Salem Political Snark

Salem City Club looked at ranked choice voting, which is on November ballot

Last Friday ranked choice voting was discussed at a Salem City Club program that featured Shannon Grimes from the Sightline Institute in Seattle, where she focuses on electoral reforms in Washington and Oregon. 

This November Oregonians will vote on Measure 117. If approved, the measure puts ranked choice voting into effect on January 1, 2028. Measure 117 was referred to voters by the 2024 state legislature, where it was passed on a party line vote, aside from one Republican who voted with the Democrats.

So what is ranked choice voting? Here's an explanation that reflects what I heard Grimes say. 

Measure 117 requires that ranked choice voting be used for partisan primaries and general elections to federal and state offices, including the president, U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state treasurer, and commissioner of labor and industries.

For some reason, the Oregon legislature exempted itself from being subject to ranked choice voting. Cities, towns, and other local governments can use ranked choice voting if they desire.

Currently Benton County, which includes Corvallis, uses ranked choice voting in local elections. In the upcoming November election, Portland voters will use ranked choice voting to elect a mayor, auditor, and three councilors to represent their district. Nationally about 50 places use ranked choice voting. 

Grimes said that 80-90% of people say ranked choice voting is easy and they like it. Voters perceive campaigns as less negative, since candidates have to appeal to more than their most avid backers given that ranked choice voting moves from whoever gets the most votes (which could be as low as 20% in a race with many candidates) to whoever gets the support of a majority of voters (since as shown in the example above, votes for the lowest ranked candidate are allocated to other candidates until someone gets at least 50% + one vote).

Grimes added that underrepresented candidates (such of people of color) tend to run and win more under a ranked choice voting system as they don't have to worry about being a spoiler candidate. That probably explains why the endorsers on the Yes on 117 web site include many organizations representing the underrepresented, along with progressive, environmental, and civic groups like the League of Women Voters.

TIME magazine offers a few examples of how ranked choice voting likely would have affected the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections.

The most notorious example of this [spoiler effect] is the 2000 presidential election, when nearly 3 million mostly left-leaning voters cast their ballots for third-party candidate Ralph Nader. If ranked-choice voting had been in place at the time, Democrat Al Gore may have prevailed in the key state of Florida, where neither Gore nor Republican George W. Bush won a majority of the vote, says Don Saari, author of Decisions and Elections.

(Florida was the center of a vote-counting scandal, and Bush’s narrow win there ensured his ascension to the White House, despite losing the popular vote nationwide.)

“Gore was the second-place choice of many of Ralph Nader’s supporters, particularly in the states of Florida and New Hampshire, where Bush narrowly won,” says Saari. “A goal of Nader’s Green Party was to reach a certain percentage of the total vote, which is a reason why many Nader voters did not want to vote for their second-ranked Gore.”

...Because it helps eliminate vote-splitting, a ranked-choice voting system can have the effect of encouraging more third-party and centrist candidates, advocates say. Michael Bloomberg, a centrist, third-party candidate, considered running in the 2016 presidential election but decided not to upon concluding that he might split the Democratic vote with Clinton, increasing the chances of Trump’s victory. (Trump, of course, still won the election, though he lost the popular vote to Clinton.)

Again, the 2016 election offers a good hypothetical example. If a ranked-choice voting system had been in place in Michigan, then Clinton, not Trump, may have won that state. Because neither candidate received a majority of the Michigan vote, ranked-choice voting would have come into play. And if we can assume that most Stein voters would have chosen Clinton as their second choice, the former Secretary of State would have won, according to Saari. Trump won Michigan by 10,700; Stein received more than 51,000 votes.

Though these examples are of how ranked choice voting could have benefitted Democratic candidates, and Alaska is considering doing away with ranked choice voting after it led to a loss by Sarah Palin in a special election to fill a seat in the House of Representatives, which ended up being won by a Democrat, an avid local Democrat, Aileen Kaye, sent me some reasons to oppose Measure 117 after I'd asked her to do this, knowing from a question she asked at the City Club program that she isn't a fan. 

Why I will vote “No” on M. 117, Ranked Choice Voting

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  As an active member of the Oregon and Marion County Democratic Party, I am very grateful that we Dems hold all the statewide offices, including the governorship, the Oregon House, and the Oregon Senate.  The Marion County Democratic Central Committee voted last week to oppose this measure.  There is no good reason to change Oregon’s election system. 

2. Legislative leadership was paid BIG bucks to vote for this.  They took the money and voted for it; but they omitted themselves from having to be elected via Ranked Choice Voting!  And no one can find out the names of the contributors to the PAC’s who lobbied hard for this!  I think the push and the money is NOT from Oregonians.  

