Finally . . . Somone Actually Said It!

For the third week in a row Rachel Maddow has done a piece on the plans to disrupt the election certification at the state level. She had Mark Elias from Democracy Docket on last week; this week it was Noah Bookbinder from CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. But honestly, it doesn’t matter how many lawyers she has on her show, until someone connects the dots to the supreme court, none of it is going to make any sense. And that was perfectly evident on Monday. She shrugs and wrinkles her brow, and just can’t seem to figure out what the end game is. Sure, these corrupt election-deniers are going to refuse to certify the results in their counties and states, and both lawyers have assured her that this is quite illegal. So . . . what the hell’s the point of all this? It’s maddening to watch. For the past six weeks I’ve been screaming into the void trying to tell the world what the real goal is, and no one seems to care. In addition to writing to Rachel—twice—I’ve written to Elias, Brian Tyler Cohen, Glen Kirchner, and my local newspaper, but to no avail. Everyone seems quite alarmed about the prospect, but with absolutely no clue about what the end game is.

But all of that changed last week, in an editorial on a popular cable channel. The speaker finally made the connection that I’ve been warning about and delivered the truth of the matter to a national televised audience:

          The GOP is already planning on how to steal the election by having corrupt state officials refuse to
          certify the results, getting corrupt judges to back them up, before the whole thing goes to the corrupt
          supreme court that’s already anointed Donald Trump a king, so now they can overturn the results of
          the election to declare him the winner.

The speaker? Charlamagne the God. The cable channel? Comedy Central. Yeah, quite a disappointment. A writer for the Daily Show figured it out before anyone at MSNBC. (CNN's a lost cause.) What are the chances? But . . . I’m happy to report, things have finally turned. The emphasis is still on the election interference at the county and state level, but at last someone has spoken out loud on a major news network, and made clear what the real goal of the refusal to certify actually is. Joy Reid last night—better late than never—had Bookbinder on again, but this time prefaced her interview with him by articulating exactly what the purpose is behind all of this. The wrangling at the state level is just the prelude.

          Or it ends up in court, right, we end up with litigation? Let’s say that Georgia ends up in huge litigation
          and then, somehow or other, nobody gets 270 because one state can’t get their votes in in time. That,
          then, goes to the House of Representatives. Republicans control 26 states, Democrats control 23,
          they just vote 26-23 and make Trump the president. Kamala Harris could win by twelve-million votes
          and it wouldn’t matter, Congress would just decide. And then the other option is it goes to the supreme
          court, and we all know what John Roberts will do. He and his five friends will make Donald Trump the
          president. So, six people could make Trump president, or 26 states.

So there it is, the exact scenario I’ve been warning about for the last month and a half. Finally, MSNBC pulled their collective heads out of the sand and made it public on something other than a comedy show. Took them long enough. Hopefully next Monday Rachel will be able to make that final conclusion herself, but until then this needs to get lots and lots of airtime on all of the news programs in the country.

Trump Only Needs Six Votes!!!

I continue to be thoroughly disgusted by the corporate news media—though I don’t know why I should still be so. Even “left-wing” news outlet MSNBC has become more and more difficult to watch as they continue to pretend they don’t know what Trump is doing. It really is infuriating. Either they are incredibly stupid, or utterly disingenuous. I hope, for their sake—certainly not ours—that it’s the latter. After colluding with Russia to interfere in our election, trying to extort Ukraine, stealing and disseminating classified documents, inciting an insurrection to stay in power, as well as other assorted crimes like rape and fraud, the media continues to frame Trump’s actions as though he is a “normal” candidate. It really is incomprehensible. In interviews all day long, the talking heads continue to be mystified by why Trump is doing this, or why Trump is doing that. And yet HE HAS ALREADY TOLD THEM, AND THEY ARE IGNORING THE TRUTH. The latest has been his attacks on the Georgia governor and secretary of state at his most recent rally. They can’t understand why he would do that. Everything he does seems to be damaging his chances in the election, they opine breathlessly. Why would he do that? Do I need to say it again? Apparently so. Donald Trump DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THE ELECTION!

He doesn’t care about the negative response to J.D. Vance. Why? Because he doesn’t care about the election. He doesn’t want to debate Kamala Harris. Why? Because he doesn’t care about the election. He tells his followers that he doesn’t need their votes. Why? Because he doesn’t care about the election. He doesn’t seem interested in courting new voters. Why? Because he doesn’t care about the election. Donald Trump doesn’t care about any of these things because he only needs six votes. That’s right. Only six votes and he is certain he will be handed the presidency regardless what the people do on election day. His election-denying officials in the election offices of all the swing states will refuse to certify the election. The next step in the process will then be lawsuits that attempt to compel those officials to certify. Because of the urgency of the cases, they will move immediately to state supreme courts, which will order them to certify the votes, then Trump’s legal team will appeal to the supreme court where the six votes of Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett will hand the presidency to Trump and there won’t be a damned thing the rest of us can do about it.

