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Let John speak

E.J. Dionne:

"[There's an] anxiety that animates an unease among some progressives about anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives. This has fostered a limited but vocal backlash against the idea that John Kasich, the Republican former Ohio governor,  might address the scaled-back Democratic National Convention on behalf of presumptive nominee Joe Biden….

"To these progressives, I’d argue that the point of this election, besides defeating Trump, is to shift the country’s political dynamic as decisively in their direction as Ronald Reagan did toward conservatives in 1980. And doing so requires not only welcoming new partners, but also nurturing their second thoughts about a conservative project to which many of them dedicated their lives."

I wasn't aware of of the suggestion that Kasich speak on Biden's behalf at the downsized Democratic Convention. But the progressive "backlash" at this sort of creative thinking and bigger-tent philosophy surprises me not one whit. It's the same ideological narrowness and politics of purity and exclusion that put the Republican Party, with a large assist by Donald Trump, in its deservedly wretched state today.

And that's my long-term fear of the Democratic Party's future. Sen. Sanders brought many a convert to the unserviceable ultraprogressive side of Democratic politics, and they seem to be successfully pressuring Democratic leaders and backbenchers farther and farther to the left — in a centrist country. That, in the opposite direction, was poor strategizing by Republicans 40 years ago, and Democrats eventually would produce the same result.

In defense of urban political machines

(Sunday's post, accidentally published Saturday evening.)

First I want to emphasize that I sympathize with Portlanders for being subjected to Trump's fascist forces moving in on peaceful protesters. It's inexcusable, it's obscene, and it's grossly unconstitutional. I trust I have made my sympathy clear, and that I stand with Portlanders in their confrontation with Trump's police state.

But, have you ever been to Portland, Ore.? I have, for the longest three weeks of my exceptionally virtuous life. The city is so chock full of ditzy do-gooders and one-sidedly informed goo-goos it makes one nostalgic for the old, corrupt, urban political machines.

To wit, decades before my birth, my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri and the county of Jackson were run by the Democratic political boss, Tom Pendergast. He was among the finest of city bosses. With FDR's New Deal cash he single-handedly rebuilt downtown Kansas City's buildings (which stand today), although, ahem, his Ready Mixed Concrete Co. stood to profit; he fed the poor; he paid their hospital bills; he permitted some gambling and a little prostitution — precisely what every working man wanted; he invited the nation's greatest big jazz bands into town; and he employed loads of desperate, depression-impacted constituents with patronage jobs. 

His downfall came in evading federal income taxes, a nonviolent crime that has taken down many a city powerhouse. But he also promoted the political career of Harry Truman, who defiantly attended his funeral in 1945 — KC do-gooders and goo-goos be damned, said Truman. And if federal agents had ever appeared in Kansas City to illegally apprehend innocent citizens, Pendergast would have had local police arrest the goons for kidnapping and disturbing the peace. He took no shit from anyone.

And there's not even a plaque commemorating his rule from 19th and Main in downtown Kansas City.

Personally? I'd take Pendergast's wide-open city over Portland's pretentious, intellectually suffocating, morally righteous, damningly conformist municipality any day. 

On all counts, Trump is down

Newly-minted Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien to reporters on conference call:
“This will be a knock-down, drag-out fight to the very end.”

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 24, 2020

From a Quinnipiac poll of 15 July:

***

BIDEN VS. TRUMP: THE ISSUES

Voters now give Biden a slight lead over Trump in a direct match up when it comes to handling the economy. Voters say 50 – 45 percent that Biden would do a better job handling the economy….

Asked about other key issues:
* On handling a crisis, Biden leads 57 – 38 percent;
* On handling health care, Biden leads 58 – 35 percent;
* On the coronavirus response, Biden leads 59 – 35 percent;
* On addressing racial inequality, Biden leads 62 – 30 percent.

Biden vs. Trump: Personal Trait

Trump receives some of his worst scores ever.