3. Having gone door-to-door for the past many elections, I will tell you most voters pay little attention to government/elections.  They also do not like voting for people they know nothing of.  To have several choices for an office will result in many voters throwing up their hands and not voting for anyone for that office.

4. It will be very expensive!  There is no mention of this and there is no info on from where the funding would come. 

5. Election workers are already very stressed due to the MAGA election-denying culture.  This will this add to the stress because there is no way we will get election results the night of the election due to Ranked Choice Voting.

Lastly, if you want to experience ranked choice voting with dessert preferences, scroll down to Example #3 on this Ballotpedia article. I was shocked that people are rating ice cream above cake, which obviously is the best dessert. (Cake did make it to the third round, where it was knocked out in favor of chocolate and ice cream, the winner.)

Looks like paid parking is coming to downtown Salem. Bad idea?

Downtown parking here in Salem used to be free and unlimited, if my memory serves me correctly. Then parking was still free, but limited in hours -- currently three. 

In 2013, when downtown parking was free with a two hour limit, city officials planned to install parking meters. That idea was met with strong resistance from downtown businesses and led to a petition drive spearheaded by downtown resident and business owner Carole Smith aimed at stopping paid parking.

The City Council ended up implementing the initiative language rather than let it go to a vote of the people. That allowed the Council to be able to change the language in the future themselves instead of having free parking locked into the city statutes. 

Today I was reminded that paid parking was approved in a rather sneaky way in 2023 when the City Council voted to request that staff prepare a plan for paid on-street parking in the downtown area. An excellent in-depth story today by Abbey McDonald about the state of downtown in the Salem Reporter, "The problems and promise of downtown Salem," said:

[Councilor] Stapleton said the city is investing in improvements to downtown sidewalks, storefronts and is renovating its parking garages.

She thinks a major step in improving downtown will come when the city implements paid parking, which councilors approved last year. The goal is to bring in more money to support parking improvements, and phase out the downtown business tax that currently pays for street parking and parkade maintenance.

The paid parking will fund security in the parking garages, maintenance of parkades and parking spaces and decorations like flower baskets from light posts. The city will begin outreach and engagement for the paid parking plan next month, said city spokeswoman Nicole Miller. 

“I know some people are going to have mixed feelings about going to paid parking, but in the end, this is going to be beneficial for downtown businesses, and that is a key part of why we are doing this,” Stapleton said.

I suspect that "mixed feelings" is an understatement when people realize that parking downtown on the street is going to require a trip to one of those machines that handle paid parking outside of downtown. Some downtown businesses and regular visitors will favor paid parking, but many will hate the idea.

This is why the city spokeswoman said that outreach and engagement for the paid parking plan will begin in October. Another way to put it other than "outreach and engagement" is sales job. 

I go to a Tai Chi class on downtown's Court Street three days a week. Usually I park for free on the street. Occasionally I use the Commercial Street parking garage. I never pay for parking anywhere in Salem. Every business I patronize offers free parking. 

That's why I worry about making downtown Salem a paid on street parking area. Sure, the parking garages will still be free, but I prefer not to use them. It's more convenient and pleasant for me to park on the street. 

Now, it could be argued that we're spoiled here in Salem. Large cities typically have paid parking in their urban cores. There's sound environmental reasons to prefer this, since making automotive travel cheaper and easier goes against the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

I get that. But here's part of what I said in my 2023 post about downtown parking meters:

I'm uncertain about whether having parking meters in downtown Salem is a good or bad idea. It all depends on the details.

I'd view parking meters more favorably if the City of Salem dedicated the revenue from them to making improvements in downtown Salem. Deciding on how that money would be spent should be up to a genuine independent Downtown Association, which currently doesn't exist. 

Using parking meter money to maintain the parking garages, where parking is free for downtown visitors, doesn't make a lot of sense. Why not charge for parking in the parking garages, so they are self-sustaining? 

By improvements, I don't mean just hanging flower baskets. I mean changes to downtown that would make the sidewalks much more attractive and pleasant. City officials put a lot of work into streetscape designs for downtown Salem not too long ago. Few of those improvements have been made.

If I knew that the money I was paying to park downtown was going to make the area appreciably better, I'd be much happier. Paying for maintenance and security in the parking garages isn't a great selling point for me. 

Pac-12 resurrection rivals Harris candidacy for best 2024 comeback

Counted out. Left for dead. Momentum gone. Future looking bleak. 

That's how us Democrats felt after Biden's disastrous debate with Trump, which combined with Biden's poor poll numbers, made the prospect of a Democratic presidential victory this November seem exceedingly unlikely. 

