The Carpentariat

After the above post, an early appointment. Five weeks after an MRI brain scan, I'm to learn a neurologist's interpretation of its result — other than what is already known, that I'm hopelessly, incurably crackers.

See you tomorrow.

***

Fri. afternoon. Good news. I'm not entering early — really early — onset dementia, which worried me the most, since that would have ended my writing days tout de suite. In fact I aced the mental test designed for such an aliment — and they all said, That's amazing … how did you do that? So be humble before me; like Donald, I'm a stable genius for having recalled a few words and counted backward from 100 by 7s. 

So what's with the "white matter lesions" in my brain? They aren't sure, but they suspect multiple sclerosis, which for the last month has been far preferable in my mind — lesions and all — to dementia. Ah, if only you could have been there, in the exam room, for my balance tests. I stumbled and tilted and wobbled like a well-vodka-provisioned Russian private on V-E Day. It was comical. At any rate, from here — what else? — another MRI, this time of my spine. So we'll see.   

Are we headed for the mountaintop?

The Economist, having aggregated a multitude of recent polls, rather predictably predicts a Biden victory in the one and only category that counts — the Electoral College. What's more, it statistically entertains a Biden EC victory in which the vote exceeds 400. (Note that Trump's top range is in the low 300s.)

The Washington Post's data analyst, David Byler, concurs that a Biden landslide of 400+ is "plausible."

"Biden has a bigger lead now than Obama did at this point in 2008," observes Byler, "and he’s competitive in big red states such as Texas and Georgia. That’s why my model — as well as those from FiveThirtyEight and the Economist — see[s] 400 or more electoral votes as an optimistic but plausible scenario for Biden."

My nonexistent model foresees "400 or more electoral votes" as less "optimistic" than realistic.

The failure of lying and the power of truth: Trump vs. FDR

I'm still trying to comprehend how lying to the country can be a show of strength when the liar knows — and we now know that Trump knew — that the lie is soon to be met by the catastrophic consequences of the liar having lied. As more than one study has shown of late, the plain, simple, scientific truth from the White House, from the beginning, about covid's virulence and how to protect against it would have saved tens of thousands of American lives; in fact, roughly 75 percent of the 200,000 now dead. Instead, Trump, like a besotted, blathermouthed gambler at the craps table, let the lie ride.

"I’m a cheerleader for this country," blathered the Great Dissembler from the White House yesterday, perpetuating the Big Lie. "I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic. And certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength. We want to show strength as a nation. And that’s what I’ve done. And we’ve done very well. We’ve done well from any standard…. It’s been an amazing job that we’ve done."

He later added, "We don’t want to … start shouting that we have a problem that is a — a tremendous problem."

If Trump possessed any interest in reading, he might have learned by now, between grifts, how FDR demonstrated actual leadership at the dawn of America's entry into WWII. If you're thinking we have a tremendous problem on our hands, said Roosevelt to the public, you're damn right. But, we'll persevere and prevail. FDR's "cheerleading" showed authentic strength, confidence, truth and calm — all the elements of effective leadership that Trump lacks.

***

Or, as Prof. Tribe puts it:

FDR after Pearl Harbor might’ve said, if he’d been Trump, “Why upset folks with some ‘Day of Infamy’ speech? Let’s just calm down till my friend General Hirohito gives up. No need to panic anyone by mobilizing for war.”

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 10, 2020

Scary

​​​​​From a study by Vanderbilt political science professor Larry Bartels, published 31 Aug., "Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy." (I first read a partial quote of this passage in a David Brooks column; emphasis mine.)

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than 40% agreed that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.)

In response to Rep. Jim Jordan (see my preceding post): This really is today's Right.

The GOP's story — and they're sticking with it

In an uncharacteristic economy of words, the singularly unpleasant Jim Jordan helpfully spells out the Trump-GOP attack machine's playbook: 

Democrats:

Won’t condemn the mob, but blame Republicans for the chaos in liberal cities.

Won’t stop the violence, but refuse President Trump’s help to restore order.

Won’t let you defend your home, but can’t guarantee your neighborhood will be safe.

This is today’s Left.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 9, 2020

I suppose one could say this tweet is at least as honest as anything else Rep. Jordan has ever said.