Honesty:
Trump: 31 percent say “yes;” 66 percent say “no;”
Biden: 46 percent say “yes;” 42 percent say “no.”
Good Leadership Skills:
Trump: 35 percent say “yes;” 63 percent say “no;”
Biden: 49 percent say “yes;” 42 percent say “no.”
Cares About Average Americans:
Trump: 37 percent say “yes;” 61 percent say “no;”
Biden: 59 percent say “yes;” 33 percent say “no.”

TRUMP JOB APPROVAL
Voters give President Trump a negative 36 – 60 percent job approval rating, a 6 point drop in his job approval compared to last month.

TRUMP’S HANDLING OF OTHER ISSUES
On handling the military, voters give the president a negative 41 – 51 percent approval.
On handling foreign policy, voters give the president a negative 37 – 59 percent approval.
On handling health care, voters give the president a negative 35 – 59 percent approval.
On handling race relations, voters give the president a negative 31 – 65 percent approval.

***

I'm not sure who Bill Stepien is pointing to, when he says this will be a "knock-down, drag-out fight to the very end." But I'm beginning to think he means Trump Republicans vs. Purple Republicans. Because the top-billed fight, Biden vs, Trump, is already over. 

Some brain-teasing nostalgia

I hereby declare that the three sexiest women of early (or at least earlier) television were Mary Ann Summers (Gilligan's Island"), Samantha Stevens ("Bewitched"), and Della Street ("Perry Mason") — all girl-next-door types; none of that overdone "Ginger" glitziness. At 10 paces, I'll challenge any man who disagrees.

   

 

 

 

I further declare that the Beatles' three most brilliant classics were "Hey Jude," "Paperback Writer," and "You Say You Want a Revolution?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These, as to a toxically masculine challenge, I would defer. Music is far more subjective than beauty, even if every genuinely toxic male would choose Ginger, every time, as a trophy wife. So I invite your nominations for the Beatles' best cuts.

***

A bit more nostalgia, just to prove to every alphabetical Generation that even Boomers' parents and their generation weren't stodgy stick-in-the-muds, I'll share this family story. My uncle, who fought Studs Terkel's "Good War" in the skies of Europe as a bombardier, once told me that whenever they would return to the United States on a week or two pass, the war plants they visited, populated by women workers all, since the men were off to war, would chant to them in unison: "LSMFT." Now of course that acronym originally meant that the nation's most popular cigarette, Lucky Strike, Means Finer Tobacco." (And it did.) What your gentle grandmothers and later Bible-clutching great-grandmothers were actually chanting, however, was "Let's Screw, My Finger's Tired." So there. 

He who lives by Trump, dies by Trump

That, from Axios and SurveyMonkey, and those governors would be Doug Ducey, Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp and Greg Abbott, respectively.

It's a pity Axios chose SurveyMonkey to conduct the poll, since the disapproval/approval numbers seem so delightfully spot on. Yet FiveThirtyEight gives the polling operation a near failing grade ("D-"), largely because its polling is done exclusively online.

(SurveyMonkey's even fouler deed? In its fine-print disclosure it states, "Polls conducted continuously from May 11-July 19," even though there was a polling gap between 17 May and 13 July. Thus its polls were conducted continually, not continuously. So SurveyMonkey gets a "D-" in lexical semantics as well.)

Interpreting the Lincoln Project

Max Boot:

"If we are ever again to have a sane and sober center-right party in America — something we desperately need — then the Trumpified GOP must first be demolished. That is what the Lincoln Project is trying to accomplish….

"Right-wingers are especially perturbed that the group has targeted vulnerable Republican senators. How dare they?!? 'The Lincoln Project has made itself a Democratic Party organization,' screams a headline in the Washington Examiner. This would seem to refute a charge heard from the far left — namely that the group is a bunch of unrepentant warmongers who haven’t really broken with the GOP."

I don't much care what the far left has charged, especially since it disgraced itself by insisting that an outspoken socialist easily defeatable by Trump run in the place of the moderate, center-left Democrat who is crushing Trump in the polls. The far left is to political strategy as heart surgeons are to paleoanthropology. And I'd prefer that fossil finders not open up my chest.

