Salem Political Snark

Watch Tim Walz's inspiring acceptance speech at Democratic National Convention

Like many millions of other Americans, I've become a big fan of Tim Walz. Tonight he gave an acceptance speech for the vice-president nomination at the Democratic National Convention that showed why he inspires so much love and affection.

Walz is a regular guy who happens to be a skilled politician -- a wonderful change from the usual skilled politicians trying to appear like regular guys. Yeah, I'm talking about you, J.D. Vance.

The problem for Vance and other regular guy wanna-be's is that you can't fake the sort of background Walz wears effortlessly, because it is who he is, not who he pretends to be.

Son of a soldier, 24 years in National Guard, skilled shooter and hunter who believes in gun control, social studies teacher, coach of a high school that won a state championship, father of two children thanks to fertility treatment, twelve terms in Congress as a representative of a conservative district,  Governor of Minnesota who worked with Republicans to get things done, and now, a candidate for vice-president of the United States.

Watch his acceptance speech. It's only about fifteen minutes long. Short and inspiring. 

I thought I grew up in a small town. But Walz beat me by a bit.

He says that his hometown in Nebraska had 400 people, with 24 students in his high school graduation class. Me, my rural California town had about 700 residents, and my eighth grade class had about 20 students, 100 or so in my high school class, which was in a town some distance away.

So I understand what Walz means when he talks in his acceptance speech about being a good neighbor. In small towns, in rural areas, people have to rely on each other, because outside help typically is quite distant. They may practice a different religion or belong to a different political party than their neighbors, but what binds them is stronger than what divides them.

At least, that's the way it used to be. That's how I remember it from the age of 75, and how Tim Walz remembers it from his age of 60. Things are different now. Our country isn't as united. But Walz and Kamala Harris want to change that. Sure, it'll be an uphill battle, assuming they win this November, given how angry and disappointed Trump supporters will be that their favored candidate lost.

Walz's acceptance speech shows how good-hearted this man is. He's the perfect person to become vice-president, someone with the character to work hard at healing our divisions, a successful coach who can help lead us to victory over fear and distrust of those who aren't like us.

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 tossup, but is a heck of a lot better than the 27% chance Silver gave Biden on the day Biden withdrew from the race. 

In about three weeks Harris has doubled the odds of a Democrat residing in the White House for another four years. A Washington Post story today, "5 striking new poll numbers amid Harris's rise," says that Democratic enthusiasm for Harris-Walz is considerably greater than Republican enthusiasm for Trump-Vance.

It’s been evident for a while that Democrats have been injected with huge amounts of enthusiasm since Harris replaced President Joe Bidenon the ticket. Call it “vibes” or something else; it’s real. Polls this week reflect that.

While a Monmouth University poll from June showed just 46 percent of Democrats said they were enthusiastic about a Trump-Biden rematch, that number has nearly doubled to 85 percent for the Trump-Harris race. Democrats’ enthusiasm leapfrogged Republicans, whose excitement stayed steady at 71 percent.

In other words, Democrats went from a 25-point enthusiasm deficit to a 14-point advantage, at least on this specific question. (Other polls have tested enthusiasm to vote, which is a somewhat different question, and the two parties have been closer.)

Also notable from the Monmouth poll: Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats say they’re optimistic about the election, compared with about three-quarters of Republicans.

And an AP-NORC poll this week showed that 63 percent of Democrats are excited about a potential Harris administration, compared with 57 percent of Republicans for another Trump administration.

So what could go wrong with Harris-Walz before election day? I'm not much worried about the Trump campaign digging up dirt on them. Both Harris and Walz have run for office numerous times. It sure seems that any truly horrible stuff about their backgrounds would have come to light by now.

Plus, it seems clear that once voters form an impression of a candidate, if that person is popular, their popularity isn't going to take a big hit if some negative news about them appears. Trump survived all kinds of bad press in 2016 because voters were attracted to him for other reasons.

I'm also dubious that Harris-Walz will be hurt by policy positions they take during the rest of the campaign. Again, voters care more about the person than the policies they espouse, though single issue voters may be swayed by a policy position they vehemently dislike. 

So my biggest worry is something that neither the Harris or Trump campaign has any control over: whether a war breaks out between Israel and Iran, which likely would draw in the United States on the side of Israel.

Israel is run by Jewish right-wing zealots. Iran is run by Islamic terrorist zealots. Not exactly an encouraging situation given the saber-rattling each side has engaged in recently.

Iran says that Israel won't be attacked if a cease-fire deal is worked out between Israel and Hamas. But Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, doesn't want a deal, since this could mean the end of his right-wing coalition that keeps him in power and, importantly, out of the hands of justice for crimes he's alleged to have committed. 

If all-out war broke out between Israel and Iran, gasoline prices would soar owing to a disruption of Middle East oil supplies. News of the war would dominate headlines. Voters would unfairly blame the Biden-Harris administration for the war. Republicans would use the war to hammer Harris-Walz: "Never would have happened if Trump had been president."

