Category Archives: Donald Trump

Fact-Checkers in the Trump Era

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I’m a fanboy of journalist fact-checkers. With all of the myths floating around politics and social media, that service has never been more necessary.

But in many ways, Trump has fact-checking journalists unable to make sense of his dizzying manipulations. Tom Tomorrow’s “This Modern World” explains in this insightful ‘toon.

At least two things are in play with fact-finding in the Trump era. First, journalists are confronted with a steady stream of tens of thousands of Trump’s lies — over 30,000 lies in Trump’s first four years alone. Because there are so many Trump lies to run down, journalists seem to feel obliged to scold Harris in roughly equal measure.

Trump era reporters want to appear balanced, even if the amount of lying and misleading between the two major party candidates is clearly out of balance. For this reason, some of the Harris scolds sometimes get to be a stretch, as the Tom Tomorrow cartoon satirizes.

The other Trump tendency that ties fact-checkers into knots is this: Trump famously takes multiple conflicting positions on many issues. His policy positions are consistently inconsistent.

Therefore, a Trump opponent attempting to characterize Trump’s record and positions perfectly accurately would require them to articulate lengthy explanations of Trump’s dizzying number of contradictions. That simply isn’t practical for a Trump opponent trying to be clear and concise on the campaign trail.

Abortion is a recent example. Trump has repeatedly boasted about overturning Roe abortion rights. But now that this “achievement” is clearly unpopular with impacted women, two-thirds of whom want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, Trump is claiming he will oppose policies that continue to limit or block abortions on a national level.

Forget that Trump’s record of overturning Roe says more about his position than any spin he subsequently uses. Forget that the Project 2025 playbook written by 28 of Trump’s top aides clearly lays out new ways for Trump to ban more types of abortions in more states, and that Trump has never specifically said he wouldn’t implement those things.

No, now when Harris points out that Trump wants to take away reproductive freedom, the ever-earnest fact-checkers have declared that she must point out that Trump has also taken a different position recently. They say that Harris’s failure to note Trump’s walkback spin makes her less than truthful.

That kind of fact-checking inadvertently misleads readers, many of whom only read the fact-checkers’ headlines and labels (e.g. “Kamala Harris’s Attack of Trump on Abortion Is Misleading”). The headline fails to note that Trump’s frequent lies are at the heart of Harris’s struggle to concisely characterize Trump’s ever-changing positions.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt explains the strategy behind Trump’s walkbacks that aren’t walkbacks.

It’s become a pattern: President Trump says something outrageous. He later grudgingly retracts his statement, or members of his administration retract it on his behalf. And then he quickly undermines the retraction.

So what explains it? What could Trump possibly be accomplishing with this blatant dissembling?

Something important and devious, actually. He is sending two different messages, each intended for a different audience.

With the initial statement, he’s talking to his primary audience. Often, that audience is his political base, and Trump is signaling that he’s with them…

And then, in short order, come Trump’s walkbacks. But I think it’s crucial to understand the value that these walkbacks have to Trump. Almost no matter how silly they are, much of the media coverage tends to treat the walkbacks as serious. The walkbacks — and the credulous repetition of them — allow Trump’s fellow Republicans to pretend that he never really meant the initial statements.

Leonhardt is focusing on how Trump manipulates Republicans, but Trump similarly manipulates fact-checking journalists.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a different kind of example. In his first term, Trump promised he would eliminate the ACA and replace it with a secret plan that he promised would be better than the ACA. After getting elected on this promise, Trump tried and failed over 70 times to kill the ACA, and never produced a replacement health reform plan that would be better for Americans.

(Only very late in the debate did Trump share a detailed “TrumpCare” plan. It would have caused more than 20 million Americans to lose their health protections. It was so destructive that only 17% of Americans supported it.)

Now, after that very telling history from Trump’s first term, in the 2023-24 campaign, Trump is again saying he would eliminate the ACA and replace it with a plan to make things even better. Sound familiar?