Once again, tonight, Rachel Maddow followed up on her piece from last week about election officials in swing states refusing to certify elections. She tiptoed right up to the answer, suggesting that one possible reason for this is that it will work as propaganda. No, no, no, no, no! Trump doesn’t need any more propaganda. All he has to do is say the election was rigged, and his followers believe him. There is absolutely no propaganda value in what these election officials are doing. Second, she throws up her hands and says, “It prevents the normal counting of votes.” Right. WHY, RACHEL, WHY? And yet she still seems completely unable to connect the dots and has absolutely no answer for the goal of all this. And I even wrote to her last week to give her the answer. But no, at the end she weakly suggests that this “throws it into the courts?” with a why-the-hell-would-they-want-to-do-that shrug. But she’s so dismissive of this suggestion that she completely undercuts the fact that YES, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY’RE TRYING TO DO. It’s such a sinking feeling to realize that none of these idiots are going to realize what the real reason for this is until it finally gets to the supreme court.

The reason Trump doesn’t care about the election, is because he has already stuffed the ballot box with six supremely corrupt justices who he fully expects to make him president and defy the will of the people. That’s it. The only mysterious thing to me, is why he even bothers to campaign at all. I suppose it’s to continue to instill in his followers that he will deliver on his promise to take away their rights, take away their money, and take away their freedoms, while he installs himself as permanent dictator and destroys the U.S. government in the process. Apparently, that’s what all of them really want. The judicial branch has already been trashed, so that only leaves the legislative, which he no doubt plans to render impotent on day one. To paraphrase a popular cliché, “It’s the supreme court, stupid!” Why the media can’t see that, or is unwilling to report it, is just another of the tragedies that un-regulated capitalism has brought upon this nation. All this energy that is going into defeating Trump on election day may be a complete waste of time if the supreme court does what he expects. But that is the only play he has, and all of us are kidding ourselves if we don’t think he’ll make it.

The Supreme Court is the Play!

I’m really mystified—though, given the state of corporate media, I guess not so much—why EVERYONE seems to be missing the real threat to democracy in 2024. It’s not the election. Even if the Democrats win, it’s what comes after the election that is going to end democracy in the United States. And it should be no surprise, that threat is the supreme court. Two statements last week make this crystal clear. The Trump Maggots are telling us exactly what they’re going to do, but everyone in the media is making the wrong assumptions about what that means. The idea that there’s going to be another attack on the Capitol, or challenge in the Senate, is idiotic. Republicans learned from their mistakes in 2020 and are going to take a completely different tact—well, they’re going to hope for a different outcome, anyway; the plan is still the same. The end game is the supreme court. Only this time they’ve been bolstered by recent decisions protecting Trump and so their belief—not unjustified—is that this time they won’t need evidence, that the supreme court is going to take away the victory from Kamala Harris and simply award it to Trump.

The first indication that this is the play came from Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita. In an interview prior to the Republican Convention he said, “It’s not over on Election Day, it’s over on Inauguration Day.” The meaning is clear, but the media has missed it. In 2020 the supreme court failed to listen to any of Trump’s petitions because of lack of evidence at the lower court level. But after dozens of unconstitutional decisions by a corrupted right-wing court, it seems that this time Trump believes they will side with him no matter what. A perfectly reasonable expectation. Meanwhile, the media is focused on all of the statewide manipulation going on that Republicans are engaging in so that it doesn’t have to come to that. Either way, the prospect of a Republican-rigged election looms large on the horizon. The second clear indication, however, that the corrupt supreme court is the final end game came from Trump himself, when he called in to Fox on Thursday and claimed that he doesn’t need votes, because he has lawyers. Again, the implication is clear. He doesn’t really care about the election itself, only what comes after, the lawsuits that will be pushed up to his corrupted judges on the supreme court.

The maddening part is how ignorant the media seems, even MSNBC. A blog post yesterday by Steve Benon was frustratingly titled, “Why in the world does Trump keep saying, ‘We don’t need the votes’?” BECAUSE THE SUPREME COURT’S THE PLAY! He doesn’t care about the election. In the blog post Benon cites Trump saying he doesn’t need the votes, and even puts a clip from the Fox program, but only AFTER THE LAWYER REMARK. The post was then picked up by a number of other outlets, but no one has seemed to understand that the shift in the supreme court to openly and unconstitutionally supporting Trump means that they could very easily throw the election to him if Harris wins. And then what happens? It doesn’t matter about the electoral votes or the certification if the supreme court can just anoint a winner as they did in 2000. The problem with keeping our collective heads in the sand until it happens, is that by then it will be too late. And attempts to rectify the situation after the fact will quickly be labeled as election interference by the very corrupt party that has stolen the election in the first place.

The only proactive solution to this is for Biden to pack the court as soon as election day is over. He can legally put four more justices on the court, confirmed by a Democratic Senate, and neutralize the corrupt right-wing justices before they have a chance to take the victory away from Harris. But will he do it? I honestly can’t imagine a scenario in which he does. But then I also didn’t think he would step down, either. So I suppose that is a small sliver of hope. The real danger at this moment is that no one is seriously thinking through the Republican legal strategy, which, as I said, is the same as last time. The monumental difference this time, however, is the supreme court’s clear signal to the right that they’ll do whatever they want, legal evidence and Constitution be damned. And if we let that happen, I can’t think of a way to reverse it that doesn’t involve the kind of presidential overreach that would make Biden and the Dems look like the bad guys. If the news media stays asleep on this, and gets blindsided by a supreme court decision in January, the real bad guys will have won. This needs to get out now, so that the corrupt justices know we’re on to them, and especially so that Biden can have some time to think this through with his people and, hopefully, do what’s best for the nation once again.