That's also how us Oregon State fans felt after ten teams in the Pac-12 bolted for greener financial pastures in other conferences, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the two ugly sports ducklings that nobody wanted.

But, wow, how times have changed. 

Today Kamala Harris is narrowly ahead of Donald Trump in the prediction models that I follow, having inherited the Democratic nomination following Biden's withdrawal from the race, and the conference that I've been calling the Pac-2 has added five additional members to what now legitimately deserves the Pac-12 name. 

(The number doesn't mean much these days. The Big 10 has 18 schools.)

The Pac-12 comeback is an important sports story, but I'm writing about it on this blog because it also reeks of political intrigue. 

Things looked bleak for Oregon State and Washington State when the ten departing members of the Pac-12 basically said to them, "Nice knowing you, but screw you; we want more TV rights revenue, so we're willing to trash the Pac-12 for a bigger paycheck from ESPN, Fox, or whoever."

But the two remaining schools with "state" in their name succeeded with a lawsuit that put them in control of the considerable amount of money in the Pac-12 coffers, leaving the departing schools with no say in how the conference was managed.

That left the large problem of how to schedule the 2024 football season, and succeeding years in all sports, with just two schools in the conference. Oregon State and Washington State made good progress on that front, leaving the biggest problem of all: whether to try to reconstitute the Pac-12, or call it a day and look for a conference willing to take OSU and WSU.

It wasn't clear what would happen. Until it was. 

A few days ago the Pac-12 announced that four schools from the Mountain West Conference (MWC) would be joining the Pac-12: Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Fresno State. That brought the number of schools in the conference up to six, just two away from the eight needed to be a functioning conference by 2026 under NCAA rules.

Then Utah State, another Mountain West Conference member, announced that it too would be joining the Pac-12, bringing the number of schools to seven. The Pac-12 needs to get to eight, and maybe ideally to nine, putting a spotlight on the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV).

A Yahoo Sports story today is a fascinating read for those, like me, who enjoy comebacks with a healthy dose of hard-nosed politicking. Here's some excerpts from "Is MWC dissolution coming? UNLV now holds keys to future in fight between Pac-12 and Mountain West."

In a matter of hours on Monday, during one of the wildest days in college sports realignment history, the Mountain West went from surviving with its eight football members together in a binding agreement to now on the brink of complete dissolution.

The Pac-12’s rebuilding effort could, ultimately, result in the destruction of its sister conference if UNLV accepts its offer to join. Such a move could trigger a domino effect that may lead to the Mountain West dissolving itself, presumably including the elimination of exit fees and other penalties for those members departing the conference.

Sources with knowledge of the Mountain West policies spoke to Yahoo Sports about the possibility, of which many officials in the MWC and Pac-12 are aware of.

As Tuesday arrives, attention is on a decision from UNLV, a school thrust into the heart of this realignment madness — the potential linchpin in a fight between the Pac-12 and Mountain West.

UNLV’s decision looms as significant for more than one reason.

The Rebels, for one, would be the new Pac-12’s eighth commitment, the number that the league needs to meet NCAA and CFP minimum requirements. They would join Oregon State, Washington State, Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Utah State in what is a conglomeration of the top half of the old Mountain West and the bottom of the old Pac-12.

...The first hurdle is a decision from UNLV, which, in many respects, controls the future of the Mountain West and expansion decisions of the Pac-12.

Late in the day Monday, the Rebels expressed their commitment to the Mountain West, agreeing to terms that bound all remaining eight universities and secured the league’s future. However, the agreement required the support of eight members to be a legally binding document (a reminder: the FBS minimum is eight football-playing members).

In a stunning revelation, the Mountain West Conference office received signed agreements from seven of the eight schools, including UNLV, according to those familiar with the matter.

“Utah State was waiting for UNLV to sign before signing,” said a Mountain West official. “When UNLV signed, Utah State did not.”

Utah State’s decision to leave the conference effectively voids the deal without an eighth member school. Any expansion intended for the Mountain West to rebuild to eight members would likely necessitate a new agreement.

All this intrigue is interesting for those of us happy that the Pac-12 has gone from two schools to seven in such a short time.

But I feel for fans of the Mountain West Conference who are watching their conference disintegrate just as the Pac-12 did not long ago. Not enough to hope UNLV doesn't join the Pac-12, just enough to hope the MWC survives in some form.

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 the three models that I follow: Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin (I'm a paid subscriber), ABC News' FiveThirtyEight, and The Economist. The bad news is that her lead is tenuous, being dependent on outcomes in several battleground states that are only narrowly in her polling favor at the moment.

(Note: it's a bit confusing but FiveThirtyEight has nothing to do with Nate Silver anymore, aside from using the name of his model that became famous in the 2016 presidential election; Silver retained the rights to his model when he was let go by the New York Times so his Silver Bulletin is based on the old FiveThirtyEight.)