When Harris uses shorthand and explains to voters that Trump again wants to take away ACA protections, she gets scolded by fact-checkers who want her to give Trump credit for his latest promise to produce his latest secret plan. Given Trump’s long history of deception on this issue, it’s perfectly reasonable for Harris to assume that Trump has no viable ACA replacement plan. If he did, he would surely be happy to share it with Americans.

Again, I loves me some fact-checkers. They’re vitally important. We need more of them. But they do need to do a better job of understanding and explaining Trump’s manipulative games.

Stop the “Lock Him Up” Chants Now

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I’m a big supporter of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I admire the job they’re doing on the campaign trail. But I have one beef.

Photo credit: The Independent

When Harris supporters chant “lock him up” at rallies, Harris and Walz need to stop staying silent, as they did during yesterday’s rally in Philadelphia. From the podium, they need to interrupt the chant, and gently but firmly redirect the energy in the room. Something along the lines of this:

“No, let’s not go there, friends. Sentencing is for the courts to decide, not us. Unlike Trump and the MAGA Republicans, we respect the courts’ role.

Let’s not chant “lock him up” like the Trumpers. Let’s respect the role of our American courts instead cheer about the role we will play as we vote…him…out. (Lead the crowd: “Vote him out..vote him out…”)

This may seem like micromanagement. It may be a bit of a wet blanket tossed on the organic enthusiasm in the room. But it’s vitally important.

As Trump has the country teetering on the edge of retribution-fueled authoritarianism, where he is openly promising he will use a newly politicized and weaponized Department of Justice to settle old scores with critics, this is an important teachable moment.

For years, Republicans have inflamed America’s anti-democratic tendencies by allowing and leading such lynch mob-like chants aimed at Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who have been found guilty of nothing by the courts. That is leading the nation in a dangerous direction. Democratic leaders should show the way forward by redirecting their supporters in a full-throated pro-democracy direction.

This is the right thing to do for our endangered democracy and much-vilified judicial system.

At the same time, it is the right thing to do politically. It will be music to the ears of many persuadable swing voters — soft Democrats, soft Republicans, and independents — who will decide the outcome of this election. It will show them that Harris and Walz, in stark contrast to the vindictive authoritarian Trump, are the moderate adults in the room who can be trusted to lead American democracy out of this dangerous moment.

No, Don’t “Lock Him Up”

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You may be aware that a convicted felon is now the presumptive 2024 presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Twelve ordinary citizens, chosen by mutual consent of both sides’ attorneys agreed that Trump was guilty of election interference involving the payment and coverup of hush money for a porn star with whom he was committing adultery while his wife was pregnant. Their guilty verdict was unanimous on all 34 felony counts.

By the way, this election interference jury verdict extends Trump’s impressive losing streak with jurors to 42. In four criminal and civil trials, 42 jurors have weighed the evidence, and all 42 jururls have found Trump and his company to be guilty. 0-42!

Winning so much, he’s sick of winning?

From a political standpoint, the problem with this guilty verdict is what the problem always is with Trump: The swing voters who will decide this election have repeatedly shown that they have the attention spans of gnats. Their memory of the felony conviction will significantly fade, unless they’re frequently reminded.  

Those swing voters are already chasing distracting new “shiny objects” that are regularly tossed out by Trump —  the shark/electric boats lunacy, the Hunter Biden conviction, the veepstakes humiliation derby, etc. Those kinds of issues will continue to distract swing voters from the potential of having a felonious president.

The next stage in the election interference hush money trial is sentencing, which happens on July 11.  On that very important day, the judge will announce his sentence for Trump.

From a political standpoint, I don’t like the idea of giving Trump jail time, house arrest, or anything like that. Polls show that swing voters feel incarceration would be over the top. Given that, I don’t want a jail sentence to inadvertently help Trump’s electability. 

