Posted inDonald Trump

Trump’s authoritarianism is being clearly demonstrated already

Well, that didn't take long. Just ten days have passed since Trump was elected president, and he's wasting no time proving that those of us who said he'd be a dictator on Day 1 are being proven correct.  Even before Day 1, obviously, since Trump won't take office until January 20, 2025. But his current nominees for top jobs in his administration are showing that if there's one thing we can be sure of in Trump's second stint as president, it's that he'll be our most authoritarian president ever, by far. Before I talk about what horribly bad nominees he's…
1
Posted in2024 election 2026 election Donald Trump

Fellow Trump opponents, here’s what gives me hope

Election day was really depressing for me. While I knew that the race between Harris and Trump was a toss-up, I expected that Harris would pull out a victory. Heck, maybe even a fairly easy one. At the least, I thought the election would come down to narrow margins in a few swing states. So when it became evident that Trump was the victor before I went to bed around midnight out here in Oregon, my sleep was fitful. I couldn't stop thinking about the disasters that await our country and the world with another four years of Trump in…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Win or (probably) lose, I’m thankful for how Kamala Harris campaigned

It's turning out to be a sad night. I started watching the election returns on MSNBC around 5 pm with a lot of optimism. After all, a couple of days ago I wrote a blog post called "Why I expect Harris will beat Trump fairly easily." For sure, that's not going to happen. I was wrong. At the moment the New York Times Live Presidential Forecast gives Trump more than a 95% chance of victory. Harris' only option is to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Currently Trump is leading by 3 points in Pennsylvania, 6 points in Michigan, and 4…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Why I expect Harris will beat Trump fairly easily

As I told a friend today, when I consider how I feel about the almost-upon-us presidential election, it's difficult for me to separate out my strong desire to see Harris win from factual indicators of how her campaign is going. Nonetheless, below are reasons for why I'm confident that the election is going to turn out surprisingly well for Harris. I say "surprisingly," because the general attitude among political pundits is that this is a very tight 50-50 toss-up election. Indeed, that's how the three prediction models that I follow basically are rating the electoral college race: Nate Silver's Silver…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Environment

Climate is best reason to vote for Harris, and nobody’s talking about it

There are many strange things about the current presidential campaign, including: how Harris suddenly became the Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew; how the Republican Party could happily get behind Trump, a convicted felon who lost the last election; how neither campaign is speaking much about the climate crisis, even though it is by far the most important long-term issue.  I've watched all of Harris' debates and major speeches. Her silence on global warming is deafening. So is Trump's, but that's to be expected. Based on his first term in office, and what he's saying now, if Trump is elected it's…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

My tips about preserving sanity in the runup to presidential election

It takes one to know one, goes the familiar saying. Applying that to the current political situation, I know  the stress lots of people are under right now, because I'm feeling really stressed myself.  Today I mentioned in my Tai Chi class that I was going to try to use the Tai Chi principle of relaxed softness on November 5, election day, because I'm going to need all the help I can get in staying calm as the votes are counted and announced. That led to an interesting mid-class discussion among the half dozen or so students in attendance. It…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Trump campaign is self-destructing. Great news for Harris.

Like lots of Democrats, I worry incessantly about how well the Harris campaign is doing. Even though the presidential race is essentially a toss-up, us Democrats fret that Harris isn't doing better, while Trump supporters look at the same toss-up and think, "We're going to win for sure." But today I'm feeling a lot more optimistic.  Right on schedule, with just over a week to go before the election, the Trump campaign is self-destructing in plain view of voters. The clearest sign of this is the disastrous Trump rally in Madison Square Garden Sunday night.  Trump and other speakers were…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

I ditched my Washington Post subscription after Bezos tanked a Harris endorsement

After Trump won the presidency in 2016, I subscribed to the digital versions of the New York Times and Washington Post. For about $15 a month each, I figured this was money well spent to support some of the best journalists in the country. You know, those who Trump calls "the enemy of the people." Or more recently, "the enemy within." (That category includes many others as well, including Democratic politicians and liberal activists.) For almost eight years I've enjoyed both newspapers. But today I went to the Subscriptions section of my iPhone settings and unsubscribed from the digital Washington…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

My prediction is that Kamala Harris will be a great president

Last night I watched the CNN town hall featuring Kamala Harris and a group of undecided Pennsylvania voters. No Donald Trump, because he was afraid of an invitation to debate Harris on CNN that she accepted, and when CNN offered Trump his own town hall, he chickened out of that also. So much for the fake-macho Republican presidential candidate that world leaders supposedly fear. Trump doesn't even have the courage to go head-to-head with Harris again, undoubtedly because she kicked his ass badly in their previous debate. Watching Harris answer questions from the undecided voters, occasionally side-stepping a pointed question…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump National politics

Trump is a fascist, says his chief of staff, John Kelly

What bothers me the most about today's Republican Party isn't the conservatism -- my mother was a lifelong Republican with deeply held conservative values -- but the Party's dangerous submission to Donald Trump, thereby elevating a single man's personality over Republican principles. The Republican Party that my mother belonged to was fervently anti-communist and anti-totalitarian. It believed that the United States had an almost sacred duty to spread democracy across the world and resist authoritarianism. Yet here we are, in 2024, with whatever Trump spouts off becoming the de facto policy of the Republican Party. Trump admires the dictatorial leaders…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump National politics

New Yorker article: “Trump is a distinctively vile human being”

At this late date in the 2024 presidential campaign, what mystifies me the most about the election if how about half of this country's voters still support Trump despite his obvious vileness. In an article in the October 21, 2024 issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, a highly skilled writer and analyzer of current events, discusses the disease of Trumpism in "As Bad as All That: Donald Trump and the unmaking of America." (Online title: "How Alarmed Should We Be if Trump wins again?")Download How Alarmed Should We Be If Trump Wins Again? | The New Yorker The final…
2
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Trump is mentally unfit to be president. Let’s hope he won’t be.