Currently the Silver Bulletin has Harris and Trump essentially tied in the Electoral College win probability. With 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, Harris is predicted to get 277. 

The worrisome thing for Harris backers like me is that Silver has her winning the Blue Wall states -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania -- by narrow margins: Michigan 1.4%, Wisconsin 0.7%, Pennsylvania 0.4%. He also has Harris winning Nevada by 0.3%. However, he has Harris losing North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona by less than 2% in each state, so those other battleground states could easily end up being in her win column (just as the Blue Wall states could end up in her loss column).

FiveThirtyEight is slightly more bullish on Harris. This model has her winning 290 electoral college votes, though I couldn't figure out exactly which states produce that total. FiveThirtyEight has Harris narrowly winning Nevada along with the Blue Wall states, with Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina all shown as 50-50 probabilities for Harris and Trump at the moment. 

The Economist also has Harris with about a 60% chance of winning. Her electoral college total of 277 is the same as Nate Silver's: the Blue Wall states plus Nevada, with Harris being slightly behind Trump in Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.

I may be looking at the situation too optimistically, since I want Harris to win, but I see more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic about her chances improving from now until election day. 

Enthusiasm seems greater among Harris supporters. Trump appears unable, unwilling, or both to reach out to swing voters in any meaningful way. The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, is imploding under the weight of CNN's investigative reporting of his "I'm a Black Nazi" comments on a porn site, which could hurt Trump's chances in the state given his strong backing of Robinson. Harris has Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift on her side, a formidable duo. Tim Walz probably will win his debate with J.D. Vance just as Harris won her debate with Trump. 

Still, anything can happen before election day. If the future could be predicted with certainty, it wouldn't be the future. We Harris supporters have to act as if she's well behind Trump at this point, which she indeed could be, notwithstanding what the polls and election models say. Reality always is different from our understanding of it. 

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice.

Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm done to Eleaqia McCrae was no laughing matter. 

Here's an excerpt from a September 2020 Salem Reporter story about the lawsuit filed on behalf of McCrae.

The lawsuit said the crowd linked arms and knelt in the street. At 10:03 p.m. Salem police used tear gas on the crowd after the police review said people were throwing objects at them.

“Then, the use tear gas, smoke bombs, pepper grenades, flash grenades, rubber bullets, foam-tipped munitions and batons are deployed when the demonstrators cannot leave. These tactics make it more difficult for law-abiding protesters to comply with police officers’ dispersal orders,” the lawsuit states.

When McCrae got up to leave, the lawsuit said she was shot twice. One bullet hit her chest and the other hit her eye. After being shot in the eye, McCrae bent over in pain and passed out, the lawsuit states.

“She took a few steps, her vision was gone, her ears were ringing. Now blinded in one eye and unable to see out of her other eye due to SPD’s use of tear gas on the peaceful march, Elea McCrae stumbled, fell, and passed out,” the complaint reads.

When she came to, McCrae was taken to the emergency room for her eye where she needed surgery to repair the damage after suffering permanent vision loss, the complaint said.

This wasn't a shining moment for the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. In July 2020 I wrote a post, "The Salem Police Department has a big blind spot."

Here's the problem I have with how Chief Jerry Moore has defended the actions taken by the Salem Police Department during the recent Black Lives Matter protests.

Everything Moore has said is based on a flawed militaristic meet-force-with-larger-force policing philosophy. It's akin to a man explaining why he broke someone's nose in a bar fight when the real question is, "Was the fight necessary?"

In the 10-page report Chief Moore released about his department's response to the protests, there is no real discussion of the overall approach taken. It simply is assumed that tear gas is fine to use on a group of mostly peaceful people, and that a SWAT team should be called out to help deal with them. 

In September 2o20 I wrote, "Rubber bullet lawsuit undermines credibility of Salem Police Department."

This sure sounds like a Salem Police Department cover-up. There's little or no doubt that McCrae's injuries were caused by rubber bullets. She says that a police officer spoke with her after she was shot in the chest and eye. She was taken to the Salem Hospital Emergency Room.

Yet Chief Moore claimed that he wasn't aware "of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions."

Wow. Chief Moore must not have done much investigating before the after-action report was written. Or his police offices lied to him about their not being any injuries to protesters. Or Chief Moore deliberately withheld the rubber bullets injuries from his report.

Whichever possibility is true, it's a big blow to the credibility of the Salem Police Department. Shouldn't the department have contacted the Emergency Room to learn if there were people admitted with injuries caused by the actions of police officers?