Presidential Veepstakes!

Yesterday I watched as one of the hosts on MSNBC reassured her audience over and over again that the choice of a vice-presidential running mate doesn’t matter. I was a little dismayed at how she kept hammering home the point, especially when it seems clear that she is completely wrong. Earlier in the nation’s history, this was certainly true. In fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt went through several vice presidents during his four elections before Harry Truman just happened to be in the office when the president died. John F. Kennedy was keenly aware that he needed not just a southern Democrat on the ticket, but one who had a lot of charisma and political power. But I would argue that ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, that the vice-presidential pick has been instrumental in the election or defeat of presidential hopefuls. Certainly not the sole factor, but decidedly in the top two or three. This is a belief I have held for many years now, based on historical precedent, and one that has led to an adage that a presidential hopeful has the best chance of winning when they “pick from the podium.” That is, when choosing from among the strongest contenders in the presidential primaries, a nominee is not only adding their rival’s followers to his or her own, but unifying the party after what are usually contentious contests for the nomination. Presidential hopefuls who have failed to do this, usually lose.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan stunned most political pundits by selecting George H.W. Bush as his running mate, because Bush had been one of Reagan’s harshest critics on the debate stage during the Republican primaries. It was the first real choice of this kind in U.S. history, but it set the tone for future presidential success. Typically, the opposing party is able to use attacks against the eventual nominee of the opposing party by adopting those made in the primaries. But this sort of neutralizes those attacks and, even more crucially, can unify the party AS a party, rather than around a personality. Reagan was going to win against Carter regardless, but he had an even easier time four years later when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984. She was a brilliant choice, but a disaster in terms of being the first woman on a presidential ticket. It wasn’t the only reason Mondale lost, as he was essentially Carter lite, but it hurt his even minimal chances further, resulting in the most lopsided landslide in U.S. presidential history, losing 525 to 13 in the electoral college. George H.W. Bush, unlike his predecessor, made a colossal blunder in choosing Dan Quayle, an absolute dolt who couldn’t spell the word “potato.” The only reason Bush won, however, is because Michael Dukakis was such a poor candidate on the Democratic side that even the excellent selection of Lloyd Bentson couldn’t resuscitate his doomed campaign.

Four years later, after the country was much more familiar with just how dumb Dan Quayle was, he became more of an albatross. Bush lost the 1988 election primarily due to third-party candidate Ross Perot, who siphoned off far more Republican votes than he did Democratic ones for Bill Clinton. But make no mistake, in a solid second place for why he was defeated, was his vice-presidential train wreck. The reason Clinton skated by with the uninspired Al Gore, was because not only was Quayle a drag on the Republican ticket, but Ross Perot made easily the worst vice-presidential selection in U.S. history with Admiral James Stockdale. To paraphrase a podcaster on the disastrous Republican response to Biden’s most recent State of the Union address by the wacked-out Katie Britt, “You do not want to be the cold open on Saturday Night Live. If you are, then you’ve done something terribly wrong.” James Stockdale was that in spades. No one who remembers that year can forget Phil Hartman’s brutal portrayal of Stockdale as a demented senior citizen who had no idea where he was or what he was doing. And so next to those two, the super-stiff and stilted Gore looked positively charismatic. Fortunately for Clinton, Gore was also no dummy, and so while he didn’t necessarily add anything to the ticket, he didn’t drag it down, either. Bob Dole, in the 1996 campaign, did the wise thing by choosing Jack Kemp, who had run against him in the primaries, but Dole, like Dukakis before him, was an inherently weak candidate and his selection of Kemp was unable to compensate for his deficiencies.

All of which brings us to the 2000 presidential campaign. I can remember exactly where I was when I knew Al Gore was going to lose the race. I was riding in a car from Wyoming to the Denver airport, and on NPR they made the announcement that Gore had selected Joe Lieberman as his running mate. George W. Bush had Darth Vader as his potential vice-president, and so Gore decided to go with . . . Droopy Dog? It wasn’t James Stockdale, but it was in the same zip code. Almost precisely like Mondale’s selection of Ferraro: the reason why it was done was clear, but attempts to be progressive before their time are doomed to failure. And still, Gore nearly won, which emphasizes even further that it was his vice-presidential pick that actually lost him the election. Lieberman wasn’t even a Democrat, he was an Independent. And with Ralph Nader siphoning off Democratic votes in the same way Perot did to the first Bush, the VP choice was even more crucial. Gore made the wrong choice, and it cost him the presidency. Bush won again in 2004 because of his unjustified war in Iraq, but even with that John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards wasn’t exactly inspired. Sure, he was young and energetic and from the south, but with his white-guy nineteen-seventies haircut, he always seemed kind of smarmy. And sure enough, it eventually came out that he had cheated on his wife and took campaign money for personal use during the affair. At the time, it did not seem surprising, and I think voters could sense it.

