voter. Meanwhile, rural and small town polling places could have a huge problem with staffing. That said, I assume Trump volunteers will try to make sure all those polling places where it will be primarily President Toxic voters are staffed. I'll be broken record. This is why I'm sending money. I think this year GOTV will involve: Did you get your ballot? Did you vote? Did you return your ballot? Did you make sure it was received? Whether it's campaign staff or volunteers, that's what I hope people in the swing states are doing. In a certain sense, this is a campaign volunteer's dream. The frustrating thing I can recall as a campaign volunteer is calling people we knew were supporters who we knew had not voted yet. Often enough I called them multiple times over a numbers of days, or even over a number of hours on Election Day, to nag them to go vote. That will happen in 2020, too. But this year there's an opportunity to say, "If you wait until Election Day, it will be a mess, and unsafe. And if you wait to vote by mail, they'll try to prevent your vote from being counted. If you want to dump Trump, you absolutely have to vote now." I think it's to the Democrat's advantage to just be in sheer panic for two months. Until we're screaming vote, vote, vote in our sleep. Team Toxic has got the memo. They'll vote. What I seriously doubt is whether they can find a million or more new or disaffected voters like they seem to have done in 2016. So if both sides push turnout and are successful, Democrats win simply based on the numbers. Since President Toxic's base is older, that frankly means a chunk of his voters from 2016 have gone to the Godly eternal place that President Toxic will personally never be welcome in. And other than people who were too young to vote in 2016, everyone else - by definition - is not among the most fervent of Trumpets. If they were, they're already registered and they will walk through glass to vote. So they may have a turnout problem of their own. One of my brothers lives in a small town. He's right of center. He voted for President Toxic in 2016. He could be a poster child for the voter who wasn't in love with President Toxic, but thought he stank less than Hillary - who was also too liberal for his taste. By 2017 his disappointment was already clear. He was already saying Trump won't be re-elected. He's 10 years older than me and he's basically not leaving his home, even though he's hardly in a COVID-19 hot spot. So my guess is he may not vote. Or he may vote for Biden. I'll give him a nudge on that next month. Although he lives in Illinois so it doesn't really matter. I suspect there are lots and lots and lots of people like him. So despite all the loud noise from the True Toxic Trumpets, I personally don't buy that they will top what they did in 2016. They may not even match it. All that said, I think everyone should assume everything I said in the last few paragraphs is wrong.

I don't disagree. When I Googled it, I got this definition. It works well enough for me. pop·u·lism noun a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. I'd split the difference and say President Toxic's political success has elements of both populism and authoritarianism. And whichever one you call it, the US is hardly unique. It's also probably true that certain historical periods favor these types of movements and governments, since they are reactions to the established order and elites. I wouldn't say Hitler and Mussolini were simply populists. I would say they were classic authoritarians. We could have a debate about where populism stops, and authoritarianism begin. But let's not. Most of the politicians I've been closest to were populists. They based their appeal on being against elites and for ordinary people - "the little guy". They were not authoritarian. The opposite. Populists like Paul Wellstone were all about people power and organizing and empowerment of community leaders. You can argue there are elements of that in what President Toxic did to get elected. But I wouldn't compare the two in a million years. Paul would never say that his power was based on people that would still support him if he took someone out to the barn in Minnesota and shot him. I guess that's the Farmer Labor "prairie populism" equivalent of Trump and 5th Ave. The value in Dean's ideas to me are they explain why some people of both parties or no party were attracted to President Toxic. And will seemingly follow him blindly. 2020 will be a test of this. In 2016 you can explain a lot of it away by saying people were hurting. And it was precisely those people that decided to roll the dice, hoping he would make things better. Since 2016 the economy mostly improved. It didn't help most Republicans in the midterms. But at least President Toxic had that. If he wins in a recession after bungling COVID-19, it suggests that America is in far worse shape than I thought. I don't like to go there in my mind. But what it suggests is that we're moving into Hitler and Mussolini territory. You have a huge group of people who are so captured by an authoritarian figure that they'll follow him blindly, regardless of the consequences. I didn't feel that way in 2016. I will if he wins in 2020. Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ That article is somewhat off topic. I'm posting it because as I was reading it some sentences jumped off the page. Because they were exact matches with what I was reading yesterday about President Toxic's supposed "Social Dominant" leadership style. In addition to the words "suckers" and "losers", these are perfect examples: There's other psychological words you can use to describe this. Like narcissism, or lack of empathy. But the authoritarianism Dean talks about fits in perfectly. Socially dominant types like President Toxic see the world as a dog eat dog place where you either win and dominate, or you are a loser. So if your are a dead soldier, you didn't dominate, and you didn't win. So you're a loser. There's really just no other category. Smart people want to dominate. And that means making lots of lots of money. But, no. You wouldn't go into the military. You certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice your life. (Sorry. After I added the quotes it's double spacing everything). This also might explain the mystery about why President Toxic at least used to have a hard-on for generals. I've always thought the logical (or hopeful) explanation is that even a narcissist like Trump knows he needs experts around him, especially on things like national defense. And generals tend to be hawks. Implicit in that is that President Toxic respected these people. But if these statements are true, the explanation that Trump is surrounding himself with very smart and hawkish people he respects doesn't fit all that well. He doesn't respect these people. Because if they were smart, they should be out making fortunes. Not serving their country. Let alone getting killed for their country. So an alternative logical explanation is that President Toxic is a classic authoritarian. He expects obedience. Period. That's probably what he expected from his Generals. They are supposed to be good at following orders. If you buy what the author says, which is easy to believe, like Bob Barr and other Cabinet members they were supposed to be personally loyal to Trump. Not the United States of America. This would explain why President Toxic had a love affair with Generals, and then a falling out. If you buy this, which I do, it really is very scary stuff.

I agree with you that those numbers about people who have made up their mind should be taken with a grain of salt. I know I beat the YouGov poll of Independents to death. But I found it funny that something like 93 % of them said they'd made up their mind. And when asked who they were voting for, I think 13 % said undecided. Of course, they could pretty much know and just not want to tell. My conclusion from the poll is that maybe 20 % of Independents are persuadable. At least 4 in 10 say Biden is not mentally fit and would make America less safe. A slightly higher percentage (high 40's) say President Toxic is not mentally fit, is the cause of the chaos, and/or will make America more violent if re-elected. So probably at least 8 in 10 Independents have ruled out at least one candidate. The issue with some of that 80 % is simply whether they vote. I've been reading every article I can find from the smartest political hacks in the room. Every one says, no surprise, that BOTH GOTV and persuasion matter. That said, more than ever, it's all about the base. The fact that we have unprecedented issues about getting a ballot, returning a ballot, and making sure the ballot is counted only makes that more true. There is something quite different than 2016. It's a factor that proved decisive in 2016, according to my buddy Karl Rove and me. I hope it proves decisive again. A majority of voters will cast ballots in 2020, just like they did in 2016, holding an unfavorable view of President Toxic. In 2016, a majority also had an unfavorable view of Hillary. In 2020, however, a majority DO NOT hold an unfavorable view of Joe Biden. He's very close to having a majority who hold a favorable view of him. That could be decisive. I recently posted the Rove 2016 video on a different post, so I won't repost. But Rove said that 2016 exit polls said that people who had negative opinions of both President Toxic and Hillary threw the election to Trump. The 15 % who said neither was qualified favored Trump 66/15. The 18 % who said they viewed both unfavorably favored Trump 47/30. Election 2016 Favorability Ratings Election 2020 Favorability Ratings You can check out the difference in favorability ratings yourself. I read statements earlier this year that Biden has about as wide a lead on favorability with Trump in 2020 as Clinton did in 2016. So, really, he has no advantage. That makes no sense to me. The key thing about Hillary is that the Republican Death Star was fully loaded with really stinky shit way back in 2014. And they spent two very shit-filled years smearing shit all over America. When it was done they done a really shitty job. Meaning they covered Hillary, and America, with shit. So there was never a day in Fall 2016 - NOT ONE DAY - when anything close to a majority of voters viewed Hillary favorably. In fact, EVERY DAY in Fall 2016 somewhere from 50 to 60 % of voters viewed Clinton unfavorably. The final average on Election Day was Clinton 54.4 % unfavorable, President Toxic 58.5 % unfavorable. Oddly, according to the exit polls, the fact that she was only slightly less disliked than President Toxic cost her the election, because that subset held their nose and voted for change. The massive shit operation probably also was intended to, and did, discourage Blacks and progressives who weren't wild about Hillary anyway to just not vote. We know that Sweet Rudy and Poor Brad tried the same thing in 2018 and 2019. They had an even bigger Death Star, loaded with even more and higher quality Grade A Stinky Shit. Hell, they were even importing superb, really exceptionally rare shit from Ukraine. Somehow, President Toxic got impeached over it. Alan Lichtman will tell you that now that's the extra seventh nail in Trump's coffin, just in case history fucks up and the sixth one - the shitty economy - isn't enough. So right now Biden has 48.3 % favorable and 46.6 % unfavorable in the RCP averages. President Toxic has 41.9 % favorable and 55.6 % unfavorable. It's a given that some people who don't think President Toxic is a good person will vote for him anyway. But this is different than 2016. Maybe the public will sour on Biden over the next few months. But we know President Toxic has thrown everything his racist, hateful, poor little mind can think of at Biden. There's another great line I love from Karl Rove that applies here. He said something like this about his strategy to get W. elected in re-elected: "In 2000, we had to convince people that it was the best of times. So it was time for a change. In 2004 we had to convince people that we're going through a rough patch. So it's a bad time to switch horses." You could reformulate what Rove said into something like this: In 2016 a lot of people didn't like Trump, or Clinton, or the way things were. So they voted for Trump, because they got change. In 2020 a lot of people like Biden. But they don't like Trump, or the way things are. So they'll vote for Trump, so things stay the same. The last sentence doesn't make much sense to me. But that is what President Toxic has to do. He tried to make it so that at least a majority of Americans viewed Biden unfavorably. But it hasn't worked, at least so far. If this is another change election, and the candidate who is offering change is one people actually like more, it's just bad news for President Toxic. Even if people change their mind, which they will, Biden has a better chance of benefiting from it. One more set of numbers that aligns, and seem like bad news for President Toxic. This year, there's very tight alignment between the RCP average favorability ratings, and who people say they'll vote for. As of today, 48.3 % view Biden favorably, and 49.6 % plan to vote for him. 41.9 % see President Toxic favorably, and 42.6 % plan to vote for him. It people who view each candidate favorably stick with that candidate, President Toxic is fucked. If this is like 2016, and the remaining 8 % who presumably don't view either candidate favorably break to Biden, President Toxic is even more fucked.