They learned about a protester being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protester. Yet the department was clueless, supposedly, about a protester being shot in the eye and chest by bullets fired by a police officer or officers.

There's no doubt that Chief Moore's after-action report was deeply flawed. The only question is whether this was deliberate or a result of incompetence. 

Hopefully we will learn which is true in the course of the lawsuit being adjudicated.

After a jury awarded McCrae the $1 million, the City of Salem appealed to U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who reversed the jury's decision. Today's Salem Reporter story says:

The federal judge’s decision to toss the lawsuit last year was remarkable, according to Athul Acharya, executive director of the law firm Public Accountability, who represented McCrae in her appeal. 

“Judges are generally quite deferential to jury verdicts,” he said.

When I checked on what president appointed Immergut to her District Court position, it wasn't surprising that it was Donald Trump. OPB reported on the screwy process that enabled Immergut to be confirmed. 

For the first time in history, the [Senate] committee, on which Republicans enjoy a majority, opted to hold confirmation hearings while the Senate was on a monthlong recess. Democrats were occupied defending the 26 seats up in the November 2018 election. So, when Immergut's confirmation hearing rolled around on Oct. 24, half the dais sat empty. She was asked only three questions over the course of three minutes — all from one senator.

The bad news is that like all federal judges, Immergut has a lifetime appointment, so she'll have many more opportunities to make poor decisions like she did with the McRae excessive force case. The good news, of course, is that the Ninth Circuit reversed her, so maybe Immergut will learn from this that she needs to follow the law more closely in her rulings. 

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice.

Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm done to Eleaqia McCrae was no laughing matter. 

Here's an excerpt from a September 2020 Salem Reporter story about the lawsuit filed on behalf of McCrae.

The lawsuit said the crowd linked arms and knelt in the street. At 10:03 p.m. Salem police used tear gas on the crowd after the police review said people were throwing objects at them.

“Then, the use tear gas, smoke bombs, pepper grenades, flash grenades, rubber bullets, foam-tipped munitions and batons are deployed when the demonstrators cannot leave. These tactics make it more difficult for law-abiding protesters to comply with police officers’ dispersal orders,” the lawsuit states.

When McCrae got up to leave, the lawsuit said she was shot twice. One bullet hit her chest and the other hit her eye. After being shot in the eye, McCrae bent over in pain and passed out, the lawsuit states.

“She took a few steps, her vision was gone, her ears were ringing. Now blinded in one eye and unable to see out of her other eye due to SPD’s use of tear gas on the peaceful march, Elea McCrae stumbled, fell, and passed out,” the complaint reads.

When she came to, McCrae was taken to the emergency room for her eye where she needed surgery to repair the damage after suffering permanent vision loss, the complaint said.

This wasn't a shining moment for the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. In July 2020 I wrote a post, "The Salem Police Department has a big blind spot."

Here's the problem I have with how Chief Jerry Moore has defended the actions taken by the Salem Police Department during the recent Black Lives Matter protests.

Everything Moore has said is based on a flawed militaristic meet-force-with-larger-force policing philosophy. It's akin to a man explaining why he broke someone's nose in a bar fight when the real question is, "Was the fight necessary?"

In the 10-page report Chief Moore released about his department's response to the protests, there is no real discussion of the overall approach taken. It simply is assumed that tear gas is fine to use on a group of mostly peaceful people, and that a SWAT team should be called out to help deal with them. 

In September 2o20 I wrote, "Rubber bullet lawsuit undermines credibility of Salem Police Department."

This sure sounds like a Salem Police Department cover-up. There's little or no doubt that McCrae's injuries were caused by rubber bullets. She says that a police officer spoke with her after she was shot in the chest and eye. She was taken to the Salem Hospital Emergency Room.

Yet Chief Moore claimed that he wasn't aware "of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions."

Wow. Chief Moore must not have done much investigating before the after-action report was written. Or his police offices lied to him about their not being any injuries to protesters. Or Chief Moore deliberately withheld the rubber bullets injuries from his report.

Whichever possibility is true, it's a big blow to the credibility of the Salem Police Department. Shouldn't the department have contacted the Emergency Room to learn if there were people admitted with injuries caused by the actions of police officers?

They learned about a protester being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protester. Yet the department was clueless, supposedly, about a protester being shot in the eye and chest by bullets fired by a police officer or officers.

There's no doubt that Chief Moore's after-action report was deeply flawed. The only question is whether this was deliberate or a result of incompetence. 

Hopefully we will learn which is true in the course of the lawsuit being adjudicated.

After a jury awarded McCrae the $1 million, the City of Salem appealed to U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who reversed the jury's decision. Today's Salem Reporter story says:

The federal judge’s decision to toss the lawsuit last year was remarkable, according to Athul Acharya, executive director of the law firm Public Accountability, who represented McCrae in her appeal. 