2008, however, is the real shining example of this argument in action, two choices that went in completely opposite directions. First, Barak Obama. During a hard-fought campaign Obama began really challenging Hillary Clinton for the nomination. Joe Biden, who also ran, was an early casualty, dropping out after his loss in Iowa. At the end of the day Obama had won the nomination, and his selection of a VP was genius. The big knock against him at the time was that he had no foreign policy experience. But Joe Bided did, as a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. None of this long outmoded “southern strategy” like the Edwards pick for Kerry. Obama didn’t need the crucial Delaware vote. Biden was serious, engaging, intelligent, and the most knowledgeable Senator on foreign policy. His selection made sense not only in terms of his ethnicity, but also Biden’s ability to strengthen the overall ticket through his age and experience. John McCain, on the other hand? Well . . . he decided to go in a different direction. McCain obviously couldn’t pick another white guy and seriously challenge Obama. Picking a black man was too on the nose, so that meant going with a woman. It had been nearly thirty years since Geraldine Ferraro, so his people plucked from obscurity a completely unknown governor from Alaska—apparently with no vetting whatsoever—and forced McCain to take her. John McCain never liked Sara Palin, for obvious reasons. She was equal parts ignorant, inexperienced, and insincere, and wound up being a perfect storm of political poison that led to a landslide defeat.

Mitt Romney did little better with his vice-presidential selection four years later. In 2012 he failed to pick from the podium, as had McCain, and fatally selected Congressman Paul Ryan. There was a reason that McCain hadn’t gone with another white guy, because even the Republican voters had moved in a more progressive direction by this point, and his retro-selection just seemed to be more of the same white-guy hubris. It wasn’t as bad a blowout as 2008, but Barak and Biden cruised easily to another four years in the White House. In a fair world, Biden would have picked up the mantle and used his vice-presidential experience to crush failed businessman and would-be fascist Donald Trump in 2016, but when his son Beau died of cancer Biden chose not to run. This series of events finally elevated Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination, after a tough-fought campaign against Bernie Sanders. There were several factors that led to Clinton’s loss, the first being her seemingly tone-deaf responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, the lead in the drinking water in Michigan, and working people in general. The second was Bernie Sanders’ petulant attitude after his loss, which suggested to his supporters that they NOT vote for Clinton in the general election. But what finally clinched her loss to Trump was her VP selection.

A young black male politician would have been the perfect choice, unfortunately there were none who had run for the Democratic nomination, just old white guys and Hillary. Certainly, Bernie was the obvious choice, as he was hugely popular, but even had she asked him—and she might have—there is no way he would have accepted. So, with the selection process wide open, who did she pick? Tim Kaine. I had the same reaction I had to Gore’s Lieberman pick. I knew she had lost as soon as it was announced. Kaine was an utterly boring, entirely uninteresting senator from Virginia. He brought absolutely nothing to the table, but worse than that, he was a complete drag on the ticket. The guy was ten years younger than Clinton, but onscreen and in interviews he looked ten years older. This was the equally idiotic VP wisdom that says the pick needs to be someone who doesn’t outshine the candidate, after all, it had worked for her husband. But Al Gore was neutral overall, while Kaine was a decided negative. Ultimately Clinton lost by a tiny number of votes in battleground states, and yet still won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. It’s not unrealistic to suggest that, even with the primary reasons for her defeat, she might have pulled off a victory had she chosen much more dynamic running mate, rather than losing to yet another Republican white-guy duo.

Having learned from Hillary’s mistake, when Biden came out of retirement to run in 2020 after a disastrous Trump administration—in which the failed president killed a million of his citizens, emboldened foreign dictatorships, and tanked the economy—he announced up front that he was going to choose a woman as a running mate—end of discussion. And did he ever. Not only was Kamala Harris an outstanding intellect, a former prosecutor, state attorney general, and Senator, but she was a pick from the podium! Who can forget Biden telling her in an aside at the second debate, with a wink and a smile, “Take it easy on me, kid.” The choice harkened back to Reagan in 1980. Not only was Harris in the race with Biden, she was one of his toughest critics. The selection in one stroke added diversity to the ticket, signaled a genuine progressive achievement in the form of the first female vice-president, and unified the party. Up against THAT, the two white-guys ticket on the other side didn’t have a chance. It also didn’t hurt that the entire world, not just the U.S. hated Trump. Bells rang out all over the countries of the world when the citizens of the United States decided to dump Trump.

It’s difficult to believe that Trump could have made an even worse choice for vice-president than Mike Pence, a lapdog who followed his leader around and could only look up after taking his nose out of Trump’s ass. But Pence wasn’t going to break the law, which infuriated the failed president, and led to his disastrous—though good for the rest of us—pick in the 2024 race, J.D. (Shady) Vance. Trump finally has a lackey with no personality, who’s as dumb as he is, and who will certainly do anything—including breaking the law—that Trump asks him. Based on this pick alone, Trump should lose. By far his best choice would have been Nikki Haley, but Trump is far too stupid to do something smart, and she is far too smart to do something that stupid. So the only variable at the moment is who Kamala Harris’s choice will be. Wisely, Gretchen Whitmer has taken herself out of the running, as two women are unlikely to overcome still rampant sexism on the right and in the middle. For the same reason Pete Buttigieg is not a good choice. Though he is one of the party’s best and brightest communicators, this pick at this time would be on the order of Ferraro or Lieberman. Andy Beshear lacks the necessary charisma, and having two blacks on the ticket eliminates Cedric Richmond. Tim Walz, Roy Cooper and J.B. Pritzker are also poor choices simply because of the optics: they look old, and set the wrong tone for Harris’s campaign. Tim Kaine all over again.