A minor conflict between Iran and Israel wouldn't have these major effects, just some lesser ones. That's my hope, that both Iran and Israel realize that they're better off cooling things down rather than heating things up.

However, Netanyahu could want war with Iran to boost the chance that Trump will be elected president in November, since he basically gave a Republican campaign speech when he spoke to Congress this summer. And perpetual war keeps Netanyahu in power, as noted before. 

Hopefully my worry won't come to pass. It'd be super disappointing to have a Harris-Walz victory snatched away by an Israel-Iran war. 

Trump lied lots in yesterday's press conference. Reporters let him get away with it.

At least since 2015, and before that also, it's been obvious that Donald Trump lies. Not just a little. A lot. He's a compulsive liar. Can't stop himself. Even, or probably I should say, especially, at yesterday's press conference at Mar-a-Lago.

The New York Times fact-checked Trump's rambling, often incoherent, statements in response to questions asked by reporters -- which couldn't be heard at all clearly, since the Trump campaign didn't provide a microphone for those asking questions, probably so Trump could blather on about whatever he wanted without the television-viewing audience knowing the question he was asked.

I've copied in the first part of the fact-checks for your lie-admiring pleasure, a quote from Trump followed by the New York Times assessment of Trump's veracity. The story provides evidence for the assessments.

I think the Times is being generous in some of their non-false assessments, including the first one, since the King speech attracted an estimated 250,000 people and Trump's January 6, 2021 speech attracted an estimated 53,000 people.

“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech. And you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more.”
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This lacks evidence.

"She wants to take away your guns."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"They take the national strategic reserves. They're virtually empty now. We have never had it this low."-— Former President Donald J. Trump
This is exaggerated.

"The vast majority of this country does support me."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"They're going to destroy social security."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"Everybody is going to be forced to buy an electric car."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"Our tax cuts, which are the biggest in history."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"They're drilling now because they had to go back because gasoline was going up to seven, eight, nine gallons a barrel. The day after the election, if they won, you're going to have fuel prices go through the roof."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"If you go back and check your records for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul. Abdul was the leader of the Taliban still is, but had a strong talk with him. For 18 months. Not one American soldier was shot at or killed, but not even shot at 18 months."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"Democrats are really the radical ones on this, because they're allowed to do abortion on the eighth and ninth month, and even after birth."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"Nobody was killed on Jan. 6."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
False.

"Inflation was caused by their bad energy problems."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This is misleading.

"She couldn't pass her bar exam."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This needs context.

"All around the world, prisons are being emptied out into our country."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This lacks evidence.

"She was the border czar 100 percent. And all of a sudden, for the last few weeks, she's not the border czar anymore. Like nobody ever said it."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This is misleading.

"Twenty million people came over the border in the last -- during the Biden-Harris administration, 20 million people, and it could be much higher than that."
— Former President Donald J. Trump
This is exaggerated.

There were additional lies, of course.

For example, Trump said something he's lied about before: that prior to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, all Democrats and all Republicans favored returning the question of abortion rights to the states, rather than having it legal nationally (or words to that effect).

That's absurd. There's zero evidence that the Democratic Party or a majority of Democrats called for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I have no idea what Trump is talking about, aside from a lie that his feeble mind believes will help disarm an issue that has gone badly for Republicans ever since the Supreme Court decision.

Last night Lawrence O'Donnell used his MSNBC show to roundly criticize the reporters at Trump's press conference who meekly asked mostly softball questions, then failed to use a follow-up question to point out that what Trump said wasn't true. I agree with O'Donnell that the reporters seemed afraid of Trump.

Sure, if Trump doesn't like a "nasty" question (meaning, a hard-hitting question), he's inclined to not call on that reporter at future press conferences. But that's the price to be paid for journalistic integrity. 

Today I heard Tom Nichols, a writer for The Atlantic, making similar points in his appearance on Julie Mason's POTUS show on satellite radio. He too argued that the media needs to do a much better job of pointing out both Trump's lies and, equally importantly, his inability to reason, think, and speak coherently.

Nichols and Mason said that the media tends to normalize Trump, all too often choosing to report Trump's utterances as if they were normal political speech, whereas in truth they are more like the wacko conspiracy theories spouted by a crazy uncle who watches way too much Fox News. Or the misstatements of an aunt who is exhibiting signs of dementia.

At the press conference Trump said that he was in a helicopter with Willie Brown, a California legislator, that almost crashed. Trump claimed that Brown criticized Kamala Harris. Brown says he never was in a helicopter with Trump, much less one that almost crashed. 

According to a Politico story, "The other Black politician who says he was with Trump in that near-fatal chopper crash," Trump appears to have mixed up Willie Brown with Nate Holden.

The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.

It was Nate Holden, a former city councilman and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.

“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.

...Holden also connected with Brown on Thursday. “I said, ‘Willie, were you almost in a helicopter crash with Trump also?’ He said ‘No.’ I said, ‘I was the one, Willie.’”

Before he hung up with POLITICO, Holden assured a reporter that nobody discussed—let alone criticized—Kamala Harris as Trump claimed Brown did.

