Less than 10 days remain before election day. A few reflections on what is going on:
Democrats are right to be worried. The shock of a possible Trump triumph is palpable. It is difficult to get beyond the fact that, despite his disgusting behavior, his threats to prosecute his enemies, his vulgarity, his severe cognitive decline, his disastrous record in office, the actions he proposes should he return to power, and the immense danger he poses, half the country favors his election.
Learning from history is not something Republicans do. They are reprising the disastrous policies they advocated and put in place a hundred years ago, namely severe immigration restrictions and confiscatory tariffs, both of which were major contributors to the Great Depression. Self-defeating policies may win an election, but guarantee defeat within a couple of years, provided that the former GOP permits future elections to take place.
If Kamala wins, post-election chaos is certain. Republicans have been preparing for four years to contest a Democratic win, and they are much farther along than in 2020. In several battleground states, Republican-controlled legislatures have made it easier for county election boards to refuse to certify election results. While there are procedures in each state to either compel certification or substitute alternative certifying authorities, these require court intervention. Consider January 6 as a dress rehearsal for the violence likely to ensue in 2024-25.
More than 100 Republican election deniers have “infiltrated” local election boards in the battleground states, poised to wreak havoc come November 5. A number of these individuals were also fake electors in 2020 and have been indicted for that treasonous act.
One of the counters to the “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” message from the Trump campaign is to remind people that, in 2020, America shut down because of the pandemic and watched Trump mismanage the crisis, with devastating effects on individuals’ lives, work and education. Trump should have been hammered with his historic fiasco every day. The Trump administration did not end in February 2020 when the pandemic began. C’mon folks!
In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein got more votes in the three “blue wall” states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—than the margins by which Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton. Had she not been on the ballot, her voters would have either chosen Clinton or stayed home. She is potentially a disrupter once again, seemingly unmoved by the likelihood that a vote for her is in essence a vote for Trump. Stein’s hubris and recklessness is appalling.
The key thing Harris has to do now: Demonstrate that she wants to move away from Biden’s economic record. She blew the chance to do so in a recent interview where she said she could not think of one thing where she would have done something different from Biden. Big mistake. If you want voters to see you as the “change” candidate, this is not the way to do it.
Trump’s obvious cognitive decline has had zero impact on the campaign. While incomprehensible that anyone would want to cast their lot with a candidate who displays symptoms of likely deteriorating into deep dementia sooner rather than later, it is also inexcusable that the media devotes so little attention to Trump’s mental decay after obsessing over Biden’s cognition.
Mindful that Trump understands very little about economics, Harris and her surrogates should devote much more campaign time and advertising to the utter absurdity of his all-encompassing tariff plan—“all tariffs, in all countries, all the time” (per Yale economist Jeffrey Sonnefeld), which will amount to a huge national sales tax on every American.
The question voters need to ask themselves as they enter the voting booth is this: “How will what the candidates are promising affect me and my family?” If they actually do this, they need to vote for Harris and Democrats down ballot. Trump’s proposed tariffs, just one of his Pandora’s box of phenomenally stupid and thoughtless proposals, will amount to a heavy tax increase on every American family and a spur to rampant inflation.
I am disappointed, but not surprised that the artificial intelligence elephant in the room has not been discussed by either candidate or appears anywhere in what passes these days as party platforms. AI in the near term is likely to have a massive impact on jobs, and we do not have a plan in place to deal with the colossal disruption that sudden mammoth job loss could produce. While Trump probably does not understand the issue, Harris certainly does.
Similarly, too little attention has been paid by both Harris and the media to Trump’s epic bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to the fact that we lack policies in place born of that catastrophic event to manage the next pandemic.
January 6, which Trump now says was “a day of love.” NOT! It was a day of infamy. This was high treason, period. Full stop. The very long and achingly plodding arm of the law may not have snagged him yet, but the media surely should have. At least he must be made to pay at the polls. JANUARY 6! Enough said.
The atmospherics around these last weeks of campaigning are ominously reminiscent of the weeks in January 1933 before German President von Hindenburg made Adolf Hitler Chancellor at the end of the month. After that, it was all downhill for the planet. Eighty million people had to die before the situation was resolved 12 years later.