That leaves just two solid choices, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Shapiro is a young and experienced governor and seems a very commanding presence that could aid Harris tremendously on the campaign trail—not to mention delivering the incredibly important swing state of Pennsylvania. And he also sounds just like Obama! Kelly is an equally good choice for different reasons, a veteran, an astronaut, and a strong personality himself, he has the gravitas of an older presence on the ticket, much as Biden did for Obama, and he is poised to deliver a swing state as well. My choice, if it were up to me, actually would be Beto O’Rourke. I don’t know anyone who is a more passionate advocate for gun control, and would be solid on domestic issues while Kamala further refines her foreign policy credentials. Unfortunately, he has taken on the cast of a loser recently in his unsuccessful bid to become governor of Texas. Between Shapiro and Kelley, I would probably go with Shapiro, simply because he’s younger and can deliver many more electoral votes. With either him or Kelly, it puts the vice-president on a solid path to victory. Choosing someone other than those two, however, makes the prospect a lot more difficult than it should be in an already critical time for the country. It’s not certain that her early momentum will carry Kamala all the way to election day, so her choice now is every bit as important as the one we will make in November.

Ridin' with Biden!

Couple of things first off about the idiotic notion that President Biden needs to step down. Number 1: George Clooney—Shut . . . the Hell . . . UP! Nobody gives a rat’s ass what you think about Biden and the presidential race. You want to have an opinion? Run for the House or the Senate first and win a seat, THEN you get to have a voice in Democratic politics. But not until then. I don’t know what the hell you think you’re trying to accomplish, but you you’re not helping. And the same goes for Congressional Democrats—Shut . . . the Hell . . . UP! It’s one thing for a “movie star” who doesn’t know any better to shoot his mouth off, but you people have no excuse. It honestly makes it seem as if you’re in the pay of the Republican party, that’s how incredibly stupid it is to have you wringing your hands and clutching your pearls and acting like we’ve already lost. Because if you’re not at least getting paid to undermine President Biden, then you really are as idiotic as you look.

Number 2: The President’s staff, on the other hand—THAT’S who ought to step down. The utterly moronic “preparation” they did for the debate was criminally negligent. Biden should have stayed on European time when he returned from Italy, been awakened at five in the evening on the night of the debate, had a light breakfast, and then kicked Trump’s ass. Which he did anyway! I’m with Gavin Newsom on this: on substance, it was no contest. Trump lied the entire debate. Every word out of his mouth was completely unsubstantiated by anything remotely resembling a fact or evidence—and that was just on the few occasions when he wasn’t lying. Everything else was lies! THAT’s the narrative. And why Biden’s staff didn’t prepare him for that going in, was no less than a dereliction of duty. I wrote about this before, after the debate, so I won’t rehash it here, but suffice to say, there was no reason in the world to have Biden directly respond to anything that Trump said. They guy’s a brainless tool. What do you gain from arguing with that?

But to the matter at hand. Professor Allan Lichtman has correctly called every single presidential election since 1984 with his Keys to the White House. (And this idea that he didn’t get it right in 2000 is complete BS. He called it absolutely right in a presidential election that actually WAS stolen). He has correctly predicted that Biden will win in November, though it doesn’t take a college professor to see that Trump’s toxic policies and criminal behavior are an even bigger incentive for an informed electorate than in 2020. More importantly, Lichtman called the correct outcome in 2016 when all of the polls said that Hillary was going to win. And that’s what’s so infuriating, to have stooges like George Stephanopoulos spout polling to the President as if that closes the case. Even Thursday night, after Biden’s press conference, Nichole Wallace was parroting the same polling data to say that Biden is “behind” in the race. Seriously? The polling has been WRONG every two years since 2016! Where the hell does this sudden trust in the polls come from? I’ll tell you about a poll. Thursday, prior to the press conference, Brian Tyler Cohen, took a poll of some 25,000 of his viewers who watched along with him, and they were 60-40 for Biden going in. After the press conference, he asked those who watched the whole event to take the poll again, and this time, among what can only be assumed to be Democratic-leaning viewers, the numbers shot up to 75-25 for Biden. And why not? He’s the freakin’ President. Incumbency is a HUGE factor in a presidential race, and something those calling for Biden to step down just want to throw away—and more importantly, something no other Democrat has. Which also says a lot about how bad Trump is, that he was crushed in 2020 even with it.

And that’s another thing. Have all of you forgotten 2020? Because I haven’t. Most telling to me was the ringing of church bells ALL OVER EUROPE when Trump lost. When has that ever happened in American history? “Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead.” How badly did the rest of the world hate Trump that they would have responded like that? And there were plenty of celebrations in the streets of this country as well after we had finally overcome our petulant idiocy in letting Hillary Clinton’s personality cause us to hand the White House to a fascist dolt. You remember him, don’t you? A guy who did absolutely nothing as president, other than play golf, break the law, and give tax cuts to the wealthy, a guy who sat on his ass for hours watching on TV the mob that HE unleashed on the Capitol as they tried to subvert the will of the voters. Yeah, THAT’S who Biden’s running against this time, too. Or what about the supreme court, packed with right-wing lawbreakers themselves, giving Trump whatever he wants, keeping him out of jail, and taking away our rights and freedoms? Have you forgotten that already? And what happens when you let what happened in 2016 happen again, getting so whiny and childish about our candidate that you inadvertently give not only the White House this time, but the entire government, to the inspiration for Project 2025. Because I’m telling you, if you do it again, it’s the last presidential vote you’ll ever cast.

