PMC Commentary

Harris' polling progress holds firm; and now in swing states

Commissioned by Bloomberg News, the latest Morning Consult poll is in agreement with those recently commissioned by The NY Times and Wall Street Journal. All three surveys show Harris gaining in the same demographic groups, each of them crucial in November. The key difference here is that Morning Consult looked at essential swing states; the Times and Journal's polling was national.       

Kamala Harris has wiped out Donald Trump’s lead across seven battleground states, as the vice president rides a wave of enthusiasm among young, Black and Hispanic voters....

Harris was backed by 48% of voters to 47% for Trump — a statistical dead heat — in the swing states that will likely decide November’s election. That’s a stronger showing than the two-point deficit for President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race. The Democratic vice president overtook her GOP rival in Arizona and Nevada, and more than doubled Biden’s lead over Trump in Michigan.”

The numbers suggest Harris has a shot at reassembling the voter coalition that propelled President Barack Obama to the White House — and a clearer path to victory than Biden, who’d struggled to galvanize the Democratic base.

Otherwise, from RealClearPolitics, look at the preponderance of blue in this mixture of polling results for one day only. The Trump campaign is also looking at this blueish assortment — in apoplectic sweats.

I have appointments this morning and into early afternoon, but I hope to be back today. 

Elon Musk and the art of jackassery

Last Thursday, Elon Musk posted this video on Twitter, which he — only he, I think — calls X. The video itself he called "amazing." (To that he added one of those annoying little yellow things whose meaning is almost always lost on me, since rarely can I decipher the too-diminutive bugger.)   

This is amazing 😂
pic.twitter.com/KpnBKGUUwn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2024

Serious question: What was it about this one minute and 53 seconds of sophomore-college-prank computerization that compelled Musk to label it amazing? Was he amazed that a mere 19-year-old could have produced it, given the ease of AI? Or amazed by how much dirtier American politics will now be? Or that just by pressing a button, he could send the video around the world and have it viewed 132 million times? 

The only part I'm clear on is that Musk's own Twitter rules state that you are not allowed to "artificially amplify ... information or engage in behavior that manipulates ... people’s experience" on the site, or use Twitter "for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections," or post "content that may ... mislead people." In addition, says the official Rules page, "We may label posts containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity [but not my posts]." 

It's the nakedness of Musk's behavior that really irks — not so much the obvious violations of his own rules. It's the smirking, infantile pettiness aimed at Kamala Harris that really irritates — even more than those damn emojis. And it's all that fuck-you money derived from taxpayers that billionaires carry around that really galls — far more than whatever this spaced-out idiot might post.

Lessons in getting beyond any doubts about Kamala Harris

Four days after President Biden withdrew from the race, The Atlantic's Xochitl Gonzalez opened a column with this double-barreled blast:  

"I was shocked at the certainty with which people dismissed the idea of Biden being replaced by his obvious successor: Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Let me be specific. It was not 'people' dismissing her; it was men."

In turn, I was shocked at the certainty with which Gonzalez promoted the idea of reasonable doubts about Harris being replaced by the columnist's obvious bullshit. Let me be specific. It was not just bullshit; it was 1970s paranoid, man-hating feminist bullshit.

That particular variety of women's studies has long since passed from theoretical fashion, although oddly enough, I hold with some of it. This man readily agrees with the James Earl Carter-era feminist lit that many or most of the me's out there are a chronically disappointing, condescending, brawn-over-brains bunch enamored with couches, beer, bad sitcoms but good football games — except those we attend with painted chests and then bizarrely howl like banshees.

I've confessed before and I'll confess again: I'm fundamentally embarrassed by my breed — our extravagant Trump Love really cinched it — and thus I concluded years ago that women, by and large, are superior to us prehensile males who tend to vote for big stupid apes.

On the other hand, and in this one political instance, we have Gonzalez's misconception of men. (By the way, she's not actually a man-hater of decades past. As one of those aforementioned condescending males, I exaggerated for poor literary effect.) She's mistaken about not people but mostly males having dismissed Kamala Harris as Biden's replacement. 

In my readings of broadscale opinion when succession was still a question, very few Democrats seemed to "dismiss" Harris — something Gonzalez stated as fact. Rather, many of both genders believed the party should have candidate options; not, as the pejorative put it, a "coronation."