Yet what concerns some among the center-left about the Lincoln Project is nearly as ludicrous as a bunch of Bernie Bros plotting the next "revolution." Democratic moderates' concern is legitimate, yet still a bit silly in their seeming unwillingness to grab hold of what, simply, is politically axiomatic.

What Boot writes in this sentence — "If we are ever again to have a sane and sober center-right party in America — something we desperately need — then the Trumpified GOP must first be demolished" — is incontrovertible. His subsequent sentence, however, is as poorly reasoned and pitiably wrong as any Bernie Bro's: "That is what the Lincoln Project is trying to accomplish."

I should back up for a moment. Perhaps demolishing the Trumpified GOP is indeed what the Lincoln Project is trying to accomplish. What it will accomplish, though, is little more than the Democratic defeat of whatever sanity-retrievable, meekly moderate, purplish Republican members of Congress there are. Only the most corrupt, ethics-less, true-believing crackpot Trumpers will in 2020 remain comfortably and confidently in their congressional seats, since their districts or states are as red-hot daffy and Trumpified as they are.

This is what Democrats did to hardcore Bushy Republicans in 2006, and again in 2018. Moderate Democrats were able to shove aside moderate Republicans, but not the real nutjobs. They're always safe.

It would have been more accurate for Boot to write that the Lincoln Project merely wishes to reduce the Republican Party's size to the minority point of legislative impotence — it matters not who survives — and, of course, send Trump packing. And in that twofold project, I wish the Lincolners the very best.

Trump's rosy "briefings" vs. reality

I heard these stats on the radio yesterday, and you're probably aware of them, too. But it never hurts to reemphasize the "tremendous progress" we're making under the sage guidance of Dr. Trump.

Johns Hopkins University data records the US' first Covid-19 case on January 21. The US went from:

1 to 1 million cases in 99 days

1 million to 2 million cases in 43 days

2 million to 3 million cases in 28 days

3 million to 4 million cases in 15 dayshttps://t.co/LvcUWIb2Au pic.twitter.com/hzQi0mfocE

— CNN (@CNN) July 24, 2020

At this rate of progression we can reasonably expect another 1 million covid diagnoses in just the next seven days, yielding potentially life-ending illnesses among roughly 1.5 percent of the entire US population.

"Right now we are on a path to lose more than 200,000 American lives by November 1st," wrote more than 150 heath authorities to the president, congressional leaders and governors.

Only the Civil War rivaled Trump's "American Carnage."

In earnest defense of Rep. Ted "the yahoo" Yoho

I find I must come to the defense of Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida's 3rd congressional district. He has received, of late, scathing reviews of his verbal skills, and only Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have had the manly balls to come to his defense (I assume). These criticisms are wrong, unacceptable, and exceptionally shortsighted.

First of all, Yoho's recent, somewhat unsavory remark to fellow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she is a "fucking bitch" means, monumentally, that no longer should House members be required to refer to their colleagues as the "gentleman from —]." Yoho put a permanent end to that blatantly mislabeled fallacy. And for that, we should be thankful.

Second, Yoho had every emotional right to refer to AOC as a "fucking bitch." I'm sure as a wimpy, physically unattractive, mentally limited, immature 15-year-old boy he figured he would never find a woman to bang regularly. Because he was, and remains, a stupid, unappealing weakling who decided early on to work with companion animals as a veterinarian rather than humans with IQs above their hat size. This caused what should be an understandable conflict in his relating with women, especially, with anything but pseudomasculine hostility.

But to you "gentlemen" like Ted, who loves 19th-century America and his underworld god, just know this: Somewhere out there out there, in some gin joint in Rick's crazy, mixed-up world — perhaps one as far as Casablanca — there is always a woman just as physically unattractive, stupid and randy as you are. And though she may be a "fucking bitch" herself, for desperate clowns like you, it's only the adjective that counts.