If I were the judge, the sentence I hand down to Trump would sound reasonable to most swing voters, to disarm his attempts at achieving martyrdom. At the same time, my sentence would serve to regularly remind voters that Donald J. Trump is a criminal, and not an ordinary presidential candidate.

This would be my sentence: For two days per week for the next six months, Trump would do something many criminals are forced to do, community service in the form of picking up garbage.

Imagine the campaign news: “As Biden released his plans to improve pharmaceutical prices, Trump was once again picking up garbage in fulfillment of his felony conviction sentence.”

A community service sentence will strike Trump haters as outrageously lenient. I get that. After all, covering up the porn star affair in the wake of the Access Hollywood scandal may have swung an election that Trump only won by an estimated 80,000 votes in three key states, though we can never know for sure. In addition, Trump repeatedly violated his gag order during the trial, which endangered the jury and court employees. He continues to collaborate with convicted criminals, is wholly unrepentant, and has several prior convictions on his record related to business fraud, sexual abuse, defamation, and tax fraud.

Still, hear me out. A 30-day community service sentence would seem reasonable to many moderate swing voters, so it would be more difficult for Trump to use the sentence to politically empower himself through martyrdom. That’s very important.

Moreover, imagine how this garbage pick-up sentence would look through a campaign lens. Twice every week for the remainder of the campaign, the news coverage of the presidential campaign would show images of a humiliated and seething Trump picking up rubbish in brightly colored safety gear with a supervisor watching him closely.  The 30 times that millions of American voters would see this image of Trump on the news serving alongside other disgraced, unrepentant common criminals would repeatedly hammer home what Trump truly is: A disgraced, unrepentant common criminal.

This kind of community service sentence would strike most swing voters as fair and reasonable. At the same time, though, 30 campaign days with images of Trump in orange or yellow safety gear picking up trash would make it much more difficult for voters to forget that Trump is a convicted felon, and not a normal candidate.

For a candidate whose cover-up of hush money robbed 2016 voters of key information they deserved to have for evaluating Trump’s fitness for office, ensuring that 2024 voters are regularly reminded of Trump’s election interfence conviction is apt restorative justice. So, hand the convicted felon his orange gear, rubber gloves, and Hefty bag, and put him to work, as news cameras capture every delicious minute.

How Trump’s Legal Delaying Tactics Could Hurt Him

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Politics is sometimes shaped by the Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC). The actions that politicians take expecting a particular result can sometimes lead to unanticipated outcomes.

For instance, in 2011 Minnesotans saw the Law of Unintended Consequences come into play when Republican political hacks in the state legislature voted to put a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot. Their thinking was that a majority of Minnesotans, who they assumed were as eager as they were to outlaw marriage equality, would turn out in the 2012 elections to pass the amendment. They then hoped that the voters attracted by the marriage ban would elect anti-LGBTQ Republicans.

It didn’t work out that way. To the surprise of many, the Republican’s same-sex marriage amendment was rejected by 51.9% of Minnesota voters. This made Minnesota the first state to reject such a ban at the ballot box. To make matters worse, Republicans lost control of the Minnesota Legislature. 

This allowed state Democrats to pass a statute legalizing same-sex marriage in 2013. 

In other words, the heated debate over the Republican-generated ballot measure made Minnesotans more accepting of same-sex marriage, not less. In this way, the Republicans’ ban plan led to a legalization law. Go Law of Unintended Consequences!

Similarly, at the national level, the 70 times congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA)/Obamacare forced previously cowed and muted ACA supporters to finally explain the tremendous value of the ACA.  As a result of their pro-ACA advocacy during those 70 debates, an overwhelming two-thirds of Americans now support the preexisting conditions protections of the ACA.  Support for ACA repeal is now just 17%.

As with same-sex marriage in Minnesota, the once-unpopular ACA became quite popular, thanks to Republicans’ efforts to kill it.