Along that line, Gonzalez's labeling of Harris as the "obvious successor" was a bit strong. The party has a stable of young, appealing, very bright politicians. Excluding them from consideration seemed unfair, if not unwise. Some of us — again, both sexes — just wanted those bright young voices heard. Besides, the odds would remain heavy in Harris' favor.     

I'll also remind The Atlantic's columnist that the most notable advocate of an open race was a woman. I was in Nancy Pelosi's camp along with President Obama and other major players about allowing a choice. Harris was not mine nor theirs, evidently. I was clear about that in writing; they, in silence. But — and this was a big "but" — I also wrote in several posts before Biden withdrew that I saw the attainment of party unity as the much higher and far more valuable objective.

The stunning rapidity with which the party consolidated behind Ms. Harris provided that unity, hence my previous objections to her instant nomination withered just as rapidly. Now, as is true of most all anti-Trumpers, I'm wholly on board.    

I was already there when I read Times columnist Lydia Polgreen's 27 July piece, "I was a Kamala Harris Skeptic. Here's How I Got Coconut-Pilled." It's a splendidly introspective analysis of why Polgreen changed her thinking. My conversion centered only on unity and therefore was, as noted, a fast and pragmatic one. Hers was meditative.

"Looking anew at Harris," wrote Polgreen, "I see something different from what I once did: a person who stumbled as a candidate and vice president but who kept fighting anyway. I see a woman who struggled to compete for power against her peers, buried under an array of vague and unstated expectations about whether she gave the right answers, had the right ideas, was smart or specific enough."

If even those poignant remarks are insufficiently persuasive in turning however many Harris skeptics remain, Polgreen also wrote that her own professional struggles in life "taught [her] a powerful lesson: Make peace with uncertainty and imperfection.... Maybe this explains the rapturous response to Harris’s ascent.... Many Americans aren’t searching for perfection. They just want a leader who can help us all turn the page on these terrible years." 

As an MBA would put it, that bottom-lines the bejesus of this whole thing. But let us frame it a trifle more elegantly. In the war on Trumpian evil, those whom Reinhold Niebuhr called the children of light must put aside their partisan uncertainties, accept the nominee's imperfections, defend America from the fascist barbarians in the short run — and in the long race, strive to forever secure the nation's professed humanist values.

An urgent plea

Who says Democrats aren't compassionate? 

@kamalahq

😇😇😇

♬ IN BROOKE WE TRUST - me n ü

Democracy dies just as dead in obfuscation as it does in darkness

For over two dozen years I have told myself hundreds of times, Don't write lengthy posts, you idiot. Readers don't read them. I know that for a statistical fact, so stop consuming valuable hours on a 1.000-word commentary that whimpers and dies from neglect within the first three paragraphs; that is, once readers look ahead and see what they're in for. Click. Nevertheless, I'm about to violate that most sensible self-advice and lay on you a post that makes 1,00o words seem like a newspaper squib. Because this story warrants it. And I know of no other way to cover it. So either click off now, or buckle up.   

I used to think only lawyers could make a head-spinning mystery out of an ironclad case of iniquity. I've been there. I once sued a party for malicious prosecution. The malice was so strikingly vivid and the prosecution so utterly asinine, a lawyer took the case on contingency. But by the time the defense was through with its muddling misrepresentations and lies, the judge was at a loss in understanding exactly what had transpired. The damn thing wound up costing me $3,000 in non-lawyer fees and the defendants smugly walked away. 

But I was wrong about only lawyers. In politics, a criminally convicted demagogue can stand up — twice — and in the clearest of ironclad culpable words declare that once in the White House he'll put an end to the democratic inconvenience of voting, whereupon the press and pedagogues immediately begin softening the rabble-rouser's harshness into the misrepresented mush that once lay before my befuddled judge.

To anyone unaligned with the above professions, possesses a rudimentary knowledge of English and has an IQ over his or her suit size, what Trump bellowed to an evangelical audience on Friday was a frightening prelude to naked authoritarianism: Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore.... You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.

Two interpretations of those words can be adduced. Both result in the same outcome. Christians won't have to vote because no elections will be held, or they won't have to vote because the Trump administration will have rigged the election process so egregiously in its favor, the "winner" is assured. (Think Putin's recent election, in which he valiantly carried 88% of the vote. He also shuttered the opposition.)