Therefore Mr. Yoho seemed to genuinely believe he knew what he was talking about when he called Congresswoman OAC just that. And who knows? Who can confidently read the emotional instability of an intellectually limited, sexually conflicted yahoo such as Yoho?

So Ted, you keep living up to your amygdalae-damaged convictions. We all admire you for expressing them. And God bless, you're not the least bit embarrassed by exposing just what a fucking prick you are.

This time it's Cohen, not Sullivan

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein today ordered former Trump-lawyer Michael Cohen's release from prison by 2 p.m. tomorrow, "saying he believes the government retaliated against him for planning to release a book about Trump before November’s election," reports the Associated Press.

Said Judge Hellerstein to federal prosecutors, "How can I take any other inference than [Cohen's reconfinement was] retaliatory?"

"I’ve never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release," said the judge. "Why would the Bureau of Prisons ask for something like this ... unless there was a retaliatory purpose?… It’s retaliatory for his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish the book … [and retaliatory for] the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail."

From here on out, I trust that Mr. Cohen, wherever he may be, will keep his bags packed.

The next time Cohen is rehustled to prison, doubtless by some of Trump's camouflaged, unidentifiable animal-crackers goons, he needn't bother unpacking before another judge declares the administration's vindictiveness as lacking a trifle in legal theory.

And so again I quote Groucho, as next month's Cohen:

Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay
I came to say
I must be going
I'm glad I came
But just the same
I must be going, la-la!

The disastrous start of Trump's third quarter

I'm still leery of Morning Consult polls, whose publicity department seems to outperform its actual pollsters, however FiveThirtyEight now gives it a "provisional" grade of "B/C," so I'll take Nate Silver's implied word that it's improving its methodology. But on to the point, as told by Newsweek:

"The latest survey from Morning Consult found that 44 percent of voters trusted Trump more on the economy, while 43 percent said the same of Biden, putting the president's lead within the poll's 2-point margin of error. When the same poll was conducted last month, Trump had a 4-point lead over his Democratic challenger, down by half from his 8-point lead on the economy in April."

The poll was conducted before the latest unemployment figures were released, which are just awful. (The NY Times:)

New jobless claims last week of more than 1.4 million workers marked "the first time that the weekly tally has risen in more than three months," reports the Times; "an additional 975,000 claims were filed last week by freelancers [and] part-time workers."

So Trump's third quarter economy is off to less than the biggest and bestest recovery ever, that I can tell you.

Since devout Trumpeteers would give a polling thumbs up to their man even if the country hit Germany's post-Great War economic catastrophes, Biden's pickups came, as you might have guessed, from independent swingers. "Forty-percent of independents told Morning Consult pollsters," writes Newsweek, "that they trusted Biden more with the economy, compared to 34 percent who favored Trump."

Thus Biden still has a shot at thumpingly decreasing Trump's 1 point lead, according to Morning Consult, that is.

Mail-in voter fraud? A snowflake among a blizzard.

In light of recent posts and discussions about Trump's potential to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden, I'm passing along what the Washington Post's Elise Viebeck and Robert Costa are reporting:

Most legal experts said it is hard to envision that Trump would actually try to remain in office after a clear defeat by former vice president Joe Biden, considering the uproar that would follow such a challenge to U.S. democratic norms…. But his unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power has forced academics and political leaders — including, privately, some GOP lawmakers — to contemplate possible scenarios.

Among the possibilities: Trump could claim victory before the vote in key states is fully counted — a process that could take days or even weeks this year because of the expected avalanche of absentee ballots.

He could also spend weeks refusing to concede amid a legal war over which votes are valid and should be included in the tally....

Or he could simply refuse to leave on Jan. 20 — a possibility Biden has discussed publicly. Biden said he is convinced that if Trump loses but won’t leave, military leaders "will escort him from the White House with great dispatch."

Last month the Post's Elise Viebeck reported that "officials identified just 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail [in Colorado, Oregon and Washington] in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025 percent."