It's difficult for me to decide which of Trump's many obnoxious qualities are the worst. Is it his habitual shameless lying? Is it his refusal to admit that he lost to Biden in a free and fair election? Is it his wanna-be authoritarianism reflected in his love for dictators like the rulers of Russia, North Korea, and China? Is it his attempt to overthrow our democracy by his support for the January 6 insurrection and efforts to undermine the 2020 electoral college results? Is it the fact that he's been convicted criminally of falsifying business records and found by a…
3
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

The New Yorker endorsement of Kamala Harris is a thing of beauty

I'd expect nothing less of The New Yorker, a magazine I've subscribed to for much of my life that is known for its great writing and (often lengthy) articles on important subjects, not to mention quality fiction and reviews of books, theatre, TV shows, and movies. The New Yorker's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president in the October 7 issue was five pages long, much more extensive than the typical newspaper endorsement -- assuming your town still has a daily newspaper (mine does) which makes endorsements (mine doesn't, nor does it even have an opinion section anymore).Download The New Yorker…
2
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris is favored to beat Trump, but the race is damn close

It's hard to believe that October will arrive in just eleven days, because the month after that is November, election time! In this country our presidential elections, including primaries, go on for so long, it can seem endless. But now the end is growing near. Which means it's time for supporters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to look at polls and election prediction models with increased fear and hope. That's what I've been doing from my vantage point of a strong Harris backer. The good news from my perspective is that Harris has a narrow electoral college lead in…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump

Hard to feel sympathy for Trump when he acts like an asshole

After the first assassination attempt that left Trump with a wounded ear and a rally attendee dead, I felt some sympathy for Trump, along with most Americans. It helped that at first Trump spoke about being a changed man after his brush with death, vowing to unify the country. That didn't last long. Soon Trump was back to blaming Democrats for the assassination attempt, ignoring the inconvenient truth that the shooter was a registered Republican and hadn't expressed any particular political leanings.  Yesterday there was another attempted assassination according to the Secret Service, though the person in custody, Ryan W.…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Debate with Harris showed what an unmanly wimp Donald Trump is

Donald Trump likes to pretend that he's a macho guy. But in truth, he's really unmanly. Even more, he's a wimp -- as Bill Maher likes to call him, a "whiny little bitch."  Trump is always complaining about how people treat him unfairly. Yet while he demands respect, Trump doesn't act in ways that elicit respect. Speaking as a man with 75 years of experience of that gender, men know the difference between a leader who, as the saying goes, "speaks softly and carries a big stick" versus what Trump does: speak loudly and carry a fragile twig. Now, I…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris beat Trump so badly in the debate, I almost feel sorry for him

If this was a boxing match, it should have been called after the first round: technical knock-out for the clear victor over Donald Trump, Kamala Harris! But the bout, or rather the debate, went on for more than ninety minutes tonight. Trump got in a few good punches, but the evening clearly belonged to Harris. She outdid him on both style and substance, leaving Trump fumbling and mumbling his way through answers to questions that he clearly was incapable of using to his advantage. Largely this was because Trump is so bad at talking about specific policies, preferring to resort…
2
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris and Walz interviewed on CNN. Now let’s see Trump and Vance.

Ever since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, following Biden's withdrawal, many in the media have been clamoring for her to do interviews and press conferences. Today Harris and Walz were interviewed by CNN's Dana Bash in a Georgia diner. Hopefully this will put an end to the claims that Harris is scared to answer tough questions. She handled everything Bash threw at her with calm competence, as did Walz. Given how often Trump changes his policy positions, it's amusing that Bash thought it was worthwhile to ask Harris about her 2019 statement that she'd ban fracking if…
1
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Nate Silver says Harris is a great candidate and RFK Jr. dropout won’t mean much

Last night Kamala Harris gave one of the best acceptance speeches I've ever heard from the presidential pick of the Democratic National Convention. I've watched them all since the 1960s, I'm pretty sure.  Harris was virtually flawless in both the substance and delivery of her speech. And I've added "virtually" not because I found anything not to like in what she said, just because no one is perfect. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch the 38 minute speech. Which is relatively short by acceptance speech standards, way shorter than Trump's. NPR reports that Harris' speech…
No Comments
Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris-Walz are doing great, but I have one big worry

Happy days are here again for us Democrats. We've gone from severe depression when it looked like Biden was going to stay in the race and hand a victory to Trump, to fervent joy now that Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket and is kicking Trump's butt. The good news is plentiful. I'll be content with just providing a few examples before doing what is typical for Democrats: worrying.  Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" take on the presidential race currently has Harris with a 56% chance of winning this November, with Trump at 44%. That's basically a…
No Comments