“He either mixed it up,” Holden said. “Or, he made it up. This was just too big to overlook. This is a big one. Conflating Willie Brown and me? The press is searching for the real story and they didn’t get it. You did.”

Tim Walz is a joyous vice-president candidate, unlike JD Vance

There's no guarantee that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be elected this November, but one thing is sure: they'll bring a heck of a lot more joy and positivity to the campaign trail than the dour Trump and Vance will.

I'm thrilled that Harris picked Walz yesterday. However, I would have felt this way about anyone she chose to be her vice-president candidate, because I trust Harris to make good decisions and she had way more knowledge about the possible VP picks than I or anyone else were privy to.

A New York Times story discussed "Five Key Reasons That Kamala Harris Picked Tim Walz."

His plucky dad vibes. Mr. Walz, a balding 60-year-old former high school football coach with a thick Midwestern accent, has become a liberal favorite on social media precisely for his off-the-charts levels of uncoolness.

His populist policies. As governor, Mr. Walz championed a host of liberal policies in Minnesota that are popular with Democratic and independent-leaning voters.

His potential to speak to rural voters. Raised in rural Nebraska, Mr. Walz is the son of a homemaker and a public school administrator. He enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17.

His contrast with Trump's running mate, JD Vance. Ms. Harris and her advisers believe Mr. Walz will match up well on a debate stage against Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s vice-presidential candidate and a fellow Midwesterner.

In the end, it came down to winning -- and chemistry. Several people close to the decision-making process said that Ms. Harris held in-person interviews at the vice president’s residence with several hopefuls, including Mr. Walz, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. In the end, they said, Ms. Harris simply connected the best with Mr. Walz.

Over and over again during the selection process, loyalty was emphasized as one of the most important criteria for Ms. Harris, who did not have a close and trust-driven bond with Mr. Biden, at least not immediately.

Her selection suggests that she trusts Mr. Walz not only to help her win but also to help her govern.

I was worried that Harris would pick Josh Shapiro. He comes across nowhere near as natural as Walz. Shapiro sounds like a professional politician. Walz sounds like a regular guy who just happens to be a politician.

Reportedly in his interview Shapiro asked a bunch of questions about the role the VP would play in a Harris administration, which indicates that he cared more about his own self-interest than serving the interest of Harris and the country.

By contrast, Walz is reported to have said, in line with the excellent soldier that he was for 24 years in the National Guard, that he'd do whatever needed to be done if he became vice-president. That sounds like a good soldier. I was clueless about the rank Walz held before he retired from the military, Command Sergeant Major. 

A post on X yesterday by retired Army general Mark Hertling told me what I needed to know.

This makes JD Vance's lies about Walz' military service disgusting and inexcusable. But what else would we expect from Trump's VP pick, since Trump is the Liar in Chief and wants his minions to follow his bad example.

Today Vance falsely claimed that Walz retired from the Army National Guard in 2005 to avoid being sent to Iraq after his unit received deployment orders. Vance called this "stolen valor," which is complete and utter B.S.

A CNN story today set the record straight. Vance should apologize to Walz for his lie, but I strongly suspect that Vance doesn't have the courage to admit when he's wrong, because Trump hates truth-tellers. Here's an excerpt from the story.

Walz filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission as a candidate for Congress on February 10, 2005. The next month, after the guard announced a possible deployment to Iraq within two years, Walz’s campaign issued a statement saying he intended to stay in the race.

“I do not yet know if my artillery unit will be part of this mobilization and I am unable to comment further on specifics of the deployment,” Walz said in the March 2005 campaign release.

“As Command Sergeant Major I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on. I am dedicated to serving my country to the best of my ability, whether that is in Washington DC or in Iraq,” he continued, adding: “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race. I am fortunate to have a strong group of enthusiastic supporters and a very dedicated and intelligent wife. Both will be a major part of my campaign, whether I am in Minnesota or Iraq.”

Walz retired from the Army National Guard in May 2005, according to the Minnesota National Guard. In a 2009 interview for the Library of Congress, Walz said he left the guard to focus full time on running for Congress, citing concerns about trying to serve at the same time and the Hatch Act, which limits political activities for federal employees.

Service members often submit their paperwork for retirement months before their retirement date. It’s unclear when Walz submitted his papers for retirement.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond when asked about when Walz submitted his retirement paperwork.

A National Guard article on his unit’s deployment states that it received alert orders to deploy to Iraq in July 2005, two months after Walz retired. The unit first mobilized in the fall of 2005 to Camp Shelby Mississippi to prepare for deployment, according to the unit’s history, and then deployed in March 2006 for 22 months, which the Guard said was the longest continuous deployment of any military unit during US operations in Iraq.

I hate Trump, but here's my advice to him for defeating Harris

I'm not actually a Buddhist, but occasionally I like to pretend that I am.

So I'm putting on my Buddhist persona for this blog post in which I demonstrate my boundless compassion for all sentient beings by telling Donald Trump what he needs to do to defeat Kamala Harris and win the election this November.

Even though that prospect fills my non-Buddhist self with revulsion. But since there's basically a zero chance that Trump will take this advice, I feel fine sharing it.