Joe Biden is old. Got it. He mixes up names, he forgets things. He also has a speech impediment, lest we forget, that is more difficult to control as he gets older. Got that too. And . . . ? Because of that you want to let a guy who’s going to end democracy . . . end democracy? You’re just going to LET that happen because you were embarrassed by a senior citizen’s debate performance? That’s what you want? That’s worth it to you? Joe Biden has arguably done more for the people of this country than any president since Roosevelt. He learned the lessons of Obama’s ineffective last six years, rammed home some significant legislation while he could in his first two years, and passed more bi-partisan legislation with a completely obstructionist Congress after that. Biden is poised to be even more effective with a Democratic Congress in his second term. It’s because of all that that our President has collected 3,896 delegates during the primaries. He needs only 1,968 to secure the nomination at the Democratic Convention. And yet, Biden has already essentially released the delegates to vote with their conscience, so what the hell else do you want? The hard fact is, even having done that, he can lose almost half of the delegates and still win the nomination. As soft as some Congressional Democrats and others are about Biden, he has a terrific amount of support among the American people—as well he should! And like it or not, he’s going to be the nominee.

One thing more to consider. This election isn’t just about the election. There’s the supreme court to think about, and what they are going do when Trump inevitably sues in order to claim that he really won . . . again. If you thought the last transition was a rough one, that was nothing compared to what’s in store this coming winter. Trump and his criminal minions are not going to make the same mistakes they made last time, when they were throwing it all together at the last minute. They’ve already planned how they’re going to refuse to certify the election results; they’re going to disrupt state election boards; they’re going to successfully block the counting of the electoral votes. They’re going to do everything possible to push the decision to the supreme court where the presidency will be handed to Trump on a silver platter—and that’s if Democrats win! Hard decisions are going to have to be made, like packing the court. Literally, the only way to save our democracy is if Biden, as soon as possible after the election is called, is able to nominate and confirm four new supreme court judges before the court can hand the White House to Trump. And if you think that’s something Biden’s going to be reluctant to do, just imagine a different Democratic president in their first term. That person is not going to want to begin their presidency—always assuming they’ll be able to hold on to it by the end of January—with the lame duck president packing the court. All of this makes much more sense for Biden to do himself. And at the end of the day he can always step down later, and single handedly go down in the history books as responsible for the first female President of the United States. Not a bad way to go out.

So it’s time to snap out of it, people. It’s time to move forward from the “debate.” We have a guy running on our ticket who has the most experience of anyone who has ever run for president in the entire history of our nation. And he’s 81. FYI, that’s where the aforementioned experience comes from. So get over it! Corporate media shills in the news have been making a big deal of this for weeks, but that’s what they get paid to do. Why give them more ammunition? The real narrative of this election isn’t about Joe Biden’s age, it’s about the fact that Trump and his Republican Maggots want to end democracy. THAT’S what we need to be focusing on, from now until election day. And I would sure as hell hope that’s a little more important than the fact the President had a poor performance in a debate because he stayed up way past his bedtime. Tools like George Stephanopoulos get paid by their corporate employers to generate controversy where none really exists. Why take the bait? Stop talking about Biden and make the case against Trump. Our guy already beat him by eight million votes before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was closer to ten million this time. During his incredibly disingenuous interview with ABC, Stephanopoulos asked the President how he would feel if he stayed in the race and lost. But that’s not the question. The real question is how are all of YOU going to feel if Biden drops out and we lose. Because there’s no going back this time. I just hope the Congressional Democrats and the rest of the whiners like Clooney can pull their heads out of their asses before it’s too late. But regardless, I’m still ridin’ with Biden!

Welcome to the Fascist States of America!

Well, it looks as if they’ve finally done it. Ever since the end of the Civil War, corporate interests in this country have been trying to take it over, to form a capitalist state with no regulations, no taxes (on the wealthy, that is), and no accountability to anyone. The movement hit a major snag when the Great Depression exposed the myth of capitalism for all to see, and the people were having none of it. But by the time the war had exhausted everyone the right-wing began sharpening their knives once again and started waging a covert war on democracy. It was subtle at first, and seemingly went unchecked for the next seventy years. So by the time the stupidest many in history took over the White House and exposed yet again what was happening, it was too late. And let me be perfectly clear, this is not about politics. Politics is theater, a distraction, misdirection at a magic show, to capture the attention of the audience so that they don’t see what is really happening. What we are experiencing at this moment is the complete and total corporate takeover of the United States. The democratic experiment is apparently nearing the end as a corporate oligarchy is poised to completely take control and consign the rest of us to third-class citizenship, whose only function is to make more money for the wealthy elites while they keep us in bondage to a life of servitude as wage slaves—INCLUDING THOSE WHO VOTED TO GIVE THEM THE POWER!