Dead heat: Trump erases Biden’s 8-point lead in Pennsylvania as black voters abandon Democrat So that headline is an eye catcher. I think it may help explain what's happening in Pennsylvania, after you dig into the numbers. Bottom line: I think it's a crock of shit. Before I say why, let me just post a head shot of the White conservative who wrote this article. He looks like a nice enough guy. But this is what you can call my privileged White liberal problem with White conservatives. I think they have a serious and deep racism problem that will be with them, personally and politically, for the rest of their days. I don't know previously Democratic White factory workers in Scranton who lost their jobs when W. was President. I do know and have known many affluent White conservatives. They don't spend lots of time with Black people - at church, at sports games, or anywhere. If anything, they know Blacks from work. And the Blacks they know tend to be their subordinates. Yet, somehow, they seem to think they have their finger on the pulse of the Black community - which is of course, a very diverse community. It's understandable enough if all they do is cite poll data. That's actually good. I try to learn what Blacks think by reading poll data. But if you're doing that, it's hard to miss the fact that at least 3 in 4 Blacks are strongly against President Toxic. And that at least 3 in 4 think he's a racist. White conservatives never mention that. Yet many of them do insist President Toxic is the least racist guy you'll ever meet. And that the Black people calling Trump a racist are the true racists. Is it unfair of me to conclude that most White conservatives don't want to hear, think about, or publicly deal with what most Blacks think about President Toxic's racism? Or the deep racial justice problems in President Toxic's America? What this White conservative clearly wants to believe is that 27 % of Blacks in Pennsylvania now support President Toxic. That's based on a Rasmussen poll. The White conservative does not offer a theory as to why he thinks this might be the case. Which at the margin supports my belief that they don't particularly give a shit what Blacks are thinking. Even the ones that maybe support their guy. It also supports my belief that the real purpose of articles like this is to persuade Whites who are on the fence that President Toxic can't be a racist. And that the Republican Party can't be racially tone deaf. After all, 1 in 4 Blacks - more than twice as many as 2016! - think he's a swell guy. Now back to reality. This other article from 2016 says Hillary got 88 % of the Black vote nationally in 2016. But in some key states, including Pennsylvania, she got over 90 % of the Black vote. That's all in the ballpark of what I've read for years. The big problem in 2016, and the big danger for Biden in 2020, is Blacks who don't particularly care and will just stay home. Comparing this Rasmussen poll to the Monmouth poll that showed Biden's lead in Pennsylvania shrinking from 13 points in July to 4 points now offers some insight. First, the Rasmussen poll was done during the convention, and the Monmouth poll was right after. That could make a small difference at the margin. The RNC featured Black conservative men making the case for President Toxic. That could have generated a small pro-Trump blip while it was happening. More important, Monmouth says that "voters of color" in Pennsylvania were for Biden 76/16 in July and are now for him 72/15. The biggest shift they noted is that undecided "voters of color" grew from 3 % in July to 9 % now. Monmouth says, "The Republican convention attempted to sow some seeds of doubt among core Democratic blocs, especially young and urban voters." Makes perfect sense to me. My guess is that in a change election, which is what I think this will be, "voters of color" who were with Biden in July and undecided right after the RNC will more likely than not break heavily for Biden when they vote. "Voters of color" includes Hispanics and Asians as well as Black. Monmouth does not disaggregate Black voters as a distinct group. So if 15 % of "voters of color" in Pennsylvania are for President Toxic right now, that means maybe President Toxic is getting a very low single digit - 10? 11? 12? - percent support from Blacks, whose support for Trump is substantially lower than Hispanics nationally. That's a long way from 27 %. Either Monmouth or Rasmussen is way off. The picture Monmouth paints is way more consistent with 2016 and what we know. It suggests that Biden is in roughly the same ballpark with Blacks as Clinton was in 2016. There are some undecided Blacks and Hispanics and Asians leaning toward him in July that he needs to solidify support from. But probably the biggest issue is the same as 2016: he needs to persuade many potential Black voters to actually vote. I find it much easier to buy Monmouth's analysis of what really shifted between July and now: men, mostly under 50, who probably tend to live in "swing districts" that used to be Democratic enclaves. My guess is some of them are Black, more of them are Hispanic, and most of them are White. I think Biden has a problem with both Black men and Hispanic men. The biggest problem with Black men is getting them to vote. The biggest problem with Hispanic men is getting them to vote for Biden. This other article sounds right about Biden's problems with Hispanic men in Florida: Biden lags among Florida Hispanic voters A new poll finds the Democratic nominee is running behind Hillary Clinton’s pace in the critical swing state. The silver lining in this cloud, as the article says, is that Biden is doing better than Hillary with other groups, like older Whites. And he's doing better with Hispanics than Sen. Bill Nelson was in 2018. It's not clear from what I've read how Biden is doing with Blacks in Florida, relative to Hillary. But the polls suggest that he's doing well enough to win, so far. That's just another data point that suggests to me that to close the deal Biden needs to focus on the economy, stupid. I have a hunch that with Hispanics in particular there's a conflict between COVID-19 and jobs. If they are under 50, like the men who are on the fence in Pennsylvania as well, they may tip a little more toward "reopen the economy so I can work" as opposed to "if I go to work and get COVID-19 I'll be in a hospital without health insurance, or dead." Beyond that is all the stuff about President Toxic is strong and tough, Biden is weak, President Toxic is a good businessman, President Toxic wants to help small businesses. I have no idea whether things like Marco Rubio's Paycheck Protection Program have helped President Toxic, hurt him, or it's just a wash. I'm assuming that, unlike with Blacks, there's a bunch of Hispanics who didn't qualify for stimulus checks or unemployment based on their immigration status. I suspect this cluster of issues will move Latino voters way more than riots or looting or crime. Mostly i think Biden needs to take a sledgehammer and try to demolish President Toxic's image as strong and effective. He's weak, mean, and incompetent. This is a good point to mention how Bernie was a blessing and a curse. If Biden ends up winning Florida by a point or two, and therefore the Presidency, that tells me Bernie would have lost Florida. As the article says, the "socialism" tag is deadly there. It's another reason I think the Bernie Sanders Show was not ready for prime time in 2020, even though I voted for him. That said, Democrats should be eternally indebted to Tio Bernie. He came closer than any national politician I've seen to figuring out how to organize and inspire Hispanics. He won Nevada that way. While he lost Texas, that was despite the fact that he got 150,000 more votes in Texas in 2020 than in 2016 - which could be more than the winning margin in statewide races there in 2020 and the future. I agree with this article that probably the best case scenario for Democrats with Hispanics in Florida is to hold our ground in 2020. And to have a Plan B to make up any potential decrease in Latino turnout somewhere else: like older Whites or Blacks. Ultimately, I think what the Democrats need and don't have is a Tío Bernando. Meaning a Latino or Latina politician who is authentically of the culture and can play a leading national role. (I don't like the whole "x" thing. "Tíx Bernie sounds like a breath freshener to me. Or maybe an ice cream brand.) Here's an old (2015) list of the "10 most influential Hispanic Americans in US politics". It's interesting that only 5 of them are elected officials, unlike Jorge Ramos (# 1) and Justice Sotomayer (#2). Of the elected officials, they rank Rubio/Cruz slightly higher than the Castro brothers. Clearly, Julián Castro did not emerge as the Hispanic Obama in 2020. The obvious name missing from the 2015 list is Tía AOC. My perception is that Democrats are doing a better job of dealing with their issues with Black Americans than they are with their issues with Hispanic Americans. Julián said something to that effect recently. The Hispanic community is in no way locked and loaded for Democratic Party moving forward. While I was reading about Hispanics in Florida, I ran across this two minute DNC piece about a Mexican American Mom President Toxic deported. I missed this during the DNC. One more reason to want to dump President Toxic.