Democrats and their moderate presidential nominee endorse mobocracy …

They hideously blame Republicans for what happens on Republicans' watch …

They refuse Trump's "help to restore order," which in Portland only escalated the violence …

and, as always, lots of that old-time religion ... They're coming for your guns. 

Nothing like a political playbook based on intellectual integrity. 

By God we've got him this time! Right?

Enough with career-ending "very fine people" and "losers' and "suckers" and reports of, literally, 20,000 lies in less than four years.

Bob Woodward's new book proves that Trump really is a sociopathic liar — Big Time.

Is this the end of Trump? Hath not his time come? You bet. Next week. When yet another merciless exposé of this guttersnipe is released, which really will bring the end of Trump.

The aimless leading the spineless (but which is which?)

Could any endorsement be more perfectly oafish?

A true bobby-dazzler of a feat

In an email, the Biden/Harris campaign forwards an excerpt from a Trump/Pence email to contributors. Biden/Harris' intro: "Have you ever seen the kinds of crazy, misleading fundraising appeals that Donald Trump sends to his supporters?" Like this ...

Says the forwarding campaign: 8X-MATCH? Does anyone really believe this? 

Hell no is the answer, unless of course the anyone not only voted for Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again, and is enough of an incurable imbecile to send money or even be tempted to send money in any amount to a self-professed billionaire who failed to "fix" anything.

I once worked in political finance, where a 2X match was rare. Utterly unheard of was, or is, an 8X match. But a Trumpian rube would believe neither me nor a bundler no matter how many stacked volumes of Unser Kampf we swore on. 

Nonetheless, I'm sure Trump's 8X-match project will be the biggest and bestest and most beautiful ever, just like all his life's endeavors.

In legal case, Trump says "United States" is "Trump"

Yesterday, in a legal maneuver that would have delighted Roy Cohn, Bill Barr's DOJ argued that journalist E. Jean Carroll's defamation case against the president should be moved to a federal court, and since Trump was president when he denied Carroll's 2019 accusation of rape — as he's had to deny more than a dozen others — the judge should "substitute the United States for President Trump as defendant."

Should Trump's personal law firm — the United States Department of Justice — prevail in its argument before the federal court, could this president, as president, not issue blanket denials of every conceivable accusation to be made against him in his post-presidency? Thus, say, in New York state proceedings against Trump in 2021 for tax evasion and financial fraud, would the state not be required to substitute "the United States" for "Donald Trump" as defendant, since he denied any such transgressions while still president?

Only in TrumpWorld America have the ludicrous and bizarre become the norm. Hot off the scorched heels of the commander and chief having labeled the men and women of the US Armed Forces "losers" and suckers" — that, it might also be argued, was without question Trump's all-time lowest point — he instructs his law firm of Bill Barr, Saul Goodman & Associates to, essentially, permit him to claim personal sovereign immunity from lawsuits.

This story, too, will burn out in a couple news cycles, replaced by a couple more scandals. I'm sympathetic to Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, when she writes that "even in today’s world, [the president's legal] argument is shocking." Yet if the shocking is anticipated, is it still a shock?

The heart and the mind can be lonely hunters

I can commiserate with NeverTrump editor and columnist Jonah Goldberg when he asks, "Who is a moderate now? Who’s a centrist?" To summarize his lament:

"Until recently, the answer to such questions was primarily ideological. Centrists were middle-of-the roaders who rejected the purity of the ideological left and right. I will confess: I used to have considerable scorn for such people. They often acted as if being in the middle was a sign of intellectual superiority….

"In recent years, though, the definition of centrism has been changing before our eyes as the culture has become more partisan…. In this climate, the new centrists can be ideologically conservative or liberal according to the old definitions, but [they] share a common discomfort with the constant demand to catastrophize our politics in order to impose orthodoxy on everyone. And amid the cacophony, such centrism can be quite lonely.

The key phrase there: according to the old definitions. As Goldberg notes, "I haven’t changed my conservative views on most issues, but because I am a staunch critic of President Trump, many liberals now treat me as if I am a moderate or centrist." And notwithstanding his rather unhinged 2008 book, Liberal Fascism, the unmasked right now treats Goldberg as though he's fresh from a positive covid test. Although he's not a centrist at all, his NeverTrumpism has externally thrust him into the heretical middle of left and right ideologues.