But next, bring on the big boys of the Fourth Estate. Saturday, hours after less muscular sites such as HuffPost reported Trump's non-elections/rigged-elections speech, I hastened to The NY Times front page. What could be a bigger, more harrowing and more urgently needed informational story than that of a major presidential candidate openly vowing to kill off America's free and fair elections?

Nothing. No reporting. Only later in the day did the Times reference the speech, yet in small font below other political stories. Nor was that multistory bloc placed highest on the front page. I smelled the malodorous presence of the paper's new executive editor, Joe Kahn, who in May casually told Semafor "it is not the job of the news media to prevent [an autocrat from seizing the White House].... It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one."

The Times' high chieftain well understood the threat that Trump poses, for earlier in the interview he said, "Given that Trump’s not in office, it will probably be [a] fair [election]." But Kahn's First Amendment "vision" is comparable to Johnny Rocco's criminal vision in the film Key Largo. He who is about to be blasted by Bogart isn't sure what he wants in life. "He wants more, don't you, Rocco?" says Bogie. Rocco answers, "Yeah. That's it. More. That's right! I want more!" And so it is with Kahn, who just wants more readers — globally if possible — who can be acquired only inoffensively.

I moved on to The Wall Street Journal's front page. Though detached from Murdoch's pernicious influence, the straight-news section also reported nothing on Trump's hair-raising words. Same on Sunday, so I went to the paper's Politics page. Again, nothing, There, however, I did learn that Trump is hoping to "regain his edge." Oh, and that Elon Musk dislikes Biden and Democrats - now there was some real crackerjack news updating. My last hope of the Big Three on the Day After: The Washington Post, where at the very top of each page the paper announces, Democracy Dies in Darkness.

As for "breaking news," must I repeat the N word? Democracy dying in darkness lingered until about 7 p.m. Eastern, when, on the front page, at top but in third place and again in much smaller font there was the headline, "Trump faces backlash for 'in four years, you don't have to vote again' remark." A backlash, not "Trump projects the end of democracy." The lede: Democrats, the Harris campaign and online critics are "arguing" that Trump "had implied he would end elections." (Emphases mine, and by the way, the Harris campaign "argued" no such thing; it said flatly that Trump’s remarks were "a vow to end democracy.")

If the Post's softening of the demagogue's assertion failed to asphyxiate its literal severity in the first murderous attempt, the paper re-throttled his words in paragraph 2 by writing that "Democrats and others interpreted the comments as signaling how a second Trump presidency would be run" — signaling, not heralding — especially considering that he had already said he'd be a dictator only on "Day One." Unmentioned was that the godawful day could include a secondary announcement that he'll be running the government from a position of permanent authoritarian superiority. Indeed, unabashedly his staff has made public his intention to ignore all pushbacks and "backlashes" emanating from oppositional forces.  

The Post then noted that Trump’s remarks "also drew some concern among those on the Christian right." Some concern and those are journalistic lingo for one guy who wasn't really all that concerned. David Lane, a fascist-pastor organizer who heads the American Renewal Project — which renews nothing, it only reinvents American history — took to the impressive forum of a text to lament that Trump "may have gotten a little over his skis." This he clarified with an altogether bewildering, irrelevant, off-topic line: "Evangelicals in 2028, 2032, and 2036 must raise their civics game to a new level if America is to return to the Judeo-Christian heritage and Biblical-based culture laid out by the founders."

At this point WaPo recalled that Trump's Friday comments were in fact old news. Yet I and millions of other readers missed them in their entirety, likely because we tend to over-rely on the Big Three for all things political — one of them being that Trump has been running around explicitly declaring his homicidal designs on American democracy.

To wit, the Post wrote that last month he said to a gathering of Faith and Freedom Christians (excuse my C usage), "You’ve got to get out and vote, just this time. I don’t care — in four years, you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years, don’t vote. I don’t care by that time, but we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different." That passage supports my second interpretation stated above: Elections there shall be, but "they won't have to vote because the Trump administration will have rigged the election process so egregiously in its favor, the 'winner' is assured."

From here the Post sought the enlightened counsel of our finest universities' professors of government and communications to unravel what instantly had become the mystery of Trump's meaning. I guess I've been away from the academy just long enough (I earned my terminal degree in 2002) to have forgotten the scary similarity of professorial and legalistic thinking. I'm still guilty of the former at times: the habit of overthinking what's right in front of our noses, of complicating the uncomplicated, of imagining alternative explanations of what so clearly has only one.     