That's probably the best educated guess of what will happen. Which is to say, 2020 will be a ripple of 2018 and 2016. In 2016, it rippled one way. In 2018, it rippled the other way. But it could ripple either way in 2020. What's missing is what I cited about what historian Theodore White said in 1980, as it was first becoming clear on Election Night that a tidal wave was coming in. It was, in fact, a tidal wave, he said. And everything needed to be rethought. To keep it abstract, there is a big similarity in 2020. I'm not sure I get this part of White's thinking. But I read what I could find (but not his book) about what he thought happened in 1980. Part of his view was that history crushed Carter. Which is to say, the Democratic coalition became unglued. Part of what was interesting about watching the coverage is these smart anchors were saying, "Reagan might even win North Carolina." Now we're saying, "Biden might even win North Carolina." Recall that in 1980 Georgia was one of the few parts of the Southern Democratic base Carter held, only for Mondale to lose in 1984. Carter's victory in 1976 and 1980 were built on states that are now solid red. I thought it was funny that when they filled in the map in 1980, red was the color they used for the states Carter was winning. In 2020 the party that seems to be becoming unglued is the Republican Party. Even Rick Snyder, of all people, is saying President Toxic is a bully, and he's voting for Biden. I know you don't like the concept of "Biden Republicans". But the fact that we're even having the discussion suggests this is not 1972 ("Nixon Democrats") or 1980 ("Reagan Democrats"). Moving from the abstract to the practical, White would of course never have argued these tides happen in a vacuum. The essay of his that I did read about 1980 suggested that he thought it was largely the economy, stupid. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Inflation, inflation, inflation. And, back then, gas lines, gas lines, gas lines. is there a similar driver in 2020? I'll repost this chart from another model by UVA's Alan Abramowitz I posted above and called "Lichtman Lite", or "It's only the economy, stupid." This was published in March, just as were becoming aware that COVID-19 had hit US shores. So the assumption was that it could slow the economy down. And the author knew that President Toxic was an incumbent seeking re-election. So he modeled (he says within 25 electoral votes) what will happen to Trump based on what has actually happened to every incumbent since World War 2 in the Electoral College. The two variables are their approval rating in June and second quarter GDP. The author said that if President Toxic could improve his approval ratings by a few points, he might get past 270. But only if he could at least squeeze just a teeny tiny bit of growth out of the economy in the upcoming (at the time) second quarter. In fact, President Toxic's approval rating got worse. And 2nd quarter GDP was -9.5 %. If we're looking for drivers of tidal waves, I'd say that qualifies. Even if you assume Rasmussen is right, and the people who will vote actually see Trump as having 0 net disapproval. And even if you assume that a lot of these authoritarian followers simply believe Daddy is taking care of it all, no matter what they see actually happening around them with COVID-19 and a recession. If you go the other way, the numbers above suggest that the current "no toss up" analysis of RCP - that President Toxic will get 185 electoral votes - is wildly optimistic for Republicans. Coincidentally, RCP just shifted North Carolina from Trump to Biden. What matters to me is that the three states right on the edge that could tip to Biden are North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa. I'm assuming that 2020 will be like 2016 and 2018. If Biden wins those three states, he more likely than not takes four more Democratic Senators to Washington with him. We both agree, it seems. That only happens if there is a tidal wave. But not a ripple. The best all-purpose rejoinder to models like this is, "This time is different." Maybe so. My contrarian bias is that the more people say, "This time is different," the more likely it is that this time is exactly the same. Best to have flippers, a snorkel and a wet suit available come November. It's at least possible that a tidal wave is headed our way.

John Dean is out with a new book that offers another lens for viewing what's driving the election. This may help to explain some voting behavior that Lichtman's theory does not. Particularly the "stickiness" of President Toxic's supporters. John Dean's "Authoritarian Nightmare" That's a 24 minute audio interview of Dean. I listened to three interviews and read one review yesterday. If you prefer visual to audio this is an interesting interview of Dean on Democracy Now. The audio interview is longer and better for understanding his ideas. Amy asked him some interesting questions about current stuff. So it's a good interview, but a bit less about his book. I really miss Lookin from Daddy's forum. He was a very thoughtful poster. And he kept bringing up authoritarianism as a theme to explain Trumpism. As well as why so many people have been captured by the NRA. Dean and him were obviously reading the same books. Because everything Dean is saying echos points Lookin has made for years. I've got a very superficial understanding of the "science" behind this. But I'll summarize the basic theory in a paragraph, and then tell you my main takeaways from listening to about an hour of this stuff. The science of this started after World War 2. The initial question was: Could America fall to a Hitler or Mussolini? The answer researchers came up with was, "yes." Dean's co-author is one of the noted (and few) psychologists who is an expert on authoritarianism. There are psychological tests that have been used for decades that are believed to objectively measure support for authoritarianism. So the two key players in the nightmare are labelled Social Dominants and Authoritarian Followers. Social Dominants are the Trumps, who are power hungry Machiavellians who are driven to dominate others. Authoritarian followers are just that. In one interview Dean jokingly refers to them as "Daddy will make everything alright" types. They tend to be low information voters who are not great critical thinkers. At the extreme, this is the world of Q Anon and Deep State conspirators and radicals in dark clothes on airplanes. One takeaway is it reinforced my belief that the best way for people like me to change this is to do whatever I can to simplify defeat them. They're not John Kasich. They're not particularly interested in reason or compromise. But they do understand defeat. At one point, I think in the Amy Goodman interview, Dean says that, verbatim. They understand defeat. President Toxic is no Hitler or Mussolini. At least not yet. But it will end the same way. As I was listening to this I was reminded of that video Schwarzenegger made after Charlottesville about Nazis. He said growing up in Austria he knew these people were not heroes to honor. They were broken men who had been defeated. I suspect many of President Toxic's most ardent followers will feel the same way. They will understand defeat. But their impulse will not be to reconcile. This would be why they could nominate Don, Jr. in 2024, I think, even if his Dad lost. I hope I'm wrong. But I would not rule it out. If they nominate Nikki Haley, who I personally think is much less nuts, it would be because she succeeded in convincing the Trump base that she's basically Don in a dress. How exactly are these people going to be defeated? Dean says that young people don't follow President Toxic. He didn't say why in these interviews. But the fact that they are generally better educated and more critical thinkers probably has something to do with it, I suspect. The Berniecrats certainly have a different analysis about what's broken, and how to fix it. So the surest way to get rid of President Toxic is what I believe Dean called a "tsunamai" of youth voters. I've been reading smart Republican operatives for years who have been saying that a wave is coming that is going to wipe out Republicans, and Republicans are doing nothing to stop it. And that wave is young people. Separately, there is research that suggests that Millennials are acting like their parents: the older they get, the more likely they are to vote. That explains some part of Democratic wins in 2018. So this is just a huge unknown that could determine whether President Toxic wins Minnesota, on the one hand. Or loses Georgia, on the other hand. Rep. Omar was supposed to be vulnerable in her primary. But she blew her opposition away. That is one small data point that suggests that the opposition to President Toxic (and authoritarianism) may actually get out and vote. I checked on Omar. In 2018 she won her primary with 48 % of the vote out of about 135,000 votes cast. In 2020 she won 58 % of the vote out of about 178,000 votes cast. That may mean nothing. But I'm taking it as a sign that President Toxic's followers are not the only ones who are highly motivated to vote in this environment. One other point Dean made is that there has been a massive shift to the Republican Party of authoritarian followers. As a Democrat, that pleases me, if true. I don't want them in my party. The bad news, as @tassojunior keeps warning, is that if they consolidate in what is becoming The Authoritarian Party and elect someone even worse, that could move us into Hitler or