With these LUC examples in mind, I’m hoping that the LUC might come to the rescue when it comes to Team Trump’s relentless efforts to delay his pending criminal trials. Through a series of legal maneuvers, Trump’s army of lawyers has been pushing out the start of trials, presumably so that verdicts and appeals can’t be finalized prior to the November 2024 election. 

U.S. News and World Report, March 15, 2024

The chances are good that Trump’s delay tactics will largely do exactly what they are intended to do, help him once again escape legal and electoral accountability. But maybe, just maybe, they could hurt him. Here’s how:

If Trump’s criminal trials were happening this winter or spring, as originally hoped, the damaging information spotlighted during the heavy coverage of the criminal trials could by November be largely forgotten by lightly engaged, easily distracted swing voters.  On issue after issue, we’ve seen that swing voters have the attention spans of gnats. The news they’re casually focused on today could easily get forgotten by the time they vote seven months from now.

But if Team Trump’s delay tactics cause the insurrection-related testimony to be dominating the news in early fall, that could make those issues much more top-of-mind for voters during the closing days of the campaign.

Imagine a September and/or October dominated by wall-to-wall news of insurrection trial coverage.  This coverage is constantly showing voters alarming images of Trump supporters assaulting police. Imagine swing voters seeing the mountain of evidence showing Trump doing nothing to stop the bloody assault and subsequently praising the rioters.  Imagine them hearing law enforcement officers and Trump’s most loyal supporters and staff giving damaging blockbuster testimony about the bloody chaos that Trump created, relished, and glorified.

Imagine that this is what swing voters are hearing in the immediate lead-up to the election, rather than Trump’s most effective criticisms of Biden about the economy and immigration. And all of this is coming to them via a judicial setting, which feels more weighty and credible to them than the 2022 congressional hearings.

Even though the verdict and appeals wouldn’t be completed by Election Day in this scenario, these are hardly the final images Trump’s campaign strategists want in undecided voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box.  If the trial timing worked out this way, the delay tactics could unwittingly keep the insurrection nightmare fresher in voters’ minds than would have been the case if the trials hadn’t been delayed and were happening now.

Again, this is a long shot. The more likely outcome is that Trump’s delay tactics will cause him to largely push his law-breaking out of voters’ minds until after the election.

But who knows, maybe we will have a little LUC.

Five Things That Should Keep Trump Up At Night

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Politically speaking, Trump has a lot going for him. Very early in the primary season, he is the runaway front-runner for the GOP nomination.  Wrapping this up early will save him a lot of money and allow him to aim resources at Biden, instead of at his fellow Republicans.

He is battle-hardened. He has already endured dozens of serious scandals that would have ended most candidacies – two impeachments, 91 criminal indictments, a videotaped incitement of insurrection, the “grab em by the” lady bits tape, dozens of embarrassing gaffes, a porn star hush money conviction, a sexual abuse conviction, popular vote losses in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, etc. 

Despite all of those calamities and more, Trump somehow still has around 35-ish percent of voters consistently enthusiastic about him and another 15-ish percent of voters who currently seem willing to hold their noses and vote for him.

After all of that, it’s difficult to imagine what could cause Trump to lose much electoral ground in the next 10 months.

Moreover, Trump has the good fortune to be running against a politically wounded, gaffe-prone octogenarian who has had to endure post-pandemic economic headwinds throughout his term.

Add to that the very real possibility of a third-party candidate siphoning off anti-Trump voters from Biden, and it can’t be denied that Trump has one hell of a strong political hand. At this stage, he should be considered the favorite to win in November.

But if I were on Team Trump, these are five challenges that especially would concern me.

Surviving a Conviction(s)

A major conviction, especially on the insurrection-related charges, could weaken Trump with a block of undecided voters. The Washington Post recently reported:

“…election-day surveys showed 31 percent of Iowa caucus-goers and 42 percent of New Hampshire GOP primary voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime.

Those are big scary numbers, but I would add two caveats to them: First, with an army of Trump lawyers trying everything possible to delay proceedings, it’s going to be very challenging for prosecutors to get a conviction and subsequent appeals completed before the November election.