Donald, things haven't been going well for you lately. Sure, your surviving the failed assasination attempt garnered you some well-deserved sympathy. And Biden's meltdown in the debate seemed to open the door to a fairly easy electoral college win for you.

But then Biden closed that door when he withdrew from the presidential race and threw his support behind Kamala Harris. Ever since, Harris has had the momentum, not you. 

Nate Silver's election prediction model gave Biden a 27% chance of winning prior to his dropping out. And Silver said that likely was an overestimate. Now the model has Harris with a 45% chance of winning, with you having a 55% chance. 

In other words, basically a toss-up. 

It seems clear that you didn't expect this when you went mostly MAGA in your acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Or when you chose J.D. Vance to be your running mate, a MAGA mini-me.

Now you and your campaign have to figure out how to handle Harris. Obviously you aren't doing a great job at this so far, or Harris wouldn't have such a good chance of defeating you this November, with more upside looming for Harris than for you.

I know you don't like to read lengthy documents. I recall that the intelligence community had to put their daily briefings in kind of a comic book form to hold your attention: few words, lots of pictures. So I'll keep the core of my advice to you really simple: Don't be an asshole.

Look, I know that's tough for you to do. But you managed it near the end of the 2016 campaign when you stopped doing crazy stuff on Twitter and sounded relatively sane for a while. 

As a Democrat, I was worried that you were going to do this again following your brush with death at the Pennsylvania rally. You said, briefly, that the experience had changed you. Your acceptance speech was supposed to be a plea for unity. 

For 30 minutes, it was. Then your inner asshole reared its ugly head again and you spent the next hour or so free associating your way through a bunch of crazy, divisive, untrue blather that you relish spouting at your campaign rallies.

Except this was your chance to reach a much bigger audience. Which you blew. But there's still time for you to tone down your B.S. and sound like someone who deserves to lead our country and the free world through challenging times.

You've got to stop doing stupid stuff if you want to beat Harris. She's a savvy politician and experienced prosecutor. Harris isn't going to make any big mistakes. You can't count on her tripping and stumbling like Biden did. You're going to have to win through your own improved strategy.

Give this a try. 

Nest time you're invited to speak to a group that has ties to an important voting bloc, don't insult representatives of that group and denigrate a member of the voting bloc. That's what you did yesterday when you went to an association of black journalists.

You started off by lambasting the first black journalist who asked you a question, calling her a nasty person. Then you said that Kamala Harris, who is half black and half Indian, had always identified as Indian until she decided that now she was black.

The journalist correctly told you that this wasn't true, that Harris has always said she was black. She went to a black university, belonged to a black sorority, and was a member of the Black Congressional Caucus after she became a senator.

So instead of making a case for why blacks should vote for you, you gave them some great reasons to vote for Harris, given how racist and sexist you sounded. Not a great strategy for winning a presidential election. 

If you don't know how to act like a normal human being, take a crash course in this. It'll be a great asset for you in the remaining months of the campaign. Voters were tired of Biden being Biden. They're also tired of Trump being Trump. 

Harris is a fresh face. You need to freshen your own face, and I don't mean by altering the makeup you so dearly love to wear. I mean by becoming a kinder and gentler Trump, something you seemed to be on the verge of after the bullet nicked your ear rather than passing through your brain.

Today several Americans, along with others held in Russian prisons, were released as part of a complicated prisoner exchange swap ably negotiated by the Biden administration. This was your chance to show that you're a patriotic American who is pleased when some of our citizens who have been wrongly jailed by Russia finally are freed.

But no, you couldn't help yourself. Once again, you acted like an asshole. 

Former President Donald Trump has been using the wrongful detention of Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan in Russia to criticize President Joe Biden for failing to bring them home, especially during his reelection campaign.

And following Thursday's historic prisoner swap that freed those men along with two other U.S. prisoners, the GOP presidential nominee continued to bash the administration with baseless speculation.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed on Thursday that there was no cash exchanged nor was there any sanctions relief, but in a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump questioned that denial without offering specifics.

Look, I'm trying to give you some good advice in this brief period of my Buddha-like compassion for you winning out over my usual hatred of you.

But I can't make you stop doing stupid stuff that not only won't help you beat Harris, but is digging your electoral hole deeper. Somehow you've got to do something that I know is virtually impossible for you. 

Act like a decent human being. If you could pull this off for the next three months, you'd have a much better chance of returning to the White House. Fortunately -- my compassion must be losing steam -- you won't do this, so probably we're going to enjoy a President Harris.

Harris has much better chance than Biden of beating Trump, says Nate Silver

Today Nate Silver, who ran the acclaimed 538 web site back when it was part of the New York Times, turned on his proprietary election prediction model (Silver maintained the rights to it after he became an independent analyst) following a hold when Biden withdrew from the presidential race.

Now Silver considers that there's sufficient polling data for him to get the model up and running again with Harris as the Democratic candidate. Here's a couple of key figures from his Silver Bulletin, which I pay $10 a month for a subscription that gets more detail than his free offering.