Said Hamilton College's government professor Erica De Bruin to the Post, 'Trump frequently makes these kinds of deliberately ambiguous statements that can be interpreted in multiple ways." (See above, last sentence.) She added, "I think it is more useful to look at his past behavior than to attempt to parse what might be the 'true meaning' of any individual set of remarks he makes." Here, Professor De Bruin would get an argument from professors of rhetoric, who maintain — rightly, I think — that because we're unable to read a speaker's mind, we must take his or her words at face value.

In addition, a look at Trump's "past behavior" only affirms a nefarious pattern of his seeking authoritarian rule. De Bruin said as much when she also noted that "he attempted to subvert the outcome of an election and remain in power longer than the American public voted to keep him there." So where, Prof. De Bruin, is the ambiguity you highlighted, which you said leads to "multiple ways" of interpretation?  

Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M communications professor and author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, said "she interpreted" the obvious as Trump's attempt to confront the "double bind" that "strongmen" face. I'm more than deeply skeptical that he has ever intellectually confronted any complex situation. At any rate, Mercieca continued with this: "I think Trump is here promising Christians that he will actually solve the problems that he has promised them he’ll solve (a full abortion ban … and various 'culture war' issues) and so with all of the problems solved, they won’t feel like the world is so chaotic that they have to vote to save the nation."

The first part of that statement is what Trump has always promised: Whatever is broken, he'll fix it, as only he can fix it. The second part — they'll feel as though they needn't vote again — tends to contradict, or again, soften, what Trump plainly said: "Get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore." What's more, the most liberal — and by that I mean the most unrealistic, and even impossible — interpretation of Trump's words is what Prof. Mercieca arrived at.

For never in the history of American politics or worldly reality has there been an electoral instance in which voters believed, or felt, that "all the problems [had been] solved." Hence, elections and a possible change in leadership. Trump negated that option. The kicker from the good professor? "He doesn’t give specific details here." That leaves me at a loss for any further examination of her analysis, since her idea of specificity differs vastly from mine.

Harvard's distinguished professor of government Steven Levitsky, co-author of Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point, shockingly told the Post that he didn’t see Trump's comment as "indicative of an organized plot to end elections in the United States." He did however concede that it represented more evidence that "the guy has got authoritarian reflexes." Yes, and innate reflexes have a way of getting lots of exercise.  

Levitsky’s co-author, Daniel Ziblatt, went a trifle further, saying “I can’t think of a major candidate for office in any democracy on Earth since at least World War II who speaks in such overtly authoritarian ways. Not Victor Orban in Hungary, not Recep Erdogan in Turkey. Nowhere." Unspoken by Ziblatt is that that leaves only one step further for Trump: either no elections or rigged ones.

Finally we come to what I loosely called the politicos involved in this, The Mysterious Case of the Bloody Obvious. The Post quoted but one: Trump's spokesman, the ever gyrating Steven Cheung. He issued a rather belated statement on Saturday expressing that his boss "was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt."

Cheung does get bonus points for somehow managing to work in Trump's grazed ear for the umpteenth time. Other than that, his statement was merely characteristic of all Trumpian gibberish — just a heap of words stripped of any substance or sense. It was also cleanly sheared of relevance, unless by Americans' extraordinary happiness under another Trump administration Cheung meant what German propagandists said in the early 1930s: Why would you even want to vote when you're living in a fascist paradise?  

After writing these more than 2,200 words, I should hope that my drift is as unmistakable as it is irate. A presidential nominee of a major political party has twice openly advocated the end of American democracy, one way or another. And yet the major press has treated the story as something of a ho-hum affair and political analysts in our nation's most respected institutions of higher education have conjured alternative explanations of it for reasons I know not. I do know that both acts are betrayals of the American electorate and our long-cherished political system — which Donald J. Trump is hellbent on destroying.

And so I ask myself: How can we have a fair and even remotely informed election in 2024 when so many influential voices are dwelling in democracy's obfuscated darkness?

A delightful Sunday morning headline

In reporting that must make the paper's editorial board reach for Kleenex, though not from tearful joy, the Journal writes:

"On a ballot test that included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other independent and third-party candidates, Harris receives 45% and Trump gets 44%. Kennedy is backed by just 4% and 5% remain undecided.... 

"The former president leads the current vice president 49% to 47% in a two-person matchup, but that is within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Trump held a six-point lead earlier this month over President Biden. 