Second, I’d be surprised if even one-quarter of those people who today say a conviction would be a deal breaker for them would actually abandon Trump. After hearing Trump and his supporters endlessly claim how the conviction(s) was the product of a politically motivated witch hunt, I think many cynics will agree with that cynical argument.

Still, if even a relatively small fraction of that large block of conviction-sensitive voters abandon Trump because of a conviction(s), that could be decisive in a close general election.

Moving Beyond “The Base”

Also, Trump is currently weak with swing voters. While much is made of how loyal Trump’s base is, once the primaries are over the MAGA base is not anywhere near large enough to give Trump a general election win.  He needs to win over the non-affiliated independents, soft Democrats, and soft Republicans who will decide this election. Like Biden, Trump has a lot of work to do to win over those voters.

Trump should be very worried about his poor showing with independents so far. MSNBC’s data geek Steve Kornacki noted a remarkable 71-point difference between how New Hampshire independents voted for Haley by 21 points compared to how the state’s Republicans voted for Trump by 50 points.

Fox News exit polls in New Hampshire found that 35% of GOP vote primary participants, many of whom were independents, indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump won the Republican nomination that they wouldn’t vote for him.

Again, if even a fraction of that holds in November, that could seriously hurt Trump’s chances in battleground states.

The Economy, Stupid

Then there is the economy. The state of the economy has traditionally been very important to swing voters – independents, soft Republicans, and soft Democrats.  Up until now, that has helped Trump pull ahead in the polls.

But as pandemic-related economic challenges have eased, the economy under Biden has very quietly gotten robust – historically low unemployment, consistent economic growth, much lower inflation than earlier, interest rate decreases likely on the way, a historic boom for the stock market/retirement funds, wage growth outpacing inflation, and, at long last, increasing consumer confidence.  The United States under Biden has the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery in the world.

Even if that good economic news only neutralizes the enormous past advantage Trump enjoyed on this issue, rather than turning it into a strength for Biden, that could help Biden win over persuadable swing voters.

Doh! Roe!

Trump also continues to face tricky political winds related to abortion rights. Surveys show that two-thirds of Americans think the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that kept abortion legal and safe was a mistake. Meanwhile, Trump is out there telling anyone who will listen that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade.”  That’s music to Democrats’ ears.

The 2022 elections showed how much Republicans’ post-Dobbs abortion bans have hurt Republicans, particularly in suburban battlegrounds where battleground state elections are often decided.

Now congressional Republicans are promising a national abortion ban. That just adds fuel to this fire.

That would also worry me a lot if I was a Trump supporter.

Trump Being Trump

Getting voted out of the White House and kicked off Twitter has made Trump’s outrageous behavior a bit less visible than it was when he had the presidential bully pulpit. To the extent that Trump has been visible, a lot of the news coverage has been focused on how resilient he remains with the relatively narrow band of Americans who make up his political base. That success appealing to Republicans has made Trump look, up until now, relatively strong and normal.

But in a general election campaign, Trump’s steady stream of outrageous comments and actions will once again be more visible. Trump can’t keep himself from sounding childish, bigoted, incoherent, unstable, and dictatorial. That persona led Trump to lose the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.

Highly visible “Trump being Trump” news coverage is great for Trump when the task at hand is appealing to the Republican base. But a constant stream of Trump outrageousness doesn’t always help him with more moderate swing voters. Moreover, his undisciplined stream-of-conscious blathering keeps him from repeating the most persuasive anti-Biden messages and pro-Republican messages.

Again, Trump is far from politically weak. He is rightfully favored to win in November. But if I were a Trump operative, these are five things that would certainly keep me up at night.

An Ad to Save American Democracy

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If I were a billionaire who loved American democracy, I would pay for a TV ad something like the following to run steadily in the coming year in places where the data tell me swing voters are viewing.

“America was founded on this principle: No one should be above the law.