If my math is correct, that translates to about four possibly invalid votes among each 146,000 ballots cast — scarcely a basis for Trump's empirical claim that 2020 will be "the most corrupt election in the history of our country," except for whatever exaggerated voter-suppressions are committed by Republicans.

And yea, verily, their jaws will slacken in wonder

The Daily Beast's Rick Wilson predicts the empirically, laughably predictable:

On Tuesday [Trump] started the long retcon of his position on masks. Mark my words: The same Trump fanatics who spat on masks as a sign of capitulation to libtard cuck shill Soros antifa mind control last week will bob their slack jaws up and down when Trump says something to the effect of "I invented the mask. No one had ever heard about masks before me, and when I invented masks, everyone said, 'Sir. Sir. These masks are a miracle and you’ve saved us all, sir.'"

"Something to the effect of?" I recall watching on television a comedian-pianist years ago who joked about a short composition of his own, saying first in familiar language, "It went something like this." Then he added, "Actually, it went exactly like this."

Those happy-go-lucky House Republicans

​​​​​Politico, on House Republicans' embrace of independent thinking and freedom of expression:

"Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus tore into Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) during a heated GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, lobbing attacks at her for breaking with President Donald Trump, supporting Dr. Anthony Fauci and backing a primary opponent to one of their colleagues."

Rep. Andy Biggs, who heads the Freedom Caucus, "accused Cheney of undermining the GOP’s ability to win back the House and said that if someone has a problem with Trump, they should keep it to themselves" (my emphasis, his totalitarianism).

Rep. Matt Gaetz [who has been under House ethics investigations] — tweeted that "Liz Cheney has worked behind the scenes (and now in public) against @realDonaldTrump and his agenda. [She] should step down or be removed." Gaetz "himself once split with Trump over a war powers resolution."

Rep. Chip Roy "complained about Cheney’s support of Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and pointed out that his Democratic opponent for November's general election even retweeted one of Cheney’s tweets praising Fauci."

And Rep. Jim Jordan, a Freedom Caucus co-founder, "called out Cheney … for all the times she has opposed Trump."

Liz Cheney, notes Politico, "votes with Trump 97 percent of the time…. She also is one of the Trump campaign’s fundraising co-captains."

The best new comedy show this season, "Trumpfeld," produced by the Lincoln Project

No re-election for you pic.twitter.com/cKkevBNYln

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 21, 2020

Will November really mark the end of the American experiment?

In the latest of their online exchanges, the NY Times' Gail Collins and Bret Stephens ponder the idea of Trump refusing to accept November's election results:

Gail: So many people are envisioning him going out on the balcony the next morning, summoning his troops and announcing the vote didn’t count.

Bret: I have invincible faith that our soldiers, officers, Secret Service, D.C. police and Melania Trump herself wouldn’t allow that to happen, even if some Department of Homeland Security goon squads support him. I also think Trump doesn’t have the guts. A guy who can’t fire people to their face is too much of a coward to attempt a coup.

Gail: Thanks for reminding me of that.

I agree with Bret.

Yesterday I quoted historian Timothy Snyder, who warned that "when the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come." I was surprised by the majority of commenters who seemed to agree that the end has come, or at least it is near. I concluded yesterday's post by opining that "indeed [the end has come]" for Trump, since he has bungled pretty much everything he has ever tackled. Commenters disagreed.

Bret Stephens is correct, I think, in writing that Trump "is too much of a coward to attempt a coup" — which would instantly result in his federal incarceration. But I also agree with Stephens that our "soldiers, officers, Secret Service [and] D.C. police" would never allow Trump to get that far, even with some guts; and it's equally my opinion that America's traditional institutions in general (but especially the courts) have remained intact enough — despite Trump's relentless assaults on them — to permit an attempted coup beyond a few minutes.

Trump will lose in November; Trump will throw endless tantrums about the "rigged" election and millions of "illegal votes"; Trump will launch a media outlet so that his tantrums can be seen and heard nationwide — but Joe Biden will be sworn into office on 20 January 2021.