The race is tightening, and it's hard (for me) to understand. But I'll try.

After her debate with The Former Guy, which most people say she won, Kamala Harris had a bump in her lead in the election. The polling site, 538, ran their 1,000 simulations of what might happen on election day, and Kamala won sixty percent of the time. Since then, things have gotten closer. The latest simulation showed Harris winning 56% of the time.

After all of Trump's legal troubles and sexual assault revelations, not to mention the January 6 insurrection, it's hard to imagine anyone voting for him ever again. In my day (as the oldsters used to say), just a whiff of scandal would scuttle a candidate's chances. Rockefeller's divorce and remarriage, Eagleton's having seen a psychiatrist, Hart's shenanigans with Donna Rice aboard the Monkey Business were all deal breakers. Americans were very uptight about morality in the last century.

Republicans have long held themselves up as the party of family values, but they have embraced their thrice-married, woman grabbing, nonsense-babbling insurrectionist since he descended his golden escalator in 2015. Why? Why can't they quit him?

Americans just love a celebrity, and they are willing to put up with misbehavior from the rich and famous that would send mere mortals to the ash heap of history.

There's the racism factor.

There's the misogyny factor. Trump has now run against two supremely capable women candidates, and perhaps Americans prefer a woman-grabbing man to a woman. When you're famous, they let you do it. They love it when you do it and they can read about it in the tabloids.

Kamala, of course, combines the racism and misogyny factors. Some things haven't changed since "my day."

Republicans are wont to call anything Democrats want to accomplish SOCIALISM in a very loud voice. They scare a populace that would benefit from a bit more socialism, frankly.

There is the myth that Republicans are better on the economy than Democrats. The numbers since the New Deal refute that myth.

Americans seem to believe that Republicans are better on national security. But Trump doesn't act like your average Republican politician. He believes what dictators say over what American intelligence tells him. He is eager to dismantle NATO and to alienate our allies.

Then there are the outright lies.

The first lie is that Democrats want open borders. Not even close to true. And both Biden and Obama deported more people than Trump ever did, more deportees than I'm comfortable with, frankly. Trump called on Republican legislators to kill a bipartisan immigration bill that most Republicans who voted against had originally planned to vote for. He needed the issue for the 2024 election. In other words, he killed a bill that would have improved the immigration situation so that he could complain about it.

The second lie is that the Biden economy is a disaster. There is some inflation, but the U.S. has handled the post-COVID economic situation much better than the rest of the world. People keep complaining about the price of eggs, as if that were more important than saving democracy.

The third lie is that doctors in hospitals are executing babies after they are born. Does anybody really believe that? It is illegal and it doesn't happen.

There are so many more lies, but those are three of the biggest ones.

There's the authoritarianism factor. The Trump voter really loves an authoritarian, and they can't wait to see him stick it to certain other people.

Donald Trump is completely ignorant on matters of science. He claims to know more about everything than anybody, but his beliefs are ridiculous. Injecting bleach or other disinfectants into COVID patients. Infusing COVID patients with bright lights (through their butts, perhaps). Claiming that Canada can turn on a giant tap to solve California's water problems. Claiming that forest fires can be prevented by sweeping the forest floor. Claiming that there are piles of dead bald eagles under every windmill. Claiming that windmills cause cancer. Claiming that windmills kill whales.

I am tempted to say that Trump's scientific ignorance actually helps him with many voters. Yes. Many Trump voters hate the intellectual elites for lording it over them. They welcome even the most ridiculous counter-claims against anything experts say. This ties in with the conspiracy mind that believes in wild claims that "they" don't want you to know about!

So, when a candidate comes along who flaunts his ignorance proudly, he's their man! And voting for him owns the liberals! And that is quite worth the price of ending the rule of law, isn't it?

Oh, how they lie! Oh, how they whine!

 Lindsay Graham is less than pleased with Trump's performance in his debate with Kamala Harris. Here's what he said, as reported by Politico:

        "She said, 'We inherited a mess.' I was yelling and screaming, 'No you didn't--you inherited low gas prices, a secure border, a vaccine for Covid, and you inherited the biggest Mideast change of my lifetime, the Abraham Accords, and now everything is to shit.'"

Well, the Republicans, the functional ones, who say the things they wish Trump would say, have hammered home several lies over the course of this campaign. And Lindsay, who can lie with the best of them, wishes Trump would brag about his administration's accomplishments, whether they're real or imagined. (Secure borders? Yes, the asylum seekers were locked securely in their cages, wondering where their children were. A vaccine? Yes, there was a vaccine, but Trump couldn't decide whether to take credit for it or question whether it worked.)

The problem with Trump, Lindsay, is that he is incapable of telling small lies. He is too busy claiming that babies are being executed at birth, that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors' pets, and that the entire country has reverted to a hellish state in the mere three years since he's been gone.