Mussolini territory. Dean keeps referring to the known poll numbers of President Toxic's approval rating - 40 to 44 % - to describe his "base". I'd probably have to read the whole book to understand whether Dean thinks all of President Toxic's base are the "poorly educated" authoritarian followers President Toxic loves. Whatever Dean thinks, I think the slice he's describing is not all of them. My own sense is that President Toxic's followers are a minority, and this truly pro-authoritarian group is a significant minority within a minority. It is big enough that they were able to deliver the nomination to Trump in 2016. Which means they could do it again to someone else like him in 2024. In his closing comment to Amy Goodman, Dean says 24 to 29 % of President Toxic's followers said in a poll they will tolerate him ignoring The Constitution if he loses. Dean calls that "troubling". True. But even if we take the best case numbers for Trump, 29 % of a base that is 44 % of Americans on his best day is about 12 % of the electorate. If President Toxic loses, I don't see that 12 % of voters will be able to keep him in power. At least that's what I hope. Presumably this means 76 to 71 % of President Toxic's voters believe that if he lost the election, The Constitution says he has to go. This is another lens to view what is happening in the polls in Pennsylvania right now. The good news to me is that if Biden slipped back to "only" 49 % of the vote, that's consistent with the 49 % who said in both July and now they'll vote Democratic. So Democrats are close to what seems like a stable 50 % in Pennsylvania, at least so far. I think the best way to think about the people shifting around - who tend to be White men and under 50, and also maybe a slice of more conservative Black or Hispanic men, is this: jobs, jobs, jobs. It's the economy, stupid. But it's possible you can get to the same place by thinking authoritarianism, authoritarianism, authoritarianism. The phrase Dean used, "Daddy will take care of everything", sounds insulting and dismissive. But it does explain some things. It makes no sense to me, as an ideological guy who overthinks everything, that someone could say they'd vote for Bernie or Trump, but not Hillary. It makes more sense if I think the lens is simply, "Who's your Daddy?" Hillary isn't a very good Daddy. She's more like a nagging bureaucrat to a lot of these guys. Or just a bitch. So you can call it sexism. But seen through their eyes, it could be that they just don't see Hillary as the kind of guy that will take care of things for them. Standing next to Bernie in 2016, maybe they thought Bernie could take care of things better than Hillary. But then in 2020 we learned that Biden makes a better Daddy than Bernie all across states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Now they have to decide whether they like Daddy Biden or Daddy Trump. Viewed through this lens, it's even more clear that President Toxic's hateful tweet is aimed directly at people who Dean says are authoritarian followers. President Toxic is strong. All you get from Biden is a "weak response". So who's your Daddy? "President Trump is making it stop." President Toxic is your Daddy. He'll will take care of everything. If you buy this, Biden saying he's the most empathetic guy in the world doesn't close the deal. If anything, it confirms that Biden is no Daddy at all. He's a wimp. One of the things i think Biden is doing right is calling President Toxic weak. Biden and Harris are projecting the kind of strength that Angela Merkel and other female leaders in Europe tend to project. Which is to say, the kind of strength that appeals to women, and I think to critical thinkers. Biden can't be that and a mini-Mussolini at the same time. It makes no sense for Biden to try to out-Trump President Toxic to me. If these theories of psychology intersect with politics, I think the best way to connect the dots is jobs, jobs, jobs. The promise that Daddy made in 2016 that cut in the Rust Belt is that Daddy would go in to these devastated areas with closed factories and struggling families and businesses and lots of addiction and hurt. And Daddy would take care of things. Daddy has not only NOT taken care of things, which was true before the plague. He's made it worse. Before the plague, there were no new factory jobs in Pennsylvania. After the plague, which is thanks to Daddy fucking it all up so that over 200,000 will die by Election Day, they have fewer jobs. President Toxic isn't Daddy. He's not even Mommy. He's just chaos. Part of Dean's point is that these types of people are not high information thinkers. That's of course why they like Fox News. And why the ratings say in the Fox Universe they'd much rather listen to Sean Hannity than Chris Wallace. So here's some data, which is probably next to useless with true Trump followers. Even in the "best economy ever", Pennsylvania lost 2000 factory jobs between January 2019 and January 2020. If you start the clock from January 2017, when President Toxic promised to end American carnage, Pennsylvania has lost about 25,000 factory jobs under Trump, as of June 2020. Daddy isn't very good at getting the job done. There's a significant difference between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if you look at long term trends. Whether it has any impact on elections, who knows? In Wisconsin, there are periods of "recovery" since 1990. In the 1990's, Wisconsin actually gained in the ballpark of 75,000 manufacturing jobs, to a peak of about 600,000. By the end of the Great Recession, almost 1 in 3 of those jobs were gone. From the trough of The Great Recession, they did gain back about 60,000 factory jobs - mostly under Obama/Biden. So the sense of it is two or three steps back, one step forward. Pennsylvania has had no "recovery" of manufacturing jobs for three decades. Even in the Clinton heyday, they lost 20,000 or so factory jobs. Under both Obama/Biden and President Toxic, the "recovery" of manufacturing was basically a flat line. So Wisconsin today is at least better off than during the worst days of the Great Recession. Pennsylvania is actually worse off. You can make up any theory you want about how this might impact voting behavior. It certainly explains why people who are not necessarily racist or sexist felt that eight years of Obama/Biden was enough, and they didn't need Hillary. But President Toxic hasn't been any better. You can make a good argument, based on factory jobs, he's been worse. Or you can argue that this is the kind of environment that breeds authoritarian followers. Nothing works. Nothing gets better. But at least we can feel and hope that Daddy is taking care of us. Biden has done well, I think, by being disarmingly honest. His line about "Do I look like a radical to you?" worked. So one way to deal with this, which in most cases would be horrible political advice, would be for Biden to look President Toxic in the eye at a debate and say, "Donald, you choked. You promised decent hard working people you'd bring back their factory jobs. And you choked. There are fewer factory jobs. You choked. You're weak. You let people down. You choked. People are worse off today. You're a choke artist, Donald. Don't you get it? Because everybody else does." That's going way too far. But Biden has been effective using President Toxic's own words against him. And if you go back to 1980, Biden has the opposite problem Reagan did. Reagan needed to prove he wasn't a radical. So he had to NOT be inflammatory. The disarming, "There you go again" did the trick. Biden needs to prove he is not weak. So turning some of Trump's authoritarian language against him might make sense. President Toxic is not strong. He's a choke artist. Something like that might help Biden. This is where I find Lichtman helpful. His theory is based on the idea that over a very long period of time, American voters have made sound judgments based on fundamentals. Like, "it's the economy, stupid." If he's right, the sound judgment in 2020 will be that President Toxic fell short, and should not be re-elected. Dean's numbers, if I understand him right, don't contradict this. If 15 % of Americans would choose President Toxic over The Constitution, that's probably something America can survive. The most pessimistic thing I feel, especially if I really buy into Dean's ideas about authoritarianism, is that this is a big problem for America for a long time to come. These people won't go away. And they are not likely to change their minds. I'd like to think George Will is right, and after Trump loses these are the people that will be purged from the Republican Party. Or they'll just take their marbles and go home. More likely, they will blame President Toxic's defeat on RINOs like George Will. And they'll purge any of the RINOs that are still left in their authoritarian party. One other thing I've said ties in here, and in reason for hope for me. I said that I didn't think in 2020 The Bernie Show (or The Social Democratic Show) was ready for prime time. One reason I said that is that the Berniecrats didn't vote in the droves that were hoped for. That in itself is not a great omen for Democrats for November 2020. But if I understand Dean, he says they are ultimately the best solution to this problem. I certainly feel that way. They are not attracted to authoritarian leaders. So if any of this is in the ballpark of correct, it's only a matter of time until a minority that responds to authoritarian leaders is crushed by an ascendant electorate that rejects Trumpism root and branch.