Silver's estimate of the national polling average shows a virtual tie: Trump 44.5%, Harris 44.1%. Robert Kennedy Jr. has dropped from 15.5% on July 1 to 5.0% now. By contrast, when Biden dropped out on July 21, Trump led Biden 45.2% to 41.2%. So Harris has narrowed the national Trump lead from 4 points to 0.4 points.

This figure actually doesn't show how the chance of winning has changed for Trump and Harris (Kennedy always has been at 0 percent), because the model was activated yesterday and made public today.

Thus it only has one data point: Trump has a 61.3% chance of winning, Karris 38.1%. Elsewhere Silver shows a 0.5% chance of an Electoral College deadlock, with no candidate getting 270 electoral votes. By contrast, Trump had a 72.8% chance of winning on the day Biden dropped out, with Biden having a 26.9% chance of winning.

It'll be interesting to see how the odds change between now and election day, November 5. Well, more than interesting -- political junkies like me will be following Silver's updates with a mixture of hope and fear, given how high the stakes are for our country whether Trump or Harris wins.

My bet, which admittedly is tinged with more than a little hope, since I'm a Democrat, is that Harris will steadily increase her chance or winning, albeit with some ups and downs. I say this for some seemingly pretty good reasons.

(1) Harris is the fresh face Americans have been longing for. Meaning, while she is well-known, her last name isn't Trump or Biden. So those who couldn't stand a repeat of the 2020 matchup now will be able to vote for someone new.

(2) Even more new will be Harris' pick for vice-president. Whoever it is, he (unlikely to be a she) will be a moderate Democrat to better appeal to swing state voters. Trump and Vance are not moderate at all. They're MAGA Republicans, with all that this entails. Mostly bad, except to the Republican base.

(3) News of the vice-president pick in a few days, combined with the four-day Democratic National Convention that starts August 19, will consume much of the media attention during most of August. Typically candidates get a convention bounce in the polls.

(4) Enthusiasm for Harris is surprising political analysts who thought the reaction to her taking over from Biden would be more muted. She's a different candidate than she was in 2020. More sure of herself, more experienced after three and a half years of being vice-president, more willing to take moderate positions on policy issues rather than feeling like she had to kiss up to the far left wing of the Democratic Party.

Lastly, I looked at some of the newest comments on Nate Silver's web site, in part because I wanted to see if other people were as surprised as I was that Harris's chance of winning was only 38% at the moment. 

Several commenters noted that today's Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey had some good news for Harris. I have no idea how much a single poll will change the Silver forecast, but it should increase Harris' odds somewhat. Note that only the most recent blue dot shows Harris; the other dots were polls taken with Biden as the candidate.

Kamala Harris has wiped out Donald Trump’s lead across seven battleground states, as the vice president rides a wave of enthusiasm among young, Black and Hispanic voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.

Harris was backed by 48% of voters to 47% for Trump — a statistical dead heat — in the swing states that will likely decide November’s election. That’s a stronger showing than the two-point deficit for President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race. The Democratic vice president overtook her GOP rival in Arizona and Nevada, and more than doubled Biden’s lead over Trump in Michigan. 

I'm a happy Democrat again, thanks to Harris replacing Biden

What a difference a day makes when it comes to presidential politics. I woke up on Sunday, yesterday, feeling fine about my personal life and crappy about the prospect of Biden refusing to withdraw from the presidential contest, thereby likely guaranteeing a Trump victory this November.

Then, later in the morning, I checked my phone and saw that Biden had withdrawn. At first I couldn't believe it. Maybe it was a sick joke? But a bit more scrolling on X revealed that yes, it was true. I raced to find my wife and tell her the good news. We both became happier Democrats instantly.

More good news followed. Biden, not surprisingly, was endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket. As I'd told a discussion group of eleven fellow Democrats on Saturday, it seemed to me that Harris was the best choice to take on Trump if Biden withdrew. 

Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin summed up the new mood among Democrats perfectly and succinctly. 

Today I saw Kamala Harris speak at the Harris (formerly Biden) campaign headquarters in Delaware. After her husband introduced her and Harris walked to the podium, I was moved almost to tears by her opening remarks. 

It wasn't what she was saying, which was fine. It was the fact that here was the 2o24 Democratic presidential nominee, almost certainly, who I was truly enthusiastic about. It just felt so good to not be thinking about Biden, "Joe, you've done some great things, but you're too old and too down in the polls to have a decent chance of beating Trump. It's time for you to go."

Which he did, thankfully, showing that while I had my doubts about this, in the end Biden recognized reality and chose to put the country above his understandable desire to persist with his campaign against Trump, who Biden correctly understands is an existential threat to our democracy. 

I can even forgive Biden for taking so long to decide that he should withdraw from the race, even though the need for this to happen has been evident for many months, and especially evident after Biden's horrendous debate performance in late June.

What seems to have happened is that Biden repeatedly proclaiming that he was going to stay in the race acted like the heavy weight on top of a pressure cooker (remember those? only if you're as old as me and Biden). That stifled the enthusiasm of Democrats across the country who desperately want to keep Trump out of the White House, but didn't see Biden as being capable of defeating Trump.