I commiserate. I sympathize. I feel, in particular, the left's disdain — because the internet, my writing home, is where the left hangs out. And I can tell you firsthand, I reside in a quite lonely abode.

Which is also quite ironic, since according to the old definitions, I'm a rock-solid leftie.

Politically I'm a pragmatic FDR Democrat — which the progressive, "anti-establishment" internet left views with contempt — while ideologically I am, and always shall be, a democratic socialist. The new left beholds a contradiction in my self-description, yet the two are eminently compatible: FDR pragmatism is but the more certain electoral stairway to a fuller socialism.

Nevertheless, my online politics aren't pure enough or bloody loud enough to earn a place in the more hardcore left's consideration — and again, online is where the tribal left lives. That with which they disagree must be shunned, for it may cause intellectual discombobulation and therefore, to one's inextinguishable embarrassment before one's ultraprogressive friends, contaminate one's purity.

Of course the same echoing, fearful sickness preceded the left on the right. It will be the end of the latter, with the former not far behind — unless there is first an end to the cognitively sealed, separating chambers in which we contemplate politics.  

Biden needs to capture only one bridge in his "two-front war" against Trump

CNN columnist Ron Brownstein and Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic election analyst, cast a useful observation about the Democratic base's smart pragmatism in choosing Joe Biden as their presidential nominee in 2020. Brownstein:

Joe Biden has described himself as a "bridge" between the Democrats' current and future generations of leaders. But he may also be a bridge between its present and future on the electoral map.

Exactly eight weeks before Election Day, Biden has strong opportunities to recapture states that President Donald Trump won in 2016 both in the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt. But public and private polls consistently show that Biden is running slightly better in the former group of battlegrounds — centered on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — than the latter, which include North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.

That's something of a surprise, because Trump has focused his message and agenda so precisely on the priorities and resentments of the older, rural and non-college Whites who dominate the electorate in Rust Belt states, while the Sun Belt states are adding many more of the younger non-White voters who increasingly compose the Democrats' base.

Biden's electoral strategy may not define the Democrats' long-term direction [grounded in long-term demographic changes], but he may revive just enough of the party's past to sustain it until that future comes more clearly into focus.

Brownstein quotes Teixeira: "You don't want to be in a position of having to make the Sun Belt work [this year]. You want to be in a position of having a lot more degrees of freedom than that. That's the beauty of Biden in this election."

As well as the beauty of having Kamala Harris in waiting, for 2024 or 2028.

Trump: Problems? What problems?

Trump is not amused by the Times' reporting Sunday on his campaign's cash predicament — which I discussed earlier this morning here, if you're a nonsubscriber to the Times — and so naturally he has confirmed the story by vigorously denying it.

My Campaign spent a lot of money up front in order to compensate for the false reporting and Fake News concerning our handling of the China Virus. Now they see the GREAT job we have done, and we have 3 times more than we had 4 years ago - & are up in polls. Lots of $’s & ENERGY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2020

The journalistic scuttlebutt is that Trump may need to inject up to $100 million of his own money on his reelection campaign, which, even for an eternally befuddled president, would be an odd decision if he has tripled his fundraising take.

As for him being "up in polls?" A glance at RealClearPolitics' recent polling entries shows an uninterrupted string of blue pluses nationwide and Biden within the margin of error in Texas.

Finally, the "GREAT job" Trump and his administration have done on the coronavirus pandemic is thrown into a bit of doubt by approximately 200,000 dead Americans so far (probably many more), and, in the absence of a national strategy, more than 400,000 dead by the New Year — scarcely something to celebrate.

Unless you're a sociopathic boor.

Trump's advertising: "no discernible effect"

In what Axios understates as "an unusual predicament for a sitting president," the Trump campaign is having financial problems. Also understated is that this "worries veteran Republican operatives."

Or, as the Times puts it, with even more states than in 2016 for Trump to either defend or convert, "the light television spending and advertising blackouts in some key states" — such as vitally important Arizona — "have mystified allies."

Actually, it's not all that mystifying. After Trump's first campaign manager, the feckless yet personally profiting Brad Parscale, blew through massive amounts of cash over the summer "to no discernible effect" — except on Parscale's bank balance — his replacement, Bill Stepien, is being more prudent.