I didn't take them to mean those were the only swing states. And let's all keep repeating this: nobody should take anything for granted. If things swing one way, President Toxic could win Minnesota. If things swing another way, Biden could win Georgia and maybe also pick up two Senate seats there. There's poll data that suggests that The Divine Miss Graham could even lose her job in South Carolina. It's turnout, turnout, turnout. The main words in everyone's vocabulary for the next two months should be "vote, vote, and vote." Trafalgar, the Republican outlier, has a poll out today saying it's a tied race in Minnesota. The RCP average, which includes that poll, says Biden is leading by 5.4 points in Minnesota. Trafalgar says that President Toxic has a 3 point lead in Florida. That poll pulled the RCP average down, so now it shows Biden with a 1.8 % lead in Florida. We don't even have to guess what's going on here. In 2016 Trafalgar was right on the money. They published the last two state polls in Pennsylvania and Michigan, a few days before the election, both showing Trump with a very small lead. In 2018 they were way off the mark in a lot of states. Their model of who would vote was just way off. What I found interesting is that Trafalgar screwed up in both directions in 2018. In states trending red, they underestimated how badly Democrats like McCaskill and Donnelly would lose by. In states going the other way, like Arizona and Nevada, they underestimated the shift to Democrats. They called both of those states wrong in the Senate races. Bottom line is it all depends on who the electorate actually is. And no one can predict that. But we can control it. Send money. Volunteer. Vote. What happened in 2018 is likely to happen again. The intensity on both sides will feed off each other, and lead to through the roof turnout on both sides. That in itself is not a bad thing in a democracy. If that happens, it will probably help Democrats in states like Georgia. McBath won in 2018, and Abrams came closer than any Democrat in about a generation. If Blacks and Millennials crawl out of the woodwork to vote, 2020 could be the opposite of 2016. Instead of the loose bricks in the Blue Wall falling, it could be the loose bricks in the Red Wall this time. But it's all turnout, turnout, turnout.

I think we agree. To oversimplify what you said, it is being passed in states the Democrats have majorities in. It is being obstructed by Republicans in states like South Carolina. It's a highly partisan issue, as that poll I posted above shows. So I'm pretty sure the only way to get to 270 is to have a solid Democratic majority. If President Toxic loses badly, I do think that Republicans will at least soften their opposition, as they did in the early Obama years. The key argument that may work, with some of them, is that taking power this way tends to result in the same thing. You take one step forward, and two steps back. If President Toxic loses badly, that's happened twice in a row. And even during that one step forward you're stuck with unpopular leaders who bungle things (W. in Iraq, President Toxic and COVID-19). While Republicans are taking the one step forward they won't want to hear this. They'd rather focus on appointing more conservative judges. After they realize they've actually fallen two steps back, and helped open the liberal floodgates in reaction to their unpopular and inept leaders, some of them may be a bit more open-minded. That's at least what the poll data shows happened with Republicans after Obama won. It became less partisan for a while. This will be a test of how permanent the damage caused by President Toxic is. I have no clue. It could be in 2024 John Kasich, or someone like him, will be the Republican nominee. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Donald Trump. Jr. - if those were my two choices. All these people that stand behind President Toxic are not going to go away. At least until they die. So I hope I'm wrong. But I see it as a solid wall of opposition that will just get harder, and more bitter, about "losing" their America. In that context, they will see this whole debate about dumping the Electoral College and letting the person who wins by millions of votes actually be President as a Deep State plot to destroy democracy. It's not rational. But who ever said that reason was these people's strong point?

That's the interesting question. What kind of a nation do we want to be? I've been saying for years that we are headed to a Moral Awakening. Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the growing awareness of income inequality, the Sanders campaign, the Warren campaign. To me those were all signs of what may be coming. Now I would not say an Awakening is coming. I's say it's here. By Awakening I mean eras like the 1960's and civil rights. You could also throw in the explicitly religious Great Awakenings in US history, although that fuzzes it up more. They are periods of social renewal and a focus on the "soul" of the nation. As opposed to what might be called "greed is good" values. And one sign that we've arrived is that suddenly people see things that they were slumbering or passive about previously. BLM is certainly a good example of that. There was protest, including violence and looting, after Ferguson. But not like this. What goes along with the new tide, which President Toxic is missing entirely, is that part of the movement is around personal morality. That was true in the religious Great Awakenings. It was also true in the Civil Rights Era, when MLK asked us to look into our own hearts. Is this the nation we aspire to be? Any leader who thinks the simple and one-dimensional answer is bulldogs or water hoses or federal troops or assault rifles is missing a huge part of what's really going on. Of course, why am I not surprised that President Toxic is not the kind of guy who gets this? I was impressed with a new Biden ad running which I will post below that fits into this theme. I went to find that "Jobs Not Mobs" tweet President Toxic sent out. When I Googled "Jobs Not Mobs Trump", this ad from 2018 came up, which I'd never seen. I thought the first part of the ad, about the economy, was powerful. This is clearly the campaign President Toxic was hoping to run in 2020 as well. And the little kick at Hillary at the end was a nice touch. So you have to wonder. If this didn't work in 2018, what makes them think it will work better in 2020? One number that pops up in this ad refers to 4.1 % GDP growth in the second quarter of 2018. In the second quarter of 2020 it was - 9.5 %. In 2018 they said "the core economy is on fire". In 2020 Coronavirus is spreading and killing like wildfire. I'm going to keep using Charlie Cook's 2018 phrase: "color intensifier". Ads like this probably did work in states like Indiana and Missouri and North Dakota in 2018, where Democratic Senators got their asses kicked to the curb. But they didn't work in most places. If it was just the economy stupid, the Republicans probably should have done better in 2018. So some part of this is that voters, particularly women, just aren't sold by this. This 2018 ad proves that this has nothing in particular to do with any of the riots or looting that happened when the BLM protests really took hold of the nation. This shouldn't be any surprise. It's the same President Toxic that was just Donald Toxic back in the Central Park 5 days, when he said this: Same hate, different century. So he got his wish. He's had three years to preach hate. My sense is that this is partly why things didn't go so well for Republicans in 2018, despite a good economy. I can't imagine the 2020 tweet is going to work much better, since it doubles down on the fear and hate without mentioning a thing about the economy, or COVID-19. Wonder why? Here's one of the Biden/Harris ads that is being blanketed all over about 15 swing states. I can't think of a clearer distinction between campaigning on fear, and campaigning on hope. I'd take it further and say it's the difference between offering up hope, and offering up hate. And that ad is Moral Awakening territory to me. Biden is gambling on the idea that the nation is ready to talk about racial justice. And the question, "Who do we want to be?" I used the word gambling. But if I'm reading the polls right, it's a pretty solid beat. I don't think the Democrats could have run an ad like this to rebut "law and order" in 1968. The fact that this is what Democrats are selling today is itself a small sign of progress, at least to me. Ron Brownstein has delivered yet another great analysis relevant to this, full of both good data and good insights. The Huge Snag in Trump’s Reelection Pitch The president’s own volatility complicates his effort to convince Americans that he can stabilize their lives. He's coming at it from a somewhat different angle, which I think compliments what I'm saying. It's a bit hard to sell "law and order" when even your supporters equate your Presidency with chaos. It's hard for President Toxic to say he'll calm down this situation when he's the one saying he hates "these people", and we should, too. The one thing he's got going for him is the idea that hating people gets something done. Although even the majority of Independents seem to think what it actually gets done is more violence, not less. This is where I wish Elizabeth Warren was our nominee. I think Biden is probably a bit more of a calming presence than her, actually. But he's not the guy I would put forward as the poster child to fidelity to the law. Which is not to say he's broken any law. But Team Toxic will keep arguing he did. As well as his family. All they had against Warren was "fake recipes" in a cookbook called Pow Wow Chow. She's the one that could have said "Really? President Law And Order? Really? I know you don't read, Donald. But the polls say people see you as President Chaos, and President Corruption. You want us to buy President Law And Order? Come on. Give the viewers a break!" That said, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this issue of race/crime/safety does not hurt Biden, and probably mostly works in his favor. The polls certainly suggest that. There is zero evidence it's hurting him in Wisconsin. And my gut feeling is that President Toxic is making sure Black turnout will go through the roof. And not, of course, to vote for him. Biden is simply giving Blacks who think America has racial justice problems - meaning almost all Blacks - a positive reason to vote. If there's a problem with the ads above, it's not what it says but what it doesn't say. As Brownstein says in that article, for a lot of people it's not about race. And if it's about safety, it's COVID-19. But the biggest thing for most people is still the economy, stupid. PENNSYLVANIA: PRESIDENTIAL RACE TIGHTENS That poll is worth digging through a little. It's the only "bad news" for Democrats. And with bad news like this, who needs good news? The scary headline is that Biden dropped from a 13 point lead in July, 53/40 to a 4 point lead today, 49/45, in Pennsylvania. There was no change in support for Democrats in general. The partisan lean question went from favoring Democratic Congressional candidates 49/45 in July to 48/45 today. Biden's favorability rating actually went up, from 45 % in July to 48 % today. My read of those numbers is that Democrats are solidifying a lead that is close to 50 %, but not quite. Monmouth says this about the people who shifted away from Biden: My guess is this shift is more about the economy than anything else. The slice of President Toxic's supporters that think like the McCloskeys, and own lots of guns that they feel okay pointing at Black people, are never going to consider voting for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. There's no reference to geography in the polls. But I'd also guess that a lot of these men under 50 live in the parts of Pennsylvania Jim Carville refers to as "Pennsyltucky". Or the ailing old factory towns, like Scranton. I'd also guess that some of these men under 50 are Black. And probably a big chunk of them are Hispanic. The 2018 version of "Jobs Not Mobs" didn't cut nationally, and it certainly would cut less well today. But it's the best thing President Toxic still has going for him. As an article I posted in a different thread argued, it's the last strength of President Toxic Biden has to go after. The good news in the bad news is that if Biden had these folks seriously thinking about him in July, there is no particular reason he can't close the deal with them by November. No one is talking yet about all the factory jobs NOT CREATED in President Toxic's three "good" years, before the plague started. Or about that fact that Pennsylvania now has fewer factory jobs than when President Toxic was elected. When I say we have arrived at Moral Awakening, that is a statement of hope as well as what I think is a statement of fact. I'm fine with Biden winning by asking, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Or by asking, "Are you safer than you were four years ago?" But he is definitely adding a moral dimension here, which is clearly targeted at Blacks. But not just Blacks. "Are we a better nation than we were four years ago?" I do find that genuinely hopeful. It is an invitation to move forward, into a new and better era.