“Judges are generally quite deferential to jury verdicts,” he said.

When I checked on what president appointed Immergut to her District Court position, it wasn't surprising that it was Donald Trump. OPB reported on the screwy process that enabled Immergut to be confirmed. 

For the first time in history, the [Senate] committee, on which Republicans enjoy a majority, opted to hold confirmation hearings while the Senate was on a monthlong recess. Democrats were occupied defending the 26 seats up in the November 2018 election. So, when Immergut's confirmation hearing rolled around on Oct. 24, half the dais sat empty. She was asked only three questions over the course of three minutes — all from one senator.

The bad news is that like all federal judges, Immergut has a lifetime appointment, so she'll have many more opportunities to make poor decisions like she did with the McRae excessive force case. The good news, of course, is that the Ninth Circuit reversed her, so maybe Immergut will learn from this that she needs to follow the law more closely in her rulings. 

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. Routh, never shot his rifle from a spot just outside of the fence surrounding the Florida golf course where Trump was playing and didn't have a line of sight on Trump.

Currently Routh only has been charged as a felon in possession of a firearm and for possessing an assault rifle with the ID number scratched off. He may face other charges once authorities have interviewed him. Attempted murder probably won't be one of them, given the circumstances. Menacing an ex-president seems justified. 

This time I don't have any inclination to look upon Trump sympathetically, because he's acting like the asshole that he is right off the bat. Astoundingly, even though Trump is a master at encouraging violence and hatred, today he claimed that Kamala Harris and other Democrats need to tone down their talk about Trump being a threat to democracy.

Well, as a Democrat, here's my three word response to the ex-president who hopefully will never again be president: Fuck you, asshole! You were a huge threat to democracy before Routh was apprehended, and nothing has changed: you're still a huge threat to democracy, and nothing will stop Democrats from speaking that truth.

Trump's hypocrisy was in full display today, as made clear in a New York Times story.

Mr. Trump on Monday morning claimed that “inflammatory language” from Democrats had provoked what the authorities are investigating as an assassination attempt against him, urging his rivals to tone down their speech even as he called them the “enemy from within” and “the real threat.”

Per usual, Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, accused others of doing what they're guilty of -- inciting violence. Trump and Vance keep on spreading the lie that migrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio are eating pet cats and dogs, along with geese in city parks. 

A CNBC story today makes these key points:

• State police in Ohio will conduct daily sweeps of schools in Springfield after authorities have been forced to investigate “at least 33” bomb threats, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.
• Springfield has become the face of the national immigration debate after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, repeatedly spread baseless claims about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating city residents’ pets.
• Springfield officials, including its Mayor Rob Rue and local police, have all disputed the claims, saying there are no credible reports that Haitian immigrants in the city are stealing or eating pets.

So Trump and Vance incite violence in Springfield through their flat-out lies, yet claim that it is Democrats who need to stop using inflammatory language. Trump and Vance need to look in a mirror to find the people most responsible for coarsening our political discourse. 

Regarding Routh, he voted for Trump in 2016 but said on social media that he supported Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, both Republicans, in the 2024 race for the presidency. A New York Times story says:

An eight-page federal complaint against Routh says nothing about his potential motive. Routh seems to have spoken positively about candidates in both political parties and described himself online as a disaffected former Trump supporter. In a rambling, 291-page book Routh self-published last year, he accused Trump of threatening American democracy and wrote “you are free to assassinate Trump.” Routh told The Times last year that he was willing to fight and die in Ukraine despite appearing in over his head. The Justice Department could also bring additional charges against Routh as it investigates.

So the wisest thing to do -- which naturally Trump isn't doing -- is to wait for the Justice Department to complete its investigation into Routh before drawing any conclusions regarding his motive for doing what he did on Sunday.

But regardless of his motive, those of us who vehemently oppose Trump's bid to occupy the White House again have no reason to stop speaking the truth about the danger Trump poses to the United States and the world. 

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 want to make clear that when I say Trump is unmanly, by no means am I asserting that there's any one way to be a "real" man. Men have all kinds of characteristics. I'm simply saying that in my rather traditional view of manliness, which I grew up with, Trump falls way short.

For example, I can't imagine Trump being a true team player.

The only sport I'm aware of that he's played is golf. That's an individual activity, even when played with others. I can't picture Trump being an effective member of a football squad where personal goals have to be secondary to what's best for the team.

Trump only cares about himself. He uses his money and power to get other people to do what he wants them to do. That works for a billionaire real estate developer or President of the United States, but not in areas where authority stems from genuine competence and an ability to lead.