Now that Harris is the presidential candidate -- she already has commitments from enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to assure this happens -- the pent-up "steam" that until now didn't have any place to vent is on full display among Democrats. This power is coming at just the right time: a bit over 100 days to election day, enough time for Harris to make her case to voters.

The Harris fundraising is amazing. I was one of the first-time donors, since until now I had no interest in supporting Biden's presidential campaign.

Of course, the big question now is whether Harris can overcome the lead that Trump has both nationally and in most of the battleground states. An initial poll has some encouraging results.

Nate Silver has frozen his election forecast for Trump vs. Biden as of yesterday. Here's how it stood when Biden announced he was withdrawing. Trump had a 73% chance of winning, Biden 27%. In a week or so Silver said he will start up the forecast model again once enough Trump vs. Harris polls have been released. Hopefully it will begin to show Harris closing the gap with Trump. 

This is Silver's final national polling average for Trump vs. Biden. Trump has a four point lead. Not good, since given the advantage the electoral college has for a Republican candidate, Silver says that a Democratic candidate has to have a 2-3 point lead nationally in order to have about a 64% chance of winning the presidency. 

BIden will destroy the Democratic Party if he doesn't withdraw

Every day President Biden dithers around, now with Covid clouding his already-suspect thinking, trying to decide whether he should withdraw from the presidential race, he sets the stage for a catastrophic destruction of the Democratic Party if he fails to do the right thing and turn the nomination over to Kamala Harris.

I say this as a (formerly) proud Democrat who always backed my party's candidate for president with enthusiasm.

Now I rejoice in replying "stop" to every text message asking me to donate to Biden's campaign. I have no interest in helping his candidacy in any other way, either, because along with two-thirds of my fellow Democrats, I want Biden to withdraw and do what he said he'd do when he ran in 2020: be a one-term president who sets the stage for a younger generation of Democratic leaders.

Just about everything Biden does now irritates me, because I view him as a massive threat to democracy by his so-far stubborn refusal to heed the advice of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, Adam Schiff, George Clooney, and many other Democratic leaders: get out, because if you don't, you're greatly increasing the chance Donald Trump wins in November.

When I listen to his speeches, I hear an old man with diminished faculties who talks about his prior successes, failing to realize that voters are looking ahead to the next four years, not backward to the past three and a half years.

I hate it when Biden says something like, "Republicans want to make abortion illegal everywhere; we can't let that happen," his audience applauds and cheers, and Biden inexplicably says, "No, no, I'm not joking." Geez, dude, they weren't laughing at you; they were agreeing with you. You've just gotten into the habit of saying things that make no sense, like how you start to make a point, lose your train of thought, then say "Anyway..."

Before I looked on these sorts of utterances as Biden quirks, almost endearing, because I was a Biden backer.

Now I see them as signs that Biden is too old and set in his ways to be either an effective president or an effective candidate. And I say this as a 75 year-old man who recognizes how I've developed some senior citizen weaknesses of my own -- the big difference obviously being that I'm not claiming to be competent to lead our country.

Today my political spirits were lifted by reporting that Biden is finally starting to listen to the calls from Democratic leaders for him to withdraw from the presidential race. I seized on the headline of a New York Times story (even with the caveat in smaller type), like a drowning man thrown a life preserver.

Several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.

One of the people close to him warned that the president had not yet made up his mind to leave the race after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out. But another said that “reality is setting in,” and that it would not be a surprise if Mr. Biden made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.

Some people in Mr. Biden’s camp have told Democratic allies that the president’s resolve to stay in the race has been most shaken by three developments: The decision by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, to weigh in so strongly, new state polls showing that his path to an Electoral College victory has grown far more remote and the boycott of key party donors.

Great news.

It's good that Biden appears to have given up on his absurd statement that the only way he'd leave the race was if polls showed that it was impossible to win the election. If Biden truly believes that a poll in July can predict with 100% certainty an outcome in November, his mind is in even worse shape than it looked to be at his debate with Trump.

Polls don't predict. They are a snapshot of a particular time. But there's such a thing as prediction markets, where people bet on all kinds of things, including whether Biden will withdraw from the presidential race. One such market has the chance of this happening at 90% currently.

I sure hope the traders are correct. Our country can't endure another four years of Trump. Right now Biden only has a 28% chance of beating Trump, according to Nate Silver's website, which uses his successful approach to analyzing state and national polls, taking into consideration many factors that go beyond simply aggregating poll results. 

If Biden stays in the race, then loses to Trump, this will cause a schism in the Democratic Party that will be extremely difficult to repair. People like me will delight in saying "I told you so!" to those who urged Biden not to withdraw.

Biden's reputation will go from being a president with many accomplishments to  "Ruth Bader Biden" -- a stubborn old person who put self above country, just as Ruth Bader Ginsberg did when she refused to step down and allow Obama to appoint a younger Supreme Court justice. Ginsberg hung on too long and died when Trump could appoint her replacement, a tragic mistake that I'll never forgive her for.