And, it would seem, with Trump almost fatally lagging Joe Biden in so many swing states, big Republican money is being prudent as well. By fall of 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by only 2 or 3 points, yet this year he can't seem to shake Biden's 8-10 point national lead, which makes a Trumpian Electoral College redux a virtual impossibility. In brief, he's a lousy investment.

But Biden? Last month alone he raised a staggering $365 million and "is currently [as of 31 Aug.] outspending [Trump] by more than 10-to-1," according to the Associated Press.

So, as noted, not all that mystifying — except for this statement from Stepien to the Times: "We should not be applying a 2004 media strategy to a 2020 campaign." Which is precisely what the Trump campaign is doing. In 2004, Bush and Rove concentrated on ginning up base turnout rather than appealing to a perusable middle — just as Trump and Stepien are doing. But that was then.

"A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man." Otherwise, nice guy.

Another week, another book from a former Trump employee trashing the old boy for engendering nothing but belated hatred of him. This Tuesday the hebdomadal scandal tome (432 pages) comes from Michael Cohen, Trump’s "designated thug" who was sentenced to three years in federal prison for violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and lying to Congress and a financial institution. It's titled Disloyal: A Memoir, and gleefully does the willful thug's bile flow.

Read these few selected excerpts from the Washington Post (some of them paraphrased) and you've essentially read the book and saved yourself its list price of $32.50.

"Cohen lays out an alarming portrait of the constellation of characters orbiting around Trump, likening the arrangement to the mafia and calling himself 'one of Trump’s bad guys.' He describes the president, meanwhile, as 'a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.'"

“What appeared to be [Russian] collusion," writes Cohen, "was really a confluence of shared interests in harming Hillary Clinton in any way possible, up to and including interfering in the American election — a subject that caused Trump precisely zero unease." The mega-explanation of Trump's love of Putin, however, was that of his financial interests in Moscow real estate, postelection(s).

"The whole idea of patriotism and treason became irrelevant in his mind," Cohen writes. "Trump was using the campaign to make money for himself: of course he was."

On Trump's vague accusation of Ted Cruz's father's involvement in President Kennedy's assassination: "Can you think of another politician, ever, who would stoop this low?"

"Stuck with the [hush-money] tab for Trump’s sex romp in a hotel room in Utah a decade ago. This was the job I loved?” asks Cohen.

On Trump's commitment to America's minority communities: "I will never get the Hispanic vote," Cohen recalls Trump saying. "Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump."

"The memoir also describes episodes of Trump’s alleged racism and his 'hatred and contempt' of his predecessor, Barack Obama," who made to Columbia University and Harvard Law only because of 'fucking affirmative action.' He also recounts … that Trump once said while ranting about Obama, 'Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a shithole. They are all complete fucking toilets.'"

Here's the real keeper, though — Trump's true admiration of his beloved Christian right. "Before winning the presidency, Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with prominent evangelical leaders, where they laid their hands on him in prayer. Afterward, Trump allegedly said: 'Can you believe that bullshit? Can you believe people believe that bullshit?'"

Which should be Mike Pence's benediction at every Trump rally.

"Sully" speaks

I can think of no better way to express the nation's outrage than to reproduce this thread from national hero "Sully" Sullenberger. (My apology for the repetition of #8. Several alternative attempts at copying the code seamlessly rendered the same result.)

2/9 In our travels, my wife Lorrie and I have always made it a point to visit military bases, hospitals and cemeteries, to meet and honor those who serve and have served our nation.

— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) September 4, 2020

4/9 But this situation calls for a much more direct approach. It is time to call out egregious behavior for what it is.

— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) September 4, 2020

6/9 While I am not surprised, I am disgusted by the current occupant of the Oval Office. He has repeatedly and consistently shown himself to be completely unfit for and to have no respect for the office he holds.

— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) September 4, 2020

8/9 He cannot understand selflessness because he is selfish. He cannot conceive of courage because he is a coward. He cannot feel duty because he is disloyal.

— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) September 4, 2020

9/9 We owe it not only to those who have served and sacrificed for our nation, but to ourselves and to succeeding generations to vote him out. https://t.co/REXXzg90Pw @JeffreyGoldberg @TheAtlantic

— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) September 4, 2020