I also can't imagine Trump in a physical fight. In fact, he doesn't seem to be a very physical person, a man comfortable with his own body. I can't see him downhill skiing, or surfing, or rock climbing -- any risky activity where injuries are common.

Ever since Trump came to national attention around 2015 (I never watched an episode of The Apprentice), I've been struck by how unmanly he appears to me. He often puts on a high sing-song'y voice that sounds really effeminate. He throws personal insults around habitually, a sign of someone lacking confidence in himself. He never takes responsibility for mistakes, the mark of a true leader. 

Last Tuesday's debate with Kamala Harris showed that she has way larger "balls" than Trump does. From the first moment when she walked firmly over to Trump's podium and forced him to shake her hand, saying "Kamala Harris, have a good debate," it was evident who the alpha on the stage was.

Harris was able to lead Trump to say whatever she wanted him to say. As I noted in my post about the debate:

MSNBC's Chris Hayes had a good way of putting it in the post-debate analysis. He said that Harris would repeatedly throw out a tasty lure that she suspected would attract Trump's attention, such as her comment that people who attend Trump rallies are seen leaving early because his speeches are so boring.

OUCH! That got Trump's attention. So rather than spending precious debate time talking about the deficiencies of the Biden-Harris administration, Trump would get distracted and chase after the shiny object that Harris had skillfully gotten him to bite on.

This showed how weak and easily manipulated Trump is, a point Harris made. She said that all world leaders like the authoritarian heads of state of Russia, China, and North Korea have to do is praise Trump and he follows their lead happily.

Trump wasn't only pussy-whipped at the debate. He was led around by Harris like a wimpy bull with a ring through its nose. And rather than taking his defeat like a man, he barged into the spin room after the debate blathering on about how he did a great job and reputable polls he made up in his own mind said he won 90-10 or 80-20. More lies to add to all he told at the debate. 

I loved the looks Harris gave Trump. Often they combined pity with amusement, as if she was hoping for a more worthy opponent and couldn't believe how Trump was self-destructing into an angry frothing mess. (Which, actually, is his normal state, but his advisors had hoped that Trump could act differently for 90 minutes.)

This was my favorite Harris expression. It conveyed the feeling of a competent woman who is watching a weak man fail miserably at responding to her statements and attacks. As I said in my previous blog post, "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!"

Harris looked much more like a Commander in Chief than Trump did. To not coin a phrase, he looked like a whiny little bitch.

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 to name-calling and fear-mongering.

Trump was smart to talk about undocumented migrants flooding across the border early on in the debate. But he repeated that line so many times, often in response to questions that had nothing to do with immigration, it got boring and stale real fast.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes had a good way of putting it in the post-debate analysis. He said that Harris would repeatedly throw out a tasty lure that she suspected would attract Trump's attention, such as her comment that people who attend Trump rallies are seen leaving early because his speeches are so boring.

OUCH! That got Trump's attention. So rather than spending precious debate time talking about the deficiencies of the Biden-Harris administration, Trump would get distracted and chase after the shiny object that Harris had skillfully gotten him to bite on.

This showed how weak and easily manipulated Trump is, a point Harris made. She said that all world leaders like the authoritarian heads of state of Russia, China, and North Korea have to do is praise Trump and he follows their lead happily.

A memorable moment in the debate, which I'm pretty sure made the heads of Trump's advisors explode, because it was exactly what they'd advised Trump not to do, was when he brought up the absurd MAGA lie about immigrants from Haiti eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Obviously that's completely false. 

When Trump blathered on about this lie, I stopped our recording of the debate to take a photo of the split screen reaction from Harris. Her look, along with Trump's angry expression, summed up the entire debate. Harris relaxed and pleasant, Trump tense and angry. 

I suspect polling about the debate will show that Harris was judged the clear winner. It wasn't even close. She did much better than I expected, while Trump did much worse. I thought that at times Harris was going to be able to push Trump's buttons,  but she far exceeded that. Harris had Trump jumping around like a puppet, not in control of much of his own words and thoughts. Assuming he ever is.

Then there was Taylor Swift endorsing Harris after the debate, signing her Instagram post "Childless cat lady." The whole evening was sweet for us Democrats, but Swift's endorsement was the icing on the cake.

One of the MSNBC analysts said that at times Harris looked like she was pitying Trump. I had the same reaction. It was kind of sad to see a grown man implode, but since this was Trump, I was a lot more happy than sad.

Biden wanted to cling to power, which would have been a disaster. Pelosi saved us.

Thanks to an article in the September 2 issue of The New Yorker, "Life of the Party: The Democrats seem rejuvenated by their new candidate. Why was it so hard to get one?," I learned about how close the Democratic Party came to being stuck with Biden after his disastrous debate, because he and his staff were so adamant about him staying in the presidential race.