It's still a tie, but the first finding — that of all the candidates — is the more important for an obvious reason. And it's nice to see some blue with a plus sign in front from RealClearPolitics.

The NY Times/Siena poll of last week showed the same.

The Journal poll interviewed 1,000 registered voters, 23-25 July. It was conducted by the Democratic and Republican firms of GBAO and Lee Fabrizio; 538 ratings of 1.2 and 1.7. Although the ratings are less than ideal, the poll found the same causes of upswings for Harris as did the Times/Siena poll — which validates the findings.  

"Harris has made strides in reassembling the coalition that put Biden in the White House in 2020, one that had been fraying under the stress of unease about his physical and mental sharpness," write the Journal. "Black, Latino and young voters all showed greater support for her than they did for Biden."

One worrying spot is that "5% remain undecided." There's a long way to go before Election Day, but the same percentage remained undecided until that day in 2016. And that's what destroyed Hillary Clinton: undecideds tend to go with the challenger. As President Obama's secretary of state, Clinton was seen as the incumbent, as Kamala Harris will be, and effectively is.   

The smoking gun: Trump outs himself on tape

"The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify Mr. Trump’s intent." (NYT) 

Hey MAGA, Trump just said he's not a christian. pic.twitter.com/zeMoth86gs

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 27, 2024

There was no immediate comment from the campaign because what Trump said is impossible to reinterpret as benign.

Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.

This is the smoking gun-packing albatross hanging on Trump's neck that Democrats needed to nail down their "antidemocratic Trump" pitch, only now it's more than a salesman's pitch. It's the audio — and visual — evidence that was missing in Nixon's 18 minutes of tape.  

You know even the Trumpers know it's game over when two of their Twitter gorillas, Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson, each with millions of followers, entirely ignore what Trump said. Instead, Johnson is on a Two-Minute Hate against world athletes, asking his fans to join him in a "total boycott of the blasphemous sickening satanic occult ritual formerly known as the Olympics," and Kirk has merely scoffed at a tweet claiming that Trump said he's "not a Christian" as being "laughably dumb."   

Not a word about "In four years, you don’t have to vote again." 

Still, I have confidence in the Trump campaign's ability to twist black and white into vertiginous shades of grey, at which point the Kirks and Johnsons will happily pile on, defending the indefensible. 

Trump can then retain his 35-40% of hardcore supporters for Election Day. Others — the soft supporters and the undecideds leaning his way — will flee. 

A good time to remember this "Warning to Save Democracy From the Next Trump"

Miles Taylor, once better known as "Anonymous" — the Trump administration official who authored the 2018 NYT op-ed in which he and "likeminded colleagues ... vowed to thwart parts of [the president's] agenda" — also authored the 2023 book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy From the Next Trump.

In the op-ed, Taylor described his former employer as "impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective." He could have added "depraved," for in Blowback he not only recalled "a general culture of misogyny and sexism in the White House," he also recited almost unbelievable instances of how the president pervertedly spoke about his daughter Ivanka.

Taylor observed that "aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her." His foulness became so bad it "prompted [White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter."

Kelly “retold that story to me in visible disgust,” wrote Taylor. Kelly added that Trump was “a very, very evil man." Since the advent of WH chiefs of staff, no other has ever characterized his former boss in such derogatory terms — truthful ones, to boot.

Taylor also reminded readers that in 1997, when Ivanka was 16-years-old, her father, while hosting the Miss Teen USA Pageant, asked Miss Universe, "Don't you think my daughter is hot?"   

Speaking with radio host Howard Stern in 2004, Trump said it was fine to call Ivanka "a piece of ass." Two years later he shared with Stern & Audience that her breasts were not implants. "She's actually always been very voluptuous." 

Also in 2006 he made the well-known remark on "The View" that "if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her," but perhaps less well-known is his 2013 comment on the "Wendy Williams Show." When asked what he and Ivanka had in common, he began, "Well, I was going to say sex...."

The New Republic, from which these quotes are taken, noted in a 2023 article that "this is not even close to a comprehensive list of comments he has made about his daughter's body, or what it would be like to have sex with her." Other publications added to the list, such as The Seattle Times: "In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Trump reportedly celebrated Ivanka Trump’s 'beauty' and said, "If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …" 

One part of Taylor's 2023 "warning" to voters was that Trump is "setting a very vile tone within the Republican Party, and in a sense has normalized pretty derisive views towards women in general." As revolting as that is, I can think of no other elements of modern society that Trump hasn't normalized derisive views towards. The man is a universal plague. 