In any case, we voters are lucky that journalists are finally fact checking Trump. The Republicans are not happy about that. They're used to him telling his whoppers without any pushback. Let's hear what Tom Cotton had to say:

        "I thought it was a 3-on-1 debate. Where were the fact checks on Kamala Harris?"

Well, he and his fellow Republicans are blaming Trump's debate loss on the moderators for finally doing their job. When Trump is asked a follow-up question after one of his incomprehensible answers, he whines that he is being treated unfairly. Not just unfairly, but more unfairly than any politician in history. The truth is that Trump cannot field the most routine questions that reporters ask all politicians.

If moderators are checking Trump's "facts," it's about damn time. And checking Trump's facts takes up a lot of time if done properly. Perhaps Tom Cotton missed fact checks on Kamala Harris because they got lost in the blizzard of Trump's checks.

So, the lying and the whining begin. About the whining. The Republicans consider themselves tough guys. There is a longtime myth that Republicans are better than Democrats on defense. Tough guys at home and on the world stage. But, oh, how they melt when anyone questions or criticizes them. So unfair! So disrespectful!

They could dispense with the whining they have to do because their candidate is incapable of defending himself. They could pick a candidate who is truly tough, who is not all talk. Trump has spent the last eight-plus years insulting anyone who dared go against him. The bully can dish it out, but he can't take it. So his fellow Republicans are compelled to snivel about his treatment.

Someday, they'll be rid of this pussy. Then maybe they'll be able to behave normally again.

Trump's latest attack on Kamala Harris's character

 The whole "I was nearly in a helicopter crash with Willie Brown" story is Donald Trump's attempt to cement in people's minds his accusation that Kamala Harris "slept her way to the top." It's a common,  viciously sexist method of attacking a woman in politics. One is torn between extreme anger at Trump's attempt at character assassination, and utter boredom at its predictability. Well, really, one doesn't have to choose. The reactions are not mutually exclusive.

As if an ambitious woman could have only one reason to have a relationship with a man. As if said woman, no matter how intelligent and hard working, had only one route to the top. (Boredom is winning the battle being fought in my brain.)

And yet the accusation has taken root in the minds of some men, and probably a few women. But only, I think, in the minds of people who want to believe it; that is, people who are Kamala Harris's political enemies.

The thing that really makes me angry is that the accuser is one of the worst people in America. And that the accusation is amplified by other very bad people. And that the people who believe the accusation believe, at this late date, that one character flaw, if it were true, would outweigh Trump's endless list of character flaws if placed on a balance.

The Republican Party: There is no bottom.

I started writing these posts a long time ago, and I've been waiting all this time for the Republican Party to hit bottom. Periodically, I have to admit that the pit seems to be bottomless. I thought that, surely, Donald Trump must be it, but then came J.D. Vance.

You can't say the Republicans aren't creative. Now that Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, the Republicans have now invented a new qualification for a president--a woman president, at least--she must have borne biological children. Kamala (aka Momala) Harris is merely a stepmother, and that won't do.

Why? No reason? Did they just pull this new qualification out of their asses? Maybe, but judging by their accelerating drift towards fascism (see Project 2025), I'm thinking that they think an American woman is not whole until she has borne children for the Fatherland. Blonde children, preferably. Well, I don't think Kamala could have accomplished that magic trick. Nor can Usha Vance, I'm betting. Nor can J.D.'s couch cushions. If enough women didn't already know that Donald Trump and the Republican Party hate them, I think J.D. Vance may have communicated that message even more clearly.

Republicans have become aggressively odious, and it has to be because they want to deflect public attention from their own sins. Some of the loudest people in the party are the ones who are in no position to throw stones. The jacketless pedophile-enabler in the House is one of the most vocal slanderers. Then there's the vaping public groin-grabber. The Republican voters are not sending us their best people.

Undecided in the 2024 presidential election? What the hell is wrong with you?

Similarly to the 2016 election, 2024 is presented by the media as being between "two highly unpopular choices." People seem to believe, as they did in 2016, that this is a normal election. In 2020, enough voters were alarmed at all the horrible things that Trump had done, and that knowledge put Joe Biden in the White House. But memory of that four years seems to have faded shockingly quickly.

Let's look back.

In 2016, Trump made grandiose promises without having worked out any plan as to how to deliver on them.

He promised that he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something terrific." He never elaborated on that statement, and no one observing his campaign activity and, later, his time in the White House would see any evidence of anyone doing work on a replacement plan.

He promised to work on America's infrastructure. Every year, "Infrastructure Week" came and went with no signs on anyone doing any work on it.

He promised to build a wall at our southern border, and to make Mexico pay for it. How anyone would believe he could deliver on that promise is beyond me. He did put up some sections of very flimsy wall, and took money out of the military budget to do that. Perhaps one could say that the Mexican immigrants who have joined the U.S. military paid for that? 

He promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. It's lucky we only gave him four years, because he grew the budget deficit by fifty percent.

He promised to bring back coal, a horrible idea. We're lucky he failed.

He promised to bring back manufacturing, but made no visible effort to do so.

Meanwhile, during the campaign, he revealed himself to be a crooked businessman and a moral disaster as a human being.

We found out, by his own recorded words, that he is a serial molester of women. We found out that, as the funder of beauty pageants, he felt it was his right to enter the dressing rooms and view teenage models in various stages of undress.

We found out that his Trump University was a scam. Trump, who claims he never settles lawsuits, settled that one.

We found out that he doesn't pay many of his building contractors, most of whom don't have the funds to take him to court for payment.

We saw him making fun of a reporter's physical handicap.

We heard him insulting Gold Star parents. His idea of comforting a grieving military wife was to tell her that her husband "knew what he was getting into." He called soldiers losers.

After the 2016 election, pundits waited for an expected "pivot" into a more presidential persona. (Some pundits are apparently still waiting in 2024.

In spite of promises to release his tax returns at some vague future date, he never did.

He opened a Trump hotel in the Old Post Office, and charged foreign dignitaries ridiculous rates when they came to visit.

He never divested from his business interests while president.

He assigned some of the most difficult governing tasks to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who had no particular talent or experience to get those jobs done.

He promised us that he would be working hard every day, not golfing like Obama. He golfed more than any president in history, at his own properties.

He put asylum-seekers in cages, and separated children from their families. Some of those children could not be located later.

He had no understanding of climate change. He claimed that there were "piles of bald eagles" at the feet of windmills, and that the sound of windmills causes cancer. He continues to claim that windmills over water kill whales.

He hates electric cars, and believes that batteries in electric boats will electrocute passengers if the boat sinks.

His handling of the COVID-19 crisis led to unnecessary deaths. He had previously dismantled the government organization charged with handling epidemics. He didn't want testing for COVID because more testing meant higher numbers and made America look bad. He did not trust the scientists who understood the disease. He advocated various dangerous quack remedies: injecting disinfectant into patients; using hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. He was against the use of masks and social distancing. He distrusted vaccines, while taking credit for their production. His example caused many to refuse the vaccines, and demand unproven and dangerous "cures." Many of these people died horrible deaths.

He admired despotic rulers, such as Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orban, while alienating our longtime allies.

I would go on with his disastrous presidency, but I think it would just cause numbness in the reader.

It is well-known (although perhaps not well enough known or enough believed) that he attempted to prevent the Biden administration from taking office through a violent insurrection, attempts to create fraudulent slates of electors, and frivolous lawsuits (all dismissed).

Now, Joe Biden is described as old and feeble, which I suppose he is, but during the last four years he has done a solid, if unflashy, job. The undecided voter may somehow feel that the choice between Trump and Biden is a choice between two equally bad candidates. I believe that anyone who sees these two as equally bad is sadly politically disengaged and thinks that we're in the midst of a normal election cycle.

I was in the barber shop yesterday, and the barber said a couple of things that alarmed me. First, he said he figured that Trump did a pretty good job as president. I would say that the barber is either a low-information citizen, or a high-misinformation citizen if he really thinks Trump did anything close to a good job. Second, he lamented that "in the old days, people in presidential debates talked about their policies, while nowadays they just call each other names." If the barber were really paying attention, he would know that there is only one name-caller, and that his performance in his last debate with Joe Biden was designed to prevent any policies from being discussed.

Undecided voters, please try to see Trump for what he is, and try to get enough information to differentiate between two very different candidates.

Will Trump's convictions affect the elections, they ask...

 What a question! And yet, there's not an obvious answer.

Yesterday, after Trump was convicted on 34 of 34 felony counts, I was watching his devotees protesting the verdicts. One guy was wearing a hat that said, "#1 Fan," and carrying a poster that said, "FREE FATHER TERESA!" Well, the convictions won't affect his vote. He believes that Biden stole the election, and that Trump is being politically persecuted, rather than receiving his just deserts. There is no help for people like him. The only hope the Republic has is that some of them will become too depressed to leave the house on election day.

There is another group of voters who may have once or twice voted for him, and who still view him favorably, but who have said that a felony conviction will change their minds. Should we believe them? They set a mighty low bar for a presidential candidate. Unconvicted! Will they move the goalposts to something like waiting to see if he's convicted in his other cases, you know, the ones that won't be held until after the election? Who knows? We hope that some of them will vote for solid, competent government this time.

Now, here's the group that really concerns me: for one reason or another, they have no notion of what kind of person Trump is, and how much he loves authoritarianism. They seem to have glossed over the January 6 insurrection altogether. In any case, they really aren't sure whether Trump is any different from Joe Biden. They don't seem to remember that no other presidential candidate made fun of the handicapped, bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, denigrated soldiers as losers, made up cutesy little names for their political opponents, made all manner of buffoonish comments on every matter under the sun. These folks need to read something besides the sports page, and take an interest in their own self-interest.