Dick Hermann
October 27, 2024
Democrats are right to be worried. The shock of a possible Trump triumph is palpable. It is difficult to get beyond the fact that, despite his disgusting behavior, his threats to prosecute his enemies, his vulgarity, his severe cognitive decline, his disastrous record in office, the actions he proposes should he return to power, and the immense danger he poses, half the country favors his election.
Learning from history is not something Republicans do. They are reprising the disastrous policies they advocated and put in place a hundred years ago, namely severe immigration restrictions and confiscatory tariffs, both of which were major contributors to the Great Depression. Self-defeating policies may win an election, but guarantee defeat within a couple of years, provided that the former GOP permits future elections to take place.
If Kamala wins, post-election chaos is certain. Republicans have been preparing for four years to contest a Democratic win, and they are much farther along than in 2020. In several battleground states, Republican-controlled legislatures have made it easier for county election boards to refuse to certify election results. While there are procedures in each state to either compel certification or substitute alternative certifying authorities, these require court intervention. Consider January 6 as a dress rehearsal for the violence likely to ensue in 2024-25.
More than 100 Republican election deniers have “infiltrated” local election boards in the battleground states, poised to wreak havoc come November 5. A number of these individuals were also fake electors in 2020 and have been indicted for that treasonous act.
One of the counters to the “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” message from the Trump campaign is to remind people that, in 2020, America shut down because of the pandemic and watched Trump mismanage the crisis, with devastating effects on individuals’ lives, work and education. Trump should have been hammered with his historic fiasco every day. The Trump administration did not end in February 2020 when the pandemic began. C’mon folks!
In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein got more votes in the three “blue wall” states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—than the margins by which Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton. Had she not been on the ballot, her voters would have either chosen Clinton or stayed home. She is potentially a disrupter once again, seemingly unmoved by the likelihood that a vote for her is in essence a vote for Trump. Stein’s hubris and recklessness is appalling.
The key thing Harris has to do now: Demonstrate that she wants to move away from Biden’s economic record. She blew the chance to do so in a recent interview where she said she could not think of one thing where she would have done something different from Biden. Big mistake. If you want voters to see you as the “change” candidate, this is not the way to do it.
Trump’s obvious cognitive decline has had zero impact on the campaign. While incomprehensible that anyone would want to cast their lot with a candidate who displays symptoms of likely deteriorating into deep dementia sooner rather than later, it is also inexcusable that the media devotes so little attention to Trump’s mental decay after obsessing over Biden’s cognition.
Mindful that Trump understands very little about economics, Harris and her surrogates should devote much more campaign time and advertising to the utter absurdity of his all-encompassing tariff plan—“all tariffs, in all countries, all the time” (per Yale economist Jeffrey Sonnefeld), which will amount to a huge national sales tax on every American.
The question voters need to ask themselves as they enter the voting booth is this: “How will what the candidates are promising affect me and my family?” If they actually do this, they need to vote for Harris and Democrats down ballot. Trump’s proposed tariffs, just one of his Pandora’s box of phenomenally stupid and thoughtless proposals, will amount to a heavy tax increase on every American family and a spur to rampant inflation.
I am disappointed, but not surprised that the artificial intelligence elephant in the room has not been discussed by either candidate or appears anywhere in what passes these days as party platforms. AI in the near term is likely to have a massive impact on jobs, and we do not have a plan in place to deal with the colossal disruption that sudden mammoth job loss could produce. While Trump probably does not understand the issue, Harris certainly does.
Similarly, too little attention has been paid by both Harris and the media to Trump’s epic bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to the fact that we lack policies in place born of that catastrophic event to manage the next pandemic.
January 6, which Trump now says was “a day of love.” NOT! It was a day of infamy. This was high treason, period. Full stop. The very long and achingly plodding arm of the law may not have snagged him yet, but the media surely should have. At least he must be made to pay at the polls. JANUARY 6! Enough said.
The atmospherics around these last weeks of campaigning are ominously reminiscent of the weeks in January 1933 before German President von Hindenburg made Adolf Hitler Chancellor at the end of the month. After that, it was all downhill for the planet. Eighty million people had to die before the situation was resolved 12 years later.
Dick Hermann
October 27, 2024
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