Thank you, Donald Trump, for choosing JD Vance

Steve Schmidt writes that he "didn't think [he'd] live to see it," but he "always knew it was theoretically possible that Sarah Palin would one day be eclipsed by a candidate more dishonest, fraudulent and weird than her" — "in the way I know it is possible for aliens to arrive tomorrow."  

Well, the spaceyship landed earlier this month — its cargo payloaded with the costly JD Vance. Not even Gene Roddenberry could have conceived an otherworldly doofus quite as goofy as this Appalachian "Man of the People" with three homes and an estimated worth of $10 million, according to Forbes. 

I was certain that Trump would pick Doug Burgum, although I was certain for the wrong reason: Burgum was Trump's smart choice. Nevertheless, against all empirical odds I thought Trump really might do something smart — at least once?

What I didn't count on was this consequence: Now I'm despondent because his thinking and mine matched. Schmidt reports that he has it "from impeccable sources that Donald Trump had decided on Doug Burgum." 

I've read suggestions of this choice from other sources; that the nominee was fixed on Burgum. But then, in classic Trumpian style, he started believing whatever he last heard. And that was JD, JD, JD, enthusiastically chanted by his sons "Uday and Qusay," Schmidt's appropriate names for Donnie Jr. and Eric. 

Mr. Schmidt is relieved by Trump's selection since now his former boss, presidential candidate John McCain, has been "relieved ... from the record books for worst pick ever with his bearded Palin. The amazing difference is that McCain made HIS reckless decision when he was behind, facing the worst possible political environment. Trump made his pick when he was winning decisively."

The manner in, and degrees by which, the Democratic nominee is now dismembering the Republican nominee, I doubt the latter will have a chance to regret putting Vance in the vice president's office. But if Trump somehow makes it back to the White House, he will. 

Someone, I forget who, pointed out the other day that JD concluded his convention acceptance speech by talking about himself — not the Great One. This could not have sat well with a narcissistic ego as inhumanly massive as Trump's. I suspect JD would go right on mostly puffing himself up during whatever time Donald has at his purely personal disposal in the Oval Office, infuriating him even more. And JD is the only person he couldn't fire.

So although Mr. JD Vance is a doofus on Appalachian goofweed, every minute he's plotting his magnificent acquisition of the MAGA movement once Trump either succumbs to the Cheeseburger Effect or is removed from the White House in a rather confining type of jacket.

Or, once Ms. Kamala Harris has her way with Trump, JD will begin plotting a swifter seizure of power within MAGA — and that will be the brawling sideshow we'll all get to watch throughout a Democratic administration's four years or eight. Yet Vance will by then be the ultimate in doofusness, since MAGA will be left in tatters.  

America under Trumpism - believe it or not at your own peril

The Lincoln Project produced this four-minute video during the final days of President Biden's reelection campaign. It's still useable; the film looks only at the United States once a second Trump administration is done with reconfiguring the republic's governance.

Titled "Aftermath," its producers conclude the video by noting that some viewers might see its warnings of a fully enacted Project 2025 and a stormproofing Supreme Court as impossible hyperbole and fearmongering. The producers then ask these viewers, "What did you believe was impossible just eight years ago?" That, I think, is a question better asked at the film's beginning, so that what follows provides believable continuity in the viewer's mind.

"Aftermath" is exceptionally well-scripted — "well-everything," for that matter — although at four minutes in length much too costly to run in major markets. I hope there's a one-minute version in the works.    

The Shift Begins: Harris' numbers are already improving on Biden's

Several polls came out this week, and the numbers for Kamala Harris are looking good. Rather, they're looking better. In a month — and the way she's going after Trump, probably sooner — they should be looking good.

Most recent was a NY Times/Siena College poll (3.0/3.0), released yesterday. It showed a tie between Harris and Trump among both registered and likely voters — a significant improvement for the Democrat since an early-July Times/Siena poll. It had Biden trailing Trump by 8 points among registered voters, and trailing by 6 among likely voters.

Of yesterday's poll, the Times notes that only 14% of Democrats said they'd prefer a candidate other than Harris, and 93% support her.

Ipsos (2.8/3.0), registered voters, released Tuesday.

SSRS (2.0/3.0), registered voters, released Wednesday: Trump, 49%; Harris, 46%. This too is an improvement for the Democrat. In the SSRS polls of April and June, Trump led Biden by 6 points.