First, let me say this about third parties. My hunch is you and I would agree about 90 % about third parties in general. And about all the value they could add to the US political system, in theory. In practice, in Presidential elections, there is no such thing as a third party in the 21st century. Sure, Ralph Nader can run. That elected W. Sure, Jill Stein can run. That elected President Toxic. (I'm adding their vote totals to the Democrats, which would have meant victory in Florida in 2000, and the three Rust Belt states in 2016.) So there is the Democratic Party on the one hand. And the Republican Party and all the others like Nader and Stein that elect shitty Republican Presidents on the other hand. In practice, those are my two choices. So speaking as either a Democrat or a liberal, the great thing about third parties is they elect incompetent Republican Presidents who do really shitty things I abhor. Beyond that, we have a number of huge fucking messes on the national plate. So a discussion of third parties is a luxury I don't feel I can afford. The main reason I'm sending the most money to the Democratic Senate candidates I agree with least is so we can have a Democratic majority and actually govern. Implicit in that is the idea that centrist or arguably center-right Democrats (you could call Steve Bullock center-right) can agree on center-left laws, and pass them, and make sure they actually make huge problems less bad. If we can do that - which is actually a collection of really big "if's" - maybe Democrats can withstand the barrage of Republican attacks, much like in 2010, about how [fill in the blank] Democratic initiative is the end of civilization. That worked for McConnell's attack on Obamacare in 2010. I have full faith he'll try it again. So for at least the next few years, anybody who wants to talk up third parties is basically shilling for President Toxic or McConnell, I think. Even if their intentions are the best. Second, I think most of what you said, and the map you posted, confirmed my main point. We're not going to have the power to get rid of the Electoral College until we have a very solid Democratic majority. Again, this is something where you and I, and in fact most Americans, would agree in theory. The electoral college should go. In practice, it doesn't work that way. After W. won there was still majority support for dumping the Electoral College. But Republicans opposed it. And since Republicans were in power, what they thought kind of mattered. Whatever their viewpoint, they got over it by the time Obama was President. But when it worked for them again in 2016, they shifted so dramatically that it was, at best, a 50/50 split in America. This also reinforces my point. Part of the Trumpist doctrine is that power is the end, and any means is justified to attain it. So Republicans may have stuck to their principles after W. won, and still felt that the Electoral College was an anachronism. By 2016 principles didn't matter. They could, and did, flip flop on a dime. Ironically, some of them see all this nonsense about the Electoral College as just another Democratic attempt to destroy democracy. I think I should add something about what I posted above. You might conclude from what I wrote that I think Democrats should make the argument, to Republicans, that if they support the Electoral College they are racists. I don't believe that at all. My point is that Democrats pretty much have to win this on our own, with the help of Independents. Republicans are a lost cause. I do think we should argue, to put it dramatically, that the Electoral College always was and always will be drenched in the blood of slavery and the hate of racism. Republicans won't agree. That said, I think we may have an opportunity starting in 2021. But only if President Toxic loses. Especially if he loses badly. My argument would be that the people who got fucked the most by this are Republicans. In the short term, they won. But look at what you won. Two Presidents who never had popular support. And who did their level best to destroy their party. The Iraq War. The Great Recession. 5 million factory jobs gone missing. 200,000 dead Americans from COVID-19. Two glorious and spectacular electoral humiliations in 2008 and 2020. (If, again, that is what happens.) My line would be, "Hey, Mr. Republican. Thanks to the Electoral College, it really sucks to be you, doesn't it?" The other part of the argument is that if you win and govern with a view that you have to actually get 50 % of the vote, you end up with Republican Governors like Kasich, or [fill in the name of any Republican Governor in New England]. If President Toxic loses re-election, this argument is much easier to make. Republican Governors who are popular and competent, like Kasich and [fill in the name of any Republican Governor in New England] can actually win re-election, and not take the whole party down the shit hole to Hell like Trump did. My best guess is that a significant minority of Republicans have secret time machines. So if President Toxic loses, they will all hightail it straight back to Summer 2016. Back then, they were all whining about how their party was being hijacked. Then, when they realized that meant winning and conservative SCOTUS justices and tax cuts, they liked that whole hijack/hate-mongering thing well enough. After President Toxic, some of them will go back to blaming it all on the hijackers. Mostly, I don't think there's any value in trying to persuade Republicans at all. Mostly, these days, I just don't see the logic in putting words like "persuasion" or "compromise" in the same sentence as the word "Republican". I hope that changes after the election. But I would not count on it. Even if they get their asses kicked in 2020, they might do what Democrats did in 1980 and 1984. Go from the humiliating defeat of Jimmy Carter to the even more humiliating defeat of Walter Mondale. In this case, I'd guess the Republicans - if they actually go that way - would be more likely to nominate Donald Trump, Jr. than Mike Pence in 2024. There is always, of course, Mike Pompeo. Back to the real world we actually live in, to me Democrats just have to win. If Democrats can't do that, forget about changing the Electoral College. And even if Democrats do win, we have to have the power to bring the baby home. Almost every state on the map you posted is solid Democratic. California and New York being the treasure troves. As blue states that would have more power if we bagged the Electoral College, why am I not shocked California and New York are for this? I checked on Ohio and South Carolina, where it is "pending", based on your map. I know nothing about this effort in Ohio. But with Governors like Kasich and DeWine, I doubt this will pass. Here's the main story I could find about Ohio, from Spring 2019: Organizers Withdraw National Popular Vote Proposal So it may be "pending", but it is hardly imminent. You actually argued that the anti-labor right-to-work fight in Ohio proved that people like Kasich. I was the one who quoted Wikipedia about how the people of Ohio disagreed with him, overturned the law by popular initiative, and Kasich basically got his ass kicked. So I could see how Ohio could enact this through a ballot initiative. But it would probably be over the dead body of Republicans. Probably including Never Trump Republicans like Kasich, who may still harbor the idea of being elected President after they clean up the wreckage of Toxic Trumpism. In South Carolina, a bill was filed in the State Legislature. I won't hold my breath for that to pass and be signed by the Governor. There is this from the website: If I go by the chart I posted above, about 55 % of Republicans were ready to bag the Electoral College in Obama's first term. After President Toxic won, that plummeted to 20 %. So if they are going off 2011 poll data in South Carolina, they might be surprised how Republicans would vote if this did actually get on the ballot. Now let's play out my fantasy. Jaime Harrison wins in South Carolina, and Rev. Warnock wins in Georgia. You now have powerful Black voices in red states to argue why the Electoral College needs to go. And if guys like that can win statewide elections, in theory you could get a majority of voters to kick the Electoral College into the trash heap. Maybe even some Republicans. They'd still be states that are mostly run by Republicans. But Republicans that are losing power rapidly. And if they have half the smarts of Jeff Flake, they know that this all happened after they received the gift of President Toxic. Not through God's grace. But thanks to the Electoral College. In my 20's, when I was helping to choreograph a big redlining fight between Blacks and a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the Atlanta banks, I remember going to meet with whoever ran the SCLC at the time, at MLK's old church, which Rev. Warnock is now the pastor of. Somehow, I don't remember why, we got into a discussion about B'rer Rabbit and "don't throw me into the brier patch" as a political strategy. Only half jokingly, there may be some value in that today on this issue. Arguably, if President Toxic loses and takes the Senate majority down with him, that should be our play. If Rev. Warnock wins, which will only happen in a massive blue wave, he needs to profess the most solemn belief in the beauty and dignity and glory of the Electoral College, passed down to us from our Founding Fathers. Because whatever the goal was back then, when men were men and Black men were slaves, it now just elects Blacks to the White House and US Senate. That's what I'd want Warnock to say. You gave us W, through the Electoral college, and you got President Obama and a massive Democratic landslide in 2008. You did it again in 2016 with President Toxic, and you got me in the US Senate in 2020. And, if that happens, probably Stacey Abrams as Georgia's first Black Governor. So this works out great for Democrats. Every time you use the Electoral College to get an unpopular President in power, you take one step forward, and two steps back. Whatever else you do, please don't get rid of the Electoral College. It's a great way to build real Democratic governing majorities that an actual majority elect and re-elect, like Obama. If President Toxic gets his ass kicked, I think that chart above is predictive. For Republicans, the Electoral College won't look so good after all. I think that's when we have our best chance.