I'll never forgive Biden either if he stays in and loses this November. Nor will most in the Democratic Party. Nor should they. Biden has been told by both Democratic leaders and the Democratic electorate that he needs to withdraw. If he doesn't, his place in history will become "the stubborn president who handed the presidency to Donald Trump."

Why I'm a depressed Democrat (it's all Biden's fault)

What a difference a debate makes. Prior to June 27, 2024 I was an optimistic Democrat, looking forward to watching President Biden kick Trump's lying ass face-to-face. 

After the debate, along with many millions of other members of my party, I was deeply disturbed by the inescapable reality that Biden not only didn't do any ass-kicking, he appeared befuddled during much of the debate and at times couldn't express a coherent thought. 

Some three weeks later, my mood hasn't improved. If anything, I'm even more depressed now. Politically, not clinically, thankfully. (I've experienced actual depression; it's way beyond what I'm feeling now, though that's bad enough.)

The basic reason is that soon after the debate, there was such an uproar among Democrats about Biden's extremely bad performance, I held out hope that this would spur Biden to recognize that his already slim chance of defeating Trump now was considerably slimmer, and he needed to withdraw from the race to avoid a catastrophic loss to a man who absolutely must never become president again. 

That was wishful thinking. For it's now looking increasingly certain that Biden is digging in his heels in a reality-defying display of incompetence, egotism, and a disinclination to do what's best for the country. 

I'll list some of my reasons for despair. Hey, maybe this blog post will find its way to a political therapist of sorts, someone who can refute those reasons with such impressive logic and facts, I'll be persuaded to break out of my depression and become an optimistic Democrat again.

Well, I can dream.

(1) At the moment Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" gives Biden a 30% chance of winning. The Economist gives him a 22% chance (it was 29% the day of the debate). FiveThirtyEight has the race as about a toss-up, slightly favoring Biden (but the analysis relies in part on economic data that was a good predictor in the past, but seems not so good now).

(2) Biden's approval rating is at 39%. No president has been re-elected with such a low rating.

(3) Rep. Adam Schiff, who I respect a lot, is reported to have said this, according to a New York Times story today, "Biden Circle Shrinks as Democrats Fear Election Wipeout."

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is running for Senate, warned during a private meeting with donorson Saturday that his party was likely to suffer overwhelming losses in November if Mr. Biden stayed in the race, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Schiff’s remarks at the meeting.

“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Mr. Schiff said at a fund-raiser in New York, according to a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event. “And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”

(4) The New York Times story cites polls showing Biden trailing in most or all of the battleground states. 

(5) A Vox story today, "Democrats shouldn't use Trump's shooting as an excuse to stick with Biden," starts off with: 

Many congressional Democrats believe their party is hurtling toward a cliff’s edge and shouldn’t even bother trying to turn around.

Late last week, Senate Democrats held a private meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s electoral viability in the wake of his disastrous debate performance and subsequent revelations of his apparent cognitive decline. According to Politico, no more than four of the caucus’s 50 Democrats said they were committed to sticking with Biden as their party’s nominee.

By many accounts, a large majority of Democrats on the Hill believe that Biden has little hope of defeating Donald Trump and that a different candidate would have a better chance. The Capitol Hill reporters Heather Caygle and Jake Sherman claim that they haven’t spoken to a single congressional Democrat “who privately says they think Biden is capable of running and beating Trump at this point.” Unnamed “senior Democrats” have told Politico they’re convinced the president will lose the election.

(6) Nonetheless, in an interview yesterday with Lester Holt, Biden said that he doesn't believe the polls and, when asked who he relies on to give him advice about whether he should stay in the race, said "Me." The White House clearly has a bunker mentality: ignore reality and hope nobody will notice that the emperor (in this case the president) has no clothes, politically-speaking.

(7) Biden keeps talking about how 15 million people voted for him in the Democratic primary, and he has to respect their decision. Well, I was one of those people. There wasn't a genuine primary. I voted for Biden because the only other option was Marianne Williamson, if I recall correctly. And many Democrats voted for "none of the above" in a protest vote against Biden running again. Today polls show that most Democrats want Biden to withdraw from the race, feeling he is too old to run again.

(8) A Washington post story, "Biden allies worry he is not getting complete information about race," shows that his inner circle isn't being honest with him.

Democratic lawmakers and strategists inside the effort to reelect President Biden have grown concerned in recent days that he is listening to a small number of aides who are limiting the data he receives.

....The calls for broader advice come as Democratic lawmakers are raising new doubts about what Biden has been told about his support, after a Zoom call Saturday when Biden argued without evidence that he was leading in national polls outside the typical margin of error. An eight-minute portion of a roughly 45-minute video of the call with the New Democrat Coalition was given to The Washington Post by a Democrat.

So, yeah, I'm depressed. Biden is sinking farther behind Trump, with no prospect of a turnaround. Biden isn't in touch with political reality, choosing to listen to a small number of advisors who aren't telling him the truth about how badly he's doing. 