That’s why all of these powerful Democratic politicians were convicted.

So when you hear Republican politicians whining, remember this long list of convicted Democrats.

Is former President Trump guilty? We’ll see. We’ll see what a jury of ordinary Americans decides based on the facts and the law.

That’s how we do it in America. Because no one in either party, no matter how powerful they are, should ever be above the laws that apply to the rest of us.”

—

The image on the screen throughout this voiceover would be the following names, among others, scrolling steadily:

Dan Rostenkowski (Democrat-IL) – Convicted.

Harrison A. Williams (Democrat-NJ) – Convicted.

Mario Biaggi (Democrat-NY). Convicted.

Edwin Edwards (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Don Siegelman (Democrat-AL). Convicted.

Nicholas Mavroules (Democrat-MA). Convicted.

Albert Bustamante (Democrat-TX). Convicted.

Joe Kolter (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Austin Murphy (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Mel Reynolds (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Jim Traficant (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

Frank Ballance (Democrat-NC). Convicted.

Bob Ney (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

William J. Jefferson (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Laura Richardson (Democrat-CA). Convicted.

Jesse Jackson Jr. (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Chaka Fattah (D-PA). Convicted.

Corrine Brown (D-FL). Convicted.

Rod Blagojevich (D-IL). Convicted.

Anthony Weiner (D-NY). Convicted.

Why that ad? It’s not the least bit clever, cutting, or captivating. It’s in no danger of winning any awards.

But we need ads something like this because they inject information that is missing from the current debate. We need them to set the context for the upcoming Trump trials, a context that too many voters with short memories lack.

Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), who was impeached by his own party, forced out of office, convicted, and jailed for eight years on federal charges of public corruption

We need that messaging to bust the “only Republicans get prosecuted by the DOJ” myth being promoted non-stop by Fox News and other conservative propaganda outlets.

We need that message informing discussions on this topic at family, friend, and work gatherings.

We need messaging like that to prevent Trump, if he is convicted, from achieving martyr status amongst the swing voters who will decide if Trump ultimately regains the presidency in 2024, which would empower him to pardon himself and his co-conspirators and inflict punishment on prosecutors, political opponents, critics, and America’s most important democratic institutions.

Finally, we need paid advertising like that because we can’t rely on news reporters to repeatedly provide this important context, out of fear that it will somehow appear biased.

For billionaires, paying for this kind of messaging campaign would not diminish their lavish lifestyle. And it might just save American democracy.

So, what say you, Buffet? Soros? Bloomberg? Steyer? Sussman? Simons? Anyone?

DeSantis “Anti-Woke” Agenda Falling Flat With Voters

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In 1910, writer Jack Johnson nicknamed white boxer James Jeffries the “Great white hope” as Jeffries prepared to fight the black fighter Jack Johnson.  Apparently, Mr. Jeffries represented something that many fans found discomforting about Mr. Johnson. 

Similarly in 2023, Republican elites are desperately searching for a Great Non-Trump Hope, sometimes quietly referred to as “Trump with a brain, “Trump without the crazy,” or “Trump without the chaos.”  Most Republicans have settled on the charismatically challenged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his landslide reelection win over Democrat Charlie Crist.

At this point, a lot of Republican voters outside of Florida don’t know much about DeSantis. They know he’s not as undisciplined as Trump, and that he has handily won recent elections at a time when Trump has been regularly rejected by general election voters. 

But beyond presenting himself as a stable winner, DeSantis is pushing a set of extremist policies that appeal to anti-“woke” Republicans.  That may make sense as a primary election strategy, but how about as a general election strategy?  How popular will DeSantis’s Republican-friendly platform be with the all-important swing voters in battleground states?

Here DeSantis faces stiff headwinds, according to a recent University of North Florida survey. Remember, these toxic findings are from DeSantis’s home state, where he just won reelection by 19 points.