The real reason we have an Electoral College: to protect slave states “In a direct election system, the South would have lost every time.” If the goal is to dump the Electoral College, this analysis makes it both easier, and harder, I think. It makes it harder because Republicans are for the Electoral College. For the obvious reason that it delivered them a minority President twice in a century. "Minority" in this case meaning someone who lost the popular vote by hundreds of thousands to millions of votes. It matters to me that the Presidents who got elected this way did particularly harmful and divisive things to the nation, compared to most other Presidents. And that the public ultimately rejected what they did. W. gave us Iraq, The Great Recession, and the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs on his watch. 2008 was a massive repudiation of his leadership. Those lost manufacturing jobs are a great explanation of the pain and resentment that led to Trumpism. The verdict is out on President Toxic. But nobody feels 2020 is a great year. Then add that this whole racist edifice of the Electoral College is built on enslaving Blacks. Republicans just don't want to hear it. That's been my experience for a very long time. Meanwhile, if this is one of the points in American history where we're going to be open-minded about the legacy of slavery, as well as related issues about democracy and racial equality and income inequality that disproportionately hurts Blacks, this is a perfect time to have the discussion. As a practical matter, I doubt there is any hope of dumping the Electoral College until there is a solid Democratic majority, anyway. Republicans will make the point that there are lots of good things about the Electoral College. It protects minority rights (except for Blacks, of course) and small states. As does the US Senate, by the way. That was by design as well. If the Electoral College were history, the idea that small states have an outsized voice through the US Senate is still built in to the system. The argument that makes the most sense to me is that if we want to call ourselves a democracy, the person who wins by millions of votes should win the Presidency. Period. I think we are living in something like The New Civil War. It is not as deadly as the last one. But there is a lot of violence. And, like in the 19th century, there is a deepening reality of irreconcilable differences. The practical comparison that cuts for me is that in both civil wars there was a group who wanted to hold on tight to things that needed to go ............. and did actually go. In the 19th century, that was slavery. What needs to go now is everything that President Toxic is putting a face on. Biden has now used the word "toxic" to describe Trump. No one supports slavery anymore. But to me "Make America Great Again" has always been a way of putting a nice face on what has always been the toxic part of America. The part that gave us slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism. I don't think there is any simple or quick solution to this problem. Every follower of President Toxic is hoping that he gets four more years by winning a few states based on the "cultural anxiety" or racism or whatever you want to call it of a relatively small group of Americans. Who are primarily old, White, and male. If President Toxic loses by millions of votes again, they don't give a shit. And yet they want to argue that they are the true voices of democracy. What bullshit. They just want to hold on to power, and America as they know it. And any means justifies that end. I feel like they are shoving their racism and hate and inability to move forward down my throat. It doesn't matter that I'm in a majority that actually won in 2016. They just want to shove their racism down my throat and say, "This is the America we want. Shut the fuck up and deal with it." If you buy the idea that there is a New Civil War, I don't think I declared it. I don't think Barack Obama declared it. I think they declared it, and found their perfect leader in President Toxic. Although I know for a fact, based on the words coming out of their mouths, that they feel that Obama declared it ............. by being a Black man who, in their view, soiled their beautiful Constitution. You know, all that stuff that men who were 100 % men and 100 % White came up with centuries ago. In part to explicitly support slavery. Even the 100 % White 100 % men who were against slavery knew they had to somehow manage the deep political conflict slavery caused. That's a big part of the reason why we have an Electoral College. That's why they will fight to the death - in some cases, literally, given COVID-19 - for President Toxic and what he stands for. They know the economy is in bad shape. They know he was wrong when he said that the virus would miraculously go away. They know that we're much worse off than just about every other country on the planet. They know 1000 people are dying a day. But in the bigger picture, they also know that he is fighting for the America they believe in. I'll post it again here. This is their America: Freeze frame a few of the images. The face of the criminal mob is a dark-skinned Muslim woman. Can you believe, these criminal mob people actually got her elected to the US House? What the fuck happened to America? The face of order and jobs is 100 % White 100 % men, in the image where you see the word "jobs". That's just a coincidence, right? It doesn't mean anything, right? My read is this is why Never Trump Republicans like Stewart Stevens and Rick Wilson bailed on the conservative party they helped build. That tweet is not the America they planned on. Or the America they want. Part of the reason I think this is a New Civil War is guys like that, hardly radicals, are saying it's worth burning their ex-party down to the ground for. That's pretty strong stuff. I'm not 100 % sure I buy Nate Silver's analysis. He's good at projecting past trends into the future. But trends change. Lichtman has been more accurate, I think, because he focuses on historical forces that are far more stable - like the economy. As opposed to poll numbers or even election results from any particular election. This is a great article from Ron Brownstein that goes to the heart of this. He's one of my favorite journalists. He's a data whore, like me. And he is better than most at using data in the service of trying to figure out what's really going on below the surface. He wrote this a few days before the election in 2016. For anyone who says the polls were wrong, and no one saw it coming, read this. He even specifically names Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania as the "loosest bricks in the blue wall." His key point relative to this discussion is that Team Hillary was "betting that the surest path to victory is to fight mostly on terrain that Clinton can win without". Oops! It must have been in some other article he wrote before the election, but there was a poignant image I recall him using of how he thought Hillary could lose. The idea was that she could be crushed in a very narrow passage between the future of the Democratic Party, and its past. That's exactly what I think happened. Arizona and Georgia and even swing state Florida were a bridge too far. Meanwhile, those bricks in the Rust Belt were just loose enough to bring The Blue Wall down. Lichtman would argue that Republicans were poised to win in 2016, anyway, based on the fundamentals. So I tend to view it as a victory that President Toxic almost fucked up. Not that he's some political genius. Part of the reason I think President Toxic almost fucked 2016 up for Republicans is that there have not been many Republican victories since. Larry Sabato helpfully lists close House races that have incumbents who are the opposite party of who won the Presidential vote in 2016. So there are 6 close races with Republican incumbents in districts that voted for Hillary in 2016. There are 30 close races with Democratic incumbents in districts that voted for President Toxic in 2016. Most were new pick ups in 2018, like Lucy McBath in suburban Atlanta and Lauren Underwood in suburban Chicago. The graceful way to remember Hillary is how we remember MLK. He pointed us to the mountaintop, even though he never got there himself. Hillary pointed us to the future Democratic Party she will never lead. Some of which actually arrived in 2018. It is possible that 2020 will be the opposite of 2016, where pretty much every close call broke wrong for Democrats. Sinema won Arizona in 2018, and Biden and Kelly are way ahead in the polls in 2020. Meanwhile, moderate pundits like Morning Joe are saying that right now Pennsylvania looks like the wobbliest of the three loose bricks in the old Blue Wall Biden is trying to rebuild. I suspect there is a tug of war between Black Lives Matter types and those older factory workers, or ex-factory workers, who just don't like what the Democrats are saying. It's possible that Biden could lose Pennsylvania and win Arizona and Florida, and be President. Or, it's looking quite possible that "Scranton Joe" could patch up the Blue Wall, at least with him on the ticket in 2020, and be the one that anchors Arizona and North Carolina and maybe Georgia into the new Democratic majority. When Jeff