For all the historians out there, professional and amateur alike, who ever wondered what it was like in Germany in the early 1930s as the Nazis were taking over, well . . . now you know. Just like the people in Germany who wanted to vent their anger at someone or something—to whom Hitler offered them the Jews, and to reward him they made him dictator—we now have the Fascist States of America in which corporate-controlled politicians and judges have paved the way for the next Republican president to become a dictator and punish the brainwashed idiots who voted him into office by allowing him to take away all of their rights and freedoms—just like he’s going to do to everyone else. And to those Maggot cult members who still believe that they are going to escape the retribution that has been promised to “others,” they are in for a rude awakening once their corporate masters don’t need their “votes” anymore. They’re going to be right down in the pits of hell with the rest of us. Make no mistake. The only people the corporate oligarchy hates worse than liberals are the gun-toting, bible-thumping, beer-guzzling, trailer trash they’ve had to pander to for the last seventy years. Of course, THEY won’t need to do it directly to the fascist faithful. They only need to ply their brainless cult members with enough guns and indignation that they will do it to themselves.

The reality for most of us after the most recent supreme court decision (yes, purposely without capitals) is that we’ve probably cast our final democratic votes in the United States of America. Even if Biden wins legitimately, there is absolutely nothing stopping Republicans from taking the case to the supreme court to have them overturn the decision of the electorate. That’s always assuming that they haven’t already corrupted enough state election boards to make the exercise unnecessary. Honestly, there’s really only one way out of all this mess. That’s right, just one. Unfortunately, it would require that someone—perhaps many people—sit President Biden down after the election—no matter how it turns out—and acquaint him with the facts of life in our nascent fascist society. The political landscape in the country that Joe Biden once knew is gone—vanished. And someone needs to hammer that home to him—and don’t stop until he gets it. The old rules don’t apply anymore. The right-wing oligarchy is poised to take control, and simply handing over the reins to them in January because it is the “right thing to do” is not only NOT the right thing to do, it would be morally irresponsible and reprehensible, tantamount to treason and a complete abdication of the oath he took to protect and defend the Constitution. Biden has already signaled in his most recent White House remarks that he will not abuse the office of the president. That’s fine; no one is asking him to. What we will be asking, however—demanding, even—is for him to save democracy, no matter what the cost.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was faced with a similar decision. The Southern states had seceded, but there were still sympathetic Southern judges on the Supreme Court who were poised to undo all that Lincoln was going to need to accomplish to see the war to a victorious end. And in that regard he had only one choice. What’s so tremendously impressive is that he did it, with no qualms and no handwringing. To save the Republic he had to pack the Supreme Court, and that’s exactly what he did. By expanding the court he obviated the need to remove justices by making Southern sympathizers a minority and rendering their views superfluous. This MUST happen after the election, or not only will Joe Biden not go down as a great president, he will forever be infamous as the man who ended democracy in America by handing over the government to the fascist, corporate oligarchy. It really is that cut and dried. Just winning the election will not be enough—not nearly enough. The very supreme court he needs to save, has already given him immunity powers that are unprecedented. He MUST use them! Since the court has essentially rendered Congress powerless, they can do nothing, deadlocked as they are. But the slim majority in the Senate enables Biden to put judges on the bench and get them confirmed without the House’s approval.

Honestly, there’s no other way. There just isn’t. If Biden doesn’t pack the court as soon as the election is over, the presidency will be taken away from him, one way or another, and in that moment democracy will have been taken away from all of us. This isn’t abuse of power. It’s giving back to the people what the right-wing oligarchs have already taken away from us through their employees on the supreme court. And somebody needs to make him see that! Will the Maggots on the right lose their shit when it happens? Absolutely. But none of that matters anymore. It really doesn’t. What Biden would be doing, he would be doing to save the Republic. Period. If that means calling out the National Guard to quell the right-wing riots, then so be it. If that means activating the military to make sure people are safe from the fanatics who have been so idiotic as to vote away their own freedoms, then that is a step worth taking. It’s gonna get ugly, people, one way or another. So wouldn’t it be better to get ugly in the pursuit of saving democracy rather than losing it?

No matter what happens in November, the bought-and-paid-for right-wing justices of the supreme court are going to remove Joe Biden from office, unless he rights the ship of state first by adding four more justices to the court. In the past Biden has dismissed the idea out of hand because of what the consequences would be down the road for right-wing abuse. Well, we’re way beyond that now. There’s no more road ahead. We are out of runway. This is the most existential threat this country has ever faced, without precedent. Joe Biden will be in power until the end of January. He needs to use that power to save this country. THAT must be his legacy. If he doesn’t, everything he has done in his entire forty-seven years of public service will be seen as nothing more than fiddling while Rome burns. The majority of people in this country—that’s right, the MAJORITY—do not want fascist rule. The people are on his side, and we need him to do what he was elected for. The days of reaching across the aisle are over. There needs to be one-party rule, sure, but that party needs to be the majority of the people in the United States, not the wealthy minority and their brain-dead zombie voters. Joe Biden is the only one who can save the country now. He is all that is standing between us and dictatorship. If he doesn’t pack the supreme court in November, then nothing else is going to matter. But I just don’t know if Biden has the fortitude. At this point, my optimism is gone.