And the Democratic National Committee wants to have Biden nominated electronically this month, not at the Democratic convention, in order to forestall further efforts to have him withdraw. So much for Biden's vow "challenge me at the convention." This is another sign of weakness. 

Democratic bosses are moving to kill off efforts to force Joe Biden from the party’s presidential ticket by rushing ahead with plans to formalise his candidacy before next month’s convention in Chicago.

The move comes while the rebellion triggered by last month’s debate fiasco – which prompted multiple calls from within the party for Biden to be replacedas the candidate – has stalled following Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Committee is seeking to exploit the impasse by pushing ahead with a plan that would secure the president’s nomination by arranging for convention delegates to vote electronically in a week-long roll call starting in late July, Axios reported.

If a majority of the 4,000 delegates back Biden, it will make his candidacy technically unchallengeable when the convention starts on 19 August.

It's good Trump wasn't killed. Now let's defeat the S.O.B.

Let's not learn the wrong lesson from yesterday's attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. The biggest problem facing our country isn't toxic political discourse. It is Donald Trump.

To believe otherwise is to deny some evident facts. That's why I disagree with the basic premise of Biden's speech to the nation today. 

President Joe Biden used a rare Oval Office address on Sunday to condemn political violence and plead with Americans to turn down the temperature in the increasingly toxic political system after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

...Speaking from the Resolute Desk, Biden decried that the political rhetoric has gotten “very heated” and urged Americans to “cool it down.” He said disagreements in a democratic system were inevitable, but politics should be an “arena for peaceful debate,” and not a “killing field.”

Biden, along with many other politicians, both Democratic and Republican, are wrongly assuming that the motivation of the 20 year old man who tried to kill Trump (and did kill a member of the rally audience) was political. 

There's no evidence of this. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican. He made a small donation to a Democratic-leaning group. He clearly wasn't a political zealot. A CNN story says: 

So far, investigators haven’t found any evidence on social media or other writings by Crooks that might help identify his motive for the attempted assassination, law enforcement officials say.

But CNN interviews with more than a half-dozen former classmates and neighbors of Crooks painted him as quiet, with classmates remembering him as a good student and something of a misfit in high school. And a review of public records suggests he may have had divergent political leanings, with Crooks registering to vote as a Republican but making a small donation to a Democratic-leaning group.

Since Crooks was killed by the Secret Service, there's no way to know what led him to take an AR-15 rifle to a rooftop near the Trump rally location and fire shots at Trump, narrowly missing him aside from his ear, but hitting several other people in the audience. 

So at the moment it is irresponsible to blame the shooting on toxic political discourse, since there's zero evidence this spurred Crooks to do what he did. There's a much greater chance that even though he showed no sign of mental illness, he struggled with some "demons" that were kept hidden from other people and eventually led him to attempt to kill Trump. 

As others have noted, the man who shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., apparently was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster with his moment of fame and didn't have anything against Reagan.

Similarly, Crooks, who lived nearby, may have used the Trump rally to act out his own desire -- which unfortunately will always remain a matter of conjecture.

The parade of Republicans who I've heard decrying the vicious attacks on Trump's character and political positions fail to understand the simple reason for this: Trump has a nasty character and dangerous political positions. 

Trump has lied, cheated, and stolen his way through life. It's difficult to think of anything admirable about Trump. The best I can come up with is that Trump is remarkably consistent: he always puts himself first, not his family, not his associates, not his country. 

There's no one in recent American politics who has been more toxic than Trump.

Trump never tires of attacking people who fail to kiss his ass with sufficient enthusiasm. In his first term he caused hundreds of thousands of needless Covid deaths by failing to endorse public health measures that would have saved those lives. His legal problems stem from him doing illegal things. He had sex with a porn star a few months after his wife gave birth to their son Barron, then tried to cover that up shortly before the 2016 election in a fashion that earned him 34 felony convictions. He encouraged the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol and did nothing to stop it.

This just scratches the surface of all the crap Trump has dumped upon our country in his boundless enthusiasm for destroying all that is admirable about our democracy. Republican politicians don't like it when us Democrats call Trump an existential threat to democracy.

But that's the truth, and it needs to be spoken even more loudly after the assassination attempt, because this likely will garner Trump some sympathy points in upcoming polls.

Regarding the Republican convention next week, I suppose if all of the speeches, including the one from Trump himself, are totally respectful toward Biden and other Democrats, focusing only on policy positions regarding immigration, taxes, climate change, foreign policy, and such that the two parties disagree on, then I'll be totally surprised, and possibly even open to changing my highly negative attitude toward Trump and his GOP supporters.

The chance of that happening is extremely slim, though. Hopefully the Biden campaign won't hold back after a few days of post-assassination-attempt halting of campaign activities. It's vitally important that the S.O.B. called Donald Trump be defeated this November. Democrats shouldn't worry about attacking him strongly with words.

It's attacking people physically that's the problem. Something that Trump has encouraged his followers to do, as I well recall from how he acted in 2016. Thus Trump has contributed more than anyone else to the climate of making political violence acceptable.

He's a despicable human being and needs to be shown the trash can of history in the upcoming election.