In the graph you can see the demographic areas in which Harris improved on Biden's Apr/June numbers.

There was also a Marist poll this week that showed a small gain for Trump, but it was a one-day-only poll taken on the fly, and its subsets were insufficient: e.g., a mere 515 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were surveyed.

Sorry, I thought I'd be back full-time on this day. But 10 of them away created a stack of other stuff that needs to get done. I'm pretty efficient in mishandling urgent duties and errands, though, so tomorrow, Friday, I really will be back. —PM

Three differing observations on Biden's speech

I have always liked Joe Biden, chiefly because of his pragmatism. In the earliest days of the 2008 presidential primaries I preferred Biden over Barack Obama — until it became thunderingly clear that Obama's pragmatism was more likely to carry the general election. Thus writing that I have always liked Biden, or Obama, more interpretively means I have always liked, or preferred, political pragmatism.

The observation may strike you as too obvious to make note of. Yet its general absence in the reams of political commentary this morning on Biden's address to the nation last night seems to be the vital, albeit unbegun, starting point in assessing his speech. If you're wondering what in hell I'm saying here — which is quite understandable – I'll put it this way: Evaluating Biden's semi-farewell address is an exercise best begun by evaluating its pragmatic essence and leaving Biden out of the picture.

This initial approach then eliminates what further seems to be the rather silly divide in much of the commentary published in the last 12 hours, and much of it in lengthy extreme. I was lucky in running across one short post that exemplifies all three critical observations made: the wounding commonality of an absent foundation (pragmatism), somewhat extreme "takes," and the resulting divide.   

The post arrived in Q&A form, which I'll repost in A&Q. Wrote Nate Silver: "Give me a break. Harris has a more viable path to winning the election than Biden under the circumstances, but Biden should never have run for another term, he deprived Democrats of a real primary, and the White House did a lot of gaslighting to the country about his condition."

What was it that riled up Mr. Silver? That was Jennifer Rubin's doing: "If you cannot appreciate the dignity, the grace, the selflessness, the patriotism of that speech - akin to Washington's farewell - but instead feel compelled to denigrate him, nitpick or return to petty partisan politics I pity you. You're denying yourself the majesty, the inspiration of America and of a great president." 

Again, what's common to both immoderate opinions is what's missing. Rubin's Silver-detonating post entirely overlooks the president's pragmatic motivation, while Silver's Rubin-bashing post positively screams the extreme of the president's self-centeredness; that is, Silver acknowledges the pragmatic outcome of Biden's decision but gives it no credit for having been, in incontrovertible fact, steeped in political pragmatism.  

Neither commentary helps to explain why the president did what he did — that being what I have always liked about him. He's no saint and he's no uninterrupted sinner; the former illustrated in Rubin's extravagant fawning, the latter in Silver's hardass "give me a break" cynicism. They are but two daily commentators, though together they represent nearly all internet commentary, year after over-the-top year. 

JD Vance and the arts of bafflement and alienation

When Trump chose as his running mate a White-American "who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," I had the same impression as Joe Biden's of Barack Obama in 2008: "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

In other words, I was a bit worried. JD Vance might help to offset Trump's incoherence, ignorance and 1950s greaser look, I thought. Here's an Ivy League elitist masquerading often as a MAGA hillbilly to reassure the rustic base that's he's as backward as the ticket's top, yet sufficiently silver-tongued to put the college educated and sophisticated, suburban women more at ease.

Vance as a triple threat is what I feared — until he opened his mouth and incoherently baffled even the halfwitted rustics in 28 seconds flat.  

Vance: I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they will call that racist. pic.twitter.com/z3ra8Y5F2f

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 22, 2024

It's pretty hard for a Republican pol to misplay the racism card or botch the blowing of the party's shared dog whistle. But Vance is owed some slack. He's fairly new at this bigotry business; he didn't believe in it 10 years ago and he doesn't now, either. Slashing one's way to the very top by stomping on those below is, on the other hand, a racket he's quite familiar and comfortable with.

The core base has no problem with that kind of behavior; otherwise, former venture-capitalist Vance's fellow hillbillies will vote for Trump no matter how badly the second banana screws up their beloved theme of ridiculing people of color. So no harm there. And none, really, to the GOP's odds of attracting the college educated. They were improbable supporters of Trump's incoherence, ignorance and West Side Story coif anyway. At best, Vance showed the non-Yalies that Ivy League humor ain't all Harvard Lampoon-like.