These numbers are jaw-dropping. If DeSantis wants to run ads promoting his stands on these issues, Democrats should offer to pay for them.

An overwhelmingly unpopular policy agenda isn’t even DeSantis’s biggest challenge. His more limiting political leg iron is that he can’t begin to match the Trump bombast and charisma that seems to be the primary driver of Trump’s enduring popularity with Republicans. That will become much more apparent as the primary campaign season heats up, once DeSantis and Trump start appearing on the same stage together. The man the former President belittles as “Tiny D” will shrink in that setting.

In other words, the problem with the pursuit of “Trump without the crazy” is that a majority of Republican primary voters adore “the crazy.”

DeSantis’s other problem is that even if he somehow finds a way to defeat Trump in the primary, and I don’t think he can, Trump’s brutal and relentless attacks will drive DeSantis’s unfavorability ratings sky-high, including on issues important to general election swing voters, such as DeSantis’s past efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Also, the possibility of a Trump third-party candidacy looms large.

DeSantis won’t look nearly as attractive facing general election voters in the spring of 2024 as he looked to Republican primary voters in the winter of 2023. And if Trump somehow loses the Republican endorsement, he will continue attacking DeSantis long after the primaries are over.  All the while, DeSantis’s “anti-woke” policy agenda will further sully him with general election swing voters, particularly suburban women, people of color, and young people.

All of which is to say, it ain’t easy being DeSanctimonius.

Dueling Visions for Minnesota: Scandinavia or South Dakota?

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Elections in a purple state can give you whiplash. 

After red wave elections, we’re led by Republicans like Tim Pawlenty who push for low taxes, poor services, and culture wars.

After blue wave elections, we’re led by DFLers like Tim Walz who push for higher taxes, better services, and cultural tolerance. 

After elections with more mixed results, legislative stalemates cause us to keep the prevailing status quo frozen in place.

That makes every election cycle extremely consequential.

The South Dakota Vision for Minnesota

In 2022, a decidedly purple Minnesota – at the time, it was the only state in the nation with one chamber of the state Legislature controlled by Democrats and the other controlled by Republicans – held a particularly high-stakes election. 

If Minnesota voters had elected ultra-conservative former physician gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and a Republican Legislature dominated by far-right Trumpers, Minnesota would have become a conservative promised land, much like its neighbor to the west, South Dakota. 

During the campaign, Jensen and other Republicans proposed a race-to-the-bottom on taxes, including eliminating the state income tax, which would have led to dramatically worse services.  Republican spinmeisters prefer to say “smaller government,” but the reality is that it would have meant much worse services. The anti-vaxxer Doc Jensen also pledged a South Dakota-like war on public health and culture war initiatives to force conservatives’ thinking on gays, guns, God, and gynecology on all Minnesotans. 

In other words, think Kristi Noem, with a stethoscope prop.

The Scandinavia Vision for Minnesota

Fortunately, 192,408 more Minnesotans voted for incumbent Governor Tim Walz than Jensen. More surprisingly, since it was predicted to be a historically horrible year for Democrats, Minnesotans also elected narrow DFL majorities in the state House and Senate.  The all-important Senate majority is especially razor-thin at 34-33.

Walz and the DFL-controlled Legislatures are armed with a $17.5 billion budget surplus and are offering a vision that is more like a social democratic-led Scandinavian country in the 1970s than South Dakota in the 2020s:

  • Paid family and medical leave;
  • An enormous funding increase for public schools;
  • A targeted child tax credit to dramatically reduce childhood poverty;
  • Free school lunches for all students;
  • An opportunity for people without employer-based health insurance to buy into public health insurance (MinnesotaCare/Medicaid), instead of only being able to choose private insurance;
  • Down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and rent vouchers;
  • A huge package to save the beleaguered childcare sector and make child care free for poor families and more affordable for middle-class families;
  • Large subsidies for weatherization, electric vehicle infrastructure, and solar energy expansion to combat climate change;
  • A range of gun violence prevention reforms, such as universal background checks, red flag laws to prevent people who could be perceived as a threat to themselves or others from getting guns, raising the legal age for obtaining military-style rifles to 21, and banning high-capacity magazines;
  • Legalized marijuana and expunged records for past offenders;
  • Driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants;
  • Automatic voter registration;
  • Enfranchising felons who have served their time; and
  • A capital gains tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.