Below are excerpts from the article by Andrew Marantz that show the extent to which Biden was dangerously out of touch with reality until Nancy Pelosi and a few other leading Democrats put enough pressure on Biden to snap him out of his fantasy that rank and file Democrats didn't want him to withdraw and he had a good chance of beating Trump.

The following day [after the debate], his staff drove him [Vermont Senator Peter Welch] to various events -- a meet and greet with dairy farmers in Waitsfield, a media conference in Burlington. Whatever the ostensible topic, the only thing that people wanted to talk about was the debate. "It was maybe eighty-twenty, or ninety-ten, in favor of 'Biden cannot be our nominee,'" Welch told me. "And this is in Vermont" --  the state that gave the President his widest margin of victory in 2020.

...Adam Smith, a congressman from Washington State, told me that, the day after the debate, "I called up the White House and went, 'Guys, we all know what has to happen here.' I hung up thinking, He'll do the honorable thing. And instead I watched the palace guard go, 'Nope, fuck off,' and start circling the wagons."

...On a Zoom call with a political action committee associated with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Mike Levin, of California, told Biden directly that the overwhelming majority of his constituents wanted Biden to step aside. Biden responded, "I think I know what I'm doing," and the call ended soon after that.

The following day, on a call between Biden and centrist Democrats in the House, Jason Crow, from Colorado, said that voters were "losing confidence" that Biden could "project strength." Biden responded, "I don't want to hear that crap." Adam Smith, the representative from Washington, told me, "It was really defensive and frankly a bit weird."

Another Democratic representative put it to me even more vividly: "We were all prepared for 'This is so sad, we're going to have to take the car keys away from Grandpa.' We were not prepared for the scenario where you try to take the keys away from Grandpa and Grandpa points a gun at your head."

...The Democratic Convention was scheduled for August, but the D.N.C. [Democratic National Committee], apparently at the urging of the White House, had decided to make the nomination official a month early, via Zoom, like trying to rush a shotgun wedding before anyone could get cold feet.

...At dinner, Welch struck up a conversation with Jared Huffman, of California, and I asked them both whether the Party should make any structural reforms in light of the Biden affair. "No more uncontested primaries," Huffman said.

"I'm not sure it's a systemic thing," Welch said. "We had a good President who got too old. We didn't see it, and then we did. I think it's a one-off."

"I know he wants to be remembered as Cincinnatus, willingly giving up power," Huffman added, referring to the Roman leader who was said to have resigned to become a farmer. "The fact is, he desperately wanted to run out the clock and hang on to power."

Welch asked, "But isn't that what we all want?"

Like most Democrats I'm deeply grateful to Biden that he withdrew from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris. But the warm feelings (and higher approval ratings) Biden now is getting from a citizenry overjoyed to escape a Trump-Biden rerun in 2024 shouldn't lead us to forget that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming, metaphorically, from his reelection bid. 

The article says that the main heroine in this vital democracy rescue mission was Nancy Pelosi. 

In total, apart from Welch, only three Democratic senators publicly urged Biden to step aside. Neither Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, were seen as major factors in the process. A few people cracked jokes about how the congressional leadership was acting more like the congressional followership. Adam Smith told me that, after a while, “I went, O.K., this just isn’t going to happen.”

But Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, continued to push, using a combination of private conversations, press leaks, and carefully calibrated public statements.

On July 10th, Pelosi appeared on “Morning Joe,” on MSNBC, setting off a frenzy of Beltway tasseography. “It’s up to the President to decide if he is going to run,” she said, even though Biden had insisted repeatedly that he’d made up his mind. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.” (“Such a gangster move,” a ranking House committee member told me.)

More recently, when asked on CBS whether she had led a “pressure campaign,” she replied, “I didn’t call one person.” That may be true, but there are other ways to use a phone.

At one point, Welch sent Pelosi a long text message, sharing his fears about Biden’s candidacy, and she promptly sent him a brief but affirmative reply. (Some next-generation Robert Caro may already be at work on a multivolume biography of Pelosi, scrambling after screenshotted texts.) It’s also possible that Pelosi didn’t initiate calls, but that she sometimes picked up when her phone rang.

Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas and the first member of Congress to call on Biden to withdraw, told me that, before he did so, “I had a conversation with Pelosi. . . . It seemed to me that there was a recognition of the severity of the problem.”

On the cover of her new memoir, “The Art of Power,” Pelosi looms over the National Mall in a white pants suit. “She knew how much time she had on the clock, and she kept ratcheting up the pain until the Biden people got the message,” Smith told me. “An absolute master class.”