I know that the economy seems to affect more votes than any other issue, at least that's what the media say. These undecided voters (how could anybody be undecided?) need to take a larger look at the economy around the world. Part of the problem with the world's economic well-being is the COVID epidemic. Do you remember COVID? Surely you do. Unless a case of long COVID has played havoc with your memory. In any case, Americans worry about inflation and the price of eggs, as well they should. But they should also note that the U.S.A's inflation rate is lower than that of most other countries. There's a reason for that. Solid, competent government.

Some people really believe the myth that the Republican Party is "better on the economy," even though history tells another story. And some believe the label that the Republicans put on Democrats indiscriminately: the radical left. That's just name-calling and fear-mongering. There are really not many radical leftists around these days, unless that's how you view anybody to the left of Herbert Hoover.

And, now, I'm sure there are Democrats who are disappointed with Biden's handling of the Gaza crisis. They think that Biden's support of Israel's right to exist is screwing the Palestinians. And there are many Republicans and Democrats who think that Biden is being too lukewarm on his support of Israel.

What I am saying is that, if you value your right to choose future presidents, that concern should override difference of opinion on other issues. If Trump wins, that right slips away. He lost in 2020, and fought tooth and nail to stay in power. Remember that?

Oh, and speaking of the right to choose, let's think about women's rights in general. Turning back the clock should not be an option.

Trump, magical thinking, mass hysteria

 The world is a messy, complex place, and I think it's a natural, human desire that it be simplified. Some of us know that that desire isn't attainable, but the wish is too powerful in others.

We see the wish in action in some crime stories. Take Spiderman, for example. He's got certain advantages over policemen. Aside from his "spider strength" and his ability to swing through the air on his webbing, he also has no need to follow the rules policemen are meant to follow. He doesn't need a warrant to enter a building, and he catches criminals red-handed, wraps them up in webbing, leaving them and the evidence of their crimes for the police to find. The reader or viewer is happy that the bad guys can be caught without his having to follow all those silly rules.

There has been lots of newsprint (an archaic noun, I know) spent trying to figure out the Trump voter. It has always amused and puzzled me that people who consider themselves true Americans, from the real America (quaint small towns in the popular imagination in the heartland), should take as their champion a loudmouth from the anti-American no-go zone of New York City. What does he offer them?

Well, he's the guy who offers a simple world. He tells his followers that America is a hellscape, and that it's simple for him to clean it up. Why are we so nice to criminals? Why can't police knock a few heads now and then? (Of course, in the Trumpian imagination, these thugs who are getting their heads knocked are mostly black and brown men and their welfare-cheating women.) Trump wants it to be OK for police to shoot shoplifters on sight. The judicial system is too expensive and takes too long (I'll leave it to the reader to roll their eyes at the irony here).

In short, Trump nourishes his followers' worst instincts and calls them virtues.

A little aside about Trump's "hellscape": Make America Great Again? It would be considered an outrage if a liberal were to suggest that America is somehow no longer great. How does Trump get away with that assertion? Well, it's a simple matter if your predecessor in the presidency is that office's first Black. I have said before that, for a certain kind of American, a Black president upended their worldview. When Trump tells them that eight years of Barack Obama left a shattered America, they believe him.

Funny thing is, Trump is trying to convince everyone that, in Biden's not-quite-yet-four years, the city of Washington DC has crumbled to pieces and is unrecognizable. You may recall that, as a result of Trump's actions on January 6, 2021, he bequeathed us a damaged Capitol building with shit on the walls. He also left the city with a tacky hotel it didn't have before. That hotel is now a decidedly un-tacky Waldorf Astoria, and the Capitol has, of course, been cleaned up and repaired.

The city is better off since 2021, and we don't need Donald Trump to come back and fuck it up again.

Thoughts on possible Biden-Trump debate...

 Trump says he thinks Biden's sniffing coke, and that's how he made it through the State of the Union address. So he says any debates ought to come with a drug test. But he said the exact same thing about Hillary when he debated her.

Never mind all that. It shouldn't distract us from the memory of Trump's appalling behavior when he debated Biden in 2020. Rules? What rules? Normally, each candidate gets a certain number of minutes to answer a question, and the other candidate gets time for a rebuttal. But Trump wouldn't shut up during Biden's time. No other presidential debater has ever behaved so abominably.

So I think any upcoming debate between these candidates needs special handling. I was thinking of twin soundproof booths. Not so the candidates can't hear each other, but so the candidates can't interrupt each other.

Even better, if Trump should repeatedly flout the rules, he should receive an electric shock every time he interrupts. That would make the debate worth watching.