Last we arrive at what likely is Trump-Vance's most challenging and most requisite electoral bloc: suburban women. In relation, I've two upfront observations about the following 27-second clip: 1) the Harris campaign will see that it's replayed on social media ad infinitum, and 2) nearly all my worries about smooth-talking Vance as a bright, articulate contrast to Trump's guttersniping gynophobia simply Drifted Away.with Dobie Gray.

JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024

Granted, Vance's phrase "childless cat ladies" at least possesses some linguistic flourish, contra Trump's subliterate standbys of "the bitch," "a dog," "horseface," "nasty," "crazy," and now "Dumb as a Rock" Kamala Harris. Although the harpies of MAGA might admire the never-veep's wordsmithing, America's women of suburbs will resent his too-obvious misogyny. 

I should think all too obvious to Vance is the preexisting dislike or hatred of Trump among women in general. That he as an elected politician would then so snarkishly belittle any subsection of the voting bloc — especially one that votes at a higher rate than its counterpart — is almost beyond belief, but certainly welcome.   

Thus my initial impression of JD Vance as Trump's trifecta of worry and fear survived a mere three or four days. I'm now delighted to see this clown as the bigger one's sidekick — you go, JD, just keep on subtracting from your ticket's losing total.

The whole age thing: yet another grave disservice from Trump

At some vague point in the last four years the concept of advanced age as a legitimate barrier to sound national leadership took hold in the public's mind, and with the weirdest of twists. You know it well. A man only three years younger than then-septuagenerian Joe Biden instigated the notion, and in fairly short order it became the central issue — one exclusive to the president — of the 2024 election.

Public doubts about Biden's mental agility began even before he showed signs of real slippage, such as on a recent night in June. Meanwhile, and even weirder, Trump the instigator was mangling sentences, misnaming naming and forgetting what city he was in — all with relative impunity. If Democrats ever needed a lesson in the unilateral power of Goebbelsesque propagandizing, that was it. 

Still, what's occurred in the last four years goes much deeper than its effect on one presidential election. Of the many vile disservices Trump has inflicted on this country, I consider his demagoguery about advanced age as a barrier to sound leadership among the vilest and most harmful — because of its potency in the public's mind.

In coming decades we're likely to see more than a few potentially great candidates — ergo, potentially great presidents — "self-deport," as Mitt Romney would say, from presidential consideration. They just won't want the hassle of answering "age questions." 

Thinking ahead, take a look at Kamala Harris' stable of young, bright Democrats she can choose from as her running mate: Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, Wes Moore and Gavin Newsom. And that's just the governors. One could go on with Sens. Mark Kelly and Chris Murphy, or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. 

If they all get in line for the presidency ... well, you get the point. And I, for one, would not care to see Mr. Buttigieg or Sen. Murphy or Gov. Whitmer bow out before entering, merely because one or all had surpassed some nationally forbidden age, one which now appears to be somewhere in the late 70s.     

Yet, there is an upside — and a really steep, vertiginously giddy one — to this tale of Trumpian disservice. He's in his late 70s. Joe Biden played by his rules in 2024, and better yet, the public proceeded according to his rules in 2024. Let us dismiss for a moment that Trump is not only 78-years-old, but also a bundle of severe personality disorders and his brain melted into poisonous mush years ago. Point is, he's 78. And so too fucking old to be president.

The very best part is twofold: He's now the only septuagenarian in the race, and because he set the rules, I and many others can argue in good conscience that in 2024 his advanced age is a legitimate barrier to sound national leadership — again, forget all that other stuff, we're focusing on age here.

As Anne Applebaum does: "Now it is the Republicans who are saddled with the elderly candidate, the one who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence without veering off into anecdote." And David Frum, who wrote of Trump's "disheveled mess" of an acceptance speech. Or Jonathan Last: "The Trump campaign spent two years creating a political bomb concerning old age.... Trump is now the one holding the age bomb."  

Whenever I have a moment to spare, I dumb-down the point on social media so as to meet my interlocutors on their Trumpian level. For example, "I'm just stunned that your party is running such an old, old man for the White House. 78! Are you kidding me? He confuses names and mixes his words and forgets where he is just like every old man. He can't possibly run the country."

Not in 2025, anyway. Beyond that, I'll revert to my prejudice against prejudice.