The First Presidential Debacle

Last night was unfortunate, primarily because it was so completely unnecessary. The one hard fact about the choice for president this year is that there is no choice. On one side is the stupidest man to ever enter politics in U.S. history—and that’s saying something—an abject moron who couldn’t find his own monumental ass with two hands and a flashlight, a convicted criminal and con-man, a congenital defect of a human being, a compulsive liar, a deluded narcissist, and an amoral mass murderer: he told the citizens of this country to ignore Covid and therefore is directly responsible for killing over a million of them. On the other side is a man who has given his entire adult life to the service of the people: thirty-six years as a senator, eight years as vice-president, and a three-year stint as president that has helped the country to recover from the unmitigated disaster that was the previous administration. It’s not a choice, any more than it was in 2020. Biden’s four years older now, and it showed. But does that change the metric? Not one bit. And it’s important to remember that Trump’s changed, too. Not only has he been indicted for inciting an insurrection on January 6th, and for stealing classified documents and obstructing justice, but also twice for election interference. He was ultimately convicted of thirty-four counts of the latter in New York, though he’s unarguably guilty of all of it. The contrast, in fact, is even starker than it was four years ago.

What’s so disappointing about last night, however, is that it should never have come to pass. And most of the blame for that belongs to Biden’s team. They let him down—bigly. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for Biden to get on stage with Tdump. None. Because there was absolutely nothing to gain. But even after deciding to go ahead with it, Biden’s team did him a real disservice. This was not a debate. And more importantly, it was never going to be. Why anyone on Biden’s team thought he should engage with Lie-GPT in any way, is political negligence. The ONLY things Biden should have been focused on last night were two specific tasks. One, getting his message across to the American people on whatever topics he was asked about. And two, calling out the idiot on the other side for the liar he is. That’s it. Biden should not have responded to the moron in any way, shape, or form. When asked a question Biden needed to tell the people what he has done and why he is the only choice, as well as why tRump is a liar and wants to destroy the country. Every answer needed to be a canned response, to the people, that made absolutely no direct reference to anything the convicted felon had to say in the moment. In fact, Biden should never even have looked at him the entire night.

Everyone knew what the seditionist-in-chief was going to do last night. Everyone, it seems, except Biden’s team. What the hell were they thinking? The former White House dunce uses words like good and bad, great and terrible, best and worst—which mean absolutely NOTHING when it comes to governance, and even less when they come out of Tdump’s mouth. He uses NO statistics, NO numbers, NO facts, and NO evidence in any of what could only be euphemistically called “arguments.” And that’s because there are none that even remotely back up his assertions. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is either and ad hominem attack on the other side, or a brag about himself. And they’re ALL LIES. He projects one hundred percent of the time, so every attack on the left is something he has already done, and every boast is something the left has done and the right has absolutely no intention of ever doing. Which means there’s absolutely no way to “debate” someone like that. Every time tRump’s lips moved last night, he lied. Lies are not arguments. So if the second debate ever comes off, his team needs to drum that into Biden’s brain. BE presidential—because you ARE the president—by not engaging him. Get your message across and ignore the addle-brained ranting of Fat Man and Little Hands.

The facts are beyond dispute. Trump wants to end democracy, to end civil rights, and end any corporate responsibility to the workers they employ. But all of that is just to placate his worshipers, his deluded followers who don’t realize he has every intention of punishing them right along with the rest of the country. The ONE THING Trump wants is to use the White House, once again, to enrich himself. That’s it. Full stop. Because he’s broke, the worst businessman in U.S. history, the only way he can stay afloat is to use the office of the president as a base of criminal operations to extort as much money as he can from whoever he can. Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter to him. He’ll first use the office to rid himself of all legal cases against him, then open for business by allowing the worst right-wing radicals to gut this country of every right the Constitution affords—if not the Constitution itself—as long as he gets a cut of the action. Fox “News” won’t have to lie about Biden’s performance last night. He came off as a tired, confused, doddering old man. But does that make him a worse choice than Trump? Are you kidding? Right now Jimmy Carter is a better choice than Trump. And Fox is going to have to lie its propagandistic ass off when it comes to their candidate, backing up and repeating his litany of untruths.

So, is this the end? Are we doomed? I don’t think so. Idiotic ideas like having Biden drop out of the race, however, don’t help things. That would be a suicide move by the Democrats, as it would assure a Trump victory. Even with someone like Gavin Newsom—as tempting as that would be—the optics would be so bad we would probably lose all of the swing states. And that’s not even factoring in what to do about Kamala. How do you ignore her? Right now, the Republicans are losing in every important metric in the campaign, despite the poll numbers. Abortion and civil rights top the list, but the economy and inflation are close on their heels, and the Republicans suck at making the case for their pro-wealthy, anti-democratic agenda. So it’s not time to panic. There are still over four months to go, a Democratic convention and perhaps another “debate,” that might be able to turn around the perception—which is all that needs to happen, because the reality is on our side. Unfortunately, voters on the right are living in an alternate reality in which they are being urged to vote for their own destruction, and seem perfectly willing to do it, taking the rest of us off the cliff with them. So it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to remember that presidential elections are NOT about the candidates. They are about ideology. Whether or not you “like” Biden is immaterial. In fact, it’s destructive thinking. Basing your vote on personality is what the other side is doing—and look how that turned out. If we want to keep our democracy, if we ever want to vote again, we MUST vote against the Maggot, whether Joe seems up for it or not. Because, in the end, it may be the last presidential choice you get to make.