Flake came out for Biden, he said if Republicans do nothing Democrats are poised to win Texas by 2024. Flake is not a flake. Something very similar to this happened in 2016 and 2018. In 2016 Republicans got 49.1 % of the House vote, and Democrats got 48.0 %. Yet Republicans got 241 seats to the Democrats' 191 seats. There was a logical argument that Democrats would need to have a 3 or 4 or even 5 % margin of victory just to get a one vote House majority. In 2018, Democrats won 53.4 % of all House votes cast. They ended up with 235 seats, which is 54.0 % of the total. Part of the reason why is that Republicans used gerrymandering to create "safe" Republicans seats in suburbs that were not viewed as Democratic prospects around 2010. But because they were suburban, they were not as safe as conservative rural areas where Republicans usually win in landslides. So the same thing that happened with the House in 2018 could happen on the Senate side. Arizona and Georgia, once fairly safe Republican strongholds, could tip. Discussions about the Electoral College will be even more divisive than where we are at now. They won't go anywhere anytime soon. Not until there is a solid Democratic majority. Which will be accused of being ................wait for it .......................................un-democratic. So I think we all need to ask our conscience this question. Is it un-democratic to say Hillary should be President because she actually won by millions of votes? Who is being un-democratic now? There's another thing Republicans need to forced to own up to, I think. I'm very used to the dogma that says that I don't own slaves, my parents didn't own slaves, and my grandparents didn't own slaves. So what the fuck does all this slavery bullshit have to do with me? Get over it. If some Black guy got shot in the back, it's because he's a thug. They sexually assault women and deal drugs. What did they expect? This has nothing to do with slavery. The argument usually goes something like that. Black conservative ex-cops support this analysis. If we want to get rid of the Electoral College, my own view is that we'll have to force Republicans to face facts. It exists because lots of White men wanted to own lots of Black men and women. If Black men and women didn't agree, they were brutally tortured and murdered. So, sorry. Republicans can't divorce the Electoral College from the fact that the whole idea was to own, torture, and brutally murder Blacks. That is what the Electoral College is. That is what the Electoral College actually did for a big chunk of US history. It's easier to argue that Blacks like Jacob Blake are just today's Willie Horton ............. a thug. But it's harder to sell the argument that these Black thugs and Muslim radicals are actually electing Marxists and radicals like Rep. Omar and soon-to-be Rep. Cori Bush to the US House. Who's being un-democratic now? I don't think it's a coincidence that all this is happening when the Electoral College, not the popular vote, was kind enough to hand us a racist and hateful man like President Toxic. The Electoral College is still doing what it is there for. It may not be slavery. But I believe it's still dishing out the vicious torture and murder of Blacks. It's still undermining democracy with a small "d". In conversations with Republicans, I have tried to take another approach. I'd actually quote the statements of the Founding Fathers, like from the article above. Some of them did clearly state that they put the Electoral College in place to support slavery. In theory, conservative Constitutionalists who think Obama pissed all over the Constitution should at least be willing to listen to the words written by The Founding Fathers. But they won't. It may be hypocrisy. But the easiest way to think of it, for me, is that any means justifies their end. They want to hold on to power, and their America. So arguing about what The Founding Fathers said or meant is useless. I think what we need to focus on is the hate and lies and racism their leader is spouting today. Including the defense of torturing and killing Black men like Jacob Blake and George Floyd. You can of course argue these men were no saints. But neither was the White vigilante who took out peaceful protesters. President Toxic says the White kid "probably would have been killed" if he didn't defend himself. After all, as Morning Joe pointed out, some of those protesters were armed with skateboards. Again, I think they'll use any means necessary to justify their end. Including White vigilantes who love weapons of war and are good with killing people who believe in their right to protest. If the MAGA conservatives are good with vigilantes using assault rifles to kill protesters, I very much doubt they will be open to compromise on the Electoral College. Any more than the South was open to compromise on slavery. That's not quite true, because the Electoral College actually was THE compromise on slavery. But what I mean is that it did allow The South to hold on to power, and their slaves. Just like today it's helping MAGA conservatives hold on to power, President Toxic, and an America where systemic racism is alive and well. We are just going to have to take power. And to win this debate, after we take power, we are going to have to be very clear about what The Electoral College was built for. And what it has actually done through US history. We'll especially have to be clear about the election of President Toxic, and the racism and hate and division he has promoted and thrived on. I was going to post this YouTube video on another thread. But I think I'll post it here as an afterthought. If only to avoid starting yet another long-winded post. I stumbled on that yesterday when I was wandering around YouTube. It's about 6 1/2 hours of live election coverage from 1980. I scanned through maybe 30 minutes of it. Partly it was fun to see what the computers and clothes looked like back then. And to see a young Chris Wallace (covering Reagan) and a young Judy Woodruff (covering Carter). I was going to post this on the prediction thread. The interesting point is that people didn't know history was happening, even in the moment it was happening. Pat Caddell, Carter's pollster, always thought it was the last minute turn in hostage negotiations. Even Reagan, in his victory speech, said he thought it would be a "cliffhanger". George H.W. Bush said he was surprised, because he thought it would be close. In the last minutes before sign off, Garrick Utley announced that the Republicans won surprise Senate victories in New York and Florida. No one saw that coming. The Democrats had a 9 seat Senate majority before the election. The Republicans had a 3 seat majority after. At one point, David Brinkley said this wasn't a complete surprise, because Reagan had a huge lead in the polls after the convention that year. But while many of the polls showed Reagan leading, none called the margin. And there was none of the "wisdom" around why things were shaping up that way. It's quaint that someone as smart as Brinkley would use the words "wisdom" and "polls" in the same sentence. The only person I heard that had a sense of the historical bigger picture was - this ain't a shocker - historian Teddy White. (At about 42:00 in the video.) He was interviewed early in the coverage, before any of the Senate surprises were called. So he said it's a bit too early to say. But some elections are the end of an era, when a big historical wave comes in. Most elections are just ripples. He cited 1932, and 1964. And maybe 1980. He of course turned out to be right. 1980 was the end of an era, and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution. Lichtman is a sort of Teddy White. His critics might say he is Teddy White revisited as a snake oil salesman. He is not calling for revolutionary change in 2020. He's saying the election will be close. And that while President Toxic should lose, voter suppression and Russian interference could change the outcome. I was going to post this in the Lichtman thread. But it fits here, I think. If we're going to dump the Electoral College, it would take something like the Reagan Revolution. And I don't mean one dramatic election, necessarily. From the vantage point of history, we know that what happened in 1980 foreshadowed what happened in 1984. The even bigger landslide in 1984 confirmed that the Minnesota liberalism of Humphrey and Mondale was, in fact, history. That's still playing out. If President Toxic does win Minnesota, it will be because of those blue collar Iron Rangers who once voted for Paul Wellstone, but now vote for President Toxic. What the polls seem to be saying today is the opposite. If Biden wins Wisconsin, it presumably will be because people simply rejected President Toxic's fear and racism and hate. Not because they are for looting, fires, and radicalism. And, of course, because they care about the economy, stupid. And the soon to be 200,000 dead. All I feel I can do is send money to people running for Senate in places like Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina. If they win, history may show that it was one big nail in the coffin of the Electoral College. And in the toxic and racist parts of American history is was designed to support. And has in fact supported up to and including today.