The list goes on. Overall, think Bernie Sanders, with a Fargo accent.

This is the most dramatic swing of state policy in my lifetime, and perhaps in the history of the state. And if somebody you may have never heard of, Judy Seeberger (DFL-Afton), had received just 322 fewer votes in her state Senate race, most of those changes would never have been possible. Without Seeberger’s handful of votes in the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota would still be stuck in limbo between the South Dakota vision and the Scandinavia vision. 322 votes.

Tackling a Dummy

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By Noel Holston

In gridiron in terms, what I am about to say would be called piling on. Many political writers nationwide have already weighed in on onetime football star Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate candidacy and his staggering lack of qualification.

But I live in Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia, where Walker won a Heisman Trophy in 1982 and became a celebrity, a Peach State icon, so here I go, jumping in. Throw a flag if you want.

If elected, Hush-uhl, as the good ol’ white alumni say, would be biggest dunce in the Senate. Maybe ever.  

His candidacy represents a new low for GOP cynicism and disregard for the larger public good. Everybody knows he’s as ignorant as a tackling dummy, but while Democrats and old-line Republicans find that alarming, the MAGA wing of the Grand Old Party doesn’t care as long as Herschel can win and flip the Senate red.

And he just might. 

In November 2020, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, primary minister at Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, once the home Dr. Martin Luther King, made history when he won a special election for the Senate seat opened by Republican Johnny Isakson’s early retirement for health reasons. Warnock narrowly beat a white, Republican woman, Kelly Loeffler, in a fierce, costly race to become Georgia’s first African-American Senator. 

But the prize he won was only the remaining two years of Issakson’s six-year term. Warnock is now running as an incumbent for his first full term.

The GOP turned to its dirty trick playbook. The bosses know that Warnock, only 53, is not just one of the most charismatic Democrat to emerge since Barack Obama; they know he’s already making a mark in the Senate and that his national recognition is growing. So they didn’t bother with another white candidate. They embraced Walker, a pigskin superhero in a football-crazy state, a Donald Trump-defending (and endorsed) black celebrity who is acceptable to white conservatives and could very well peel off enough black votes to trim Warnock’s winning margin. 

Walker is such a big deal in Georgia that his campaign signs don’t even show his last name. Like Prince and Adele, he’s mononymous: Herschel.

Photo by Noel Holston. Vandalism likely by the wind.

On the downside for Republicans, Walker has been accused of domestic abuse by an ex-wife and has documented history of exaggeration and fabrication with regard to his life and accomplishments. Here’s a man so oblivious to his own prevarication that he has claimed to be valedictorian at UGA when, in fact, he did not graduate. He left school early for the pros.

Walker has said things, not just unawares on hot mics but in public forums, that make his backer Trump’s incoherent word salads sound like a TED talk. 

After the horrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, for instance, Walker told an interviewer on Fox who asked about his views on gun control, “Well, you know, it’s always been an issue…People see that it’s a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel. And that’s the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You talk about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at their social media? What about doing that?”

At a campaign stop, Walker said, “Warnock, I remember hearing him say, ‘America need to apologize for it whiteness.’ That’s not in a Bible I ever read. Our Founding Fathers already apologized for its whiteness. Because if you read the Constitution, it talks about every man being treated fair.”

I will wait while you, dear reader, scratch your head and try to figure out what the heck any of that gibberish means. And it typical of what Walker say.

This is why his campaign ads show him smiling his mega-watt smile, running with a football, mingling with adoring fans and reading simple sentences from a TelePrompter. It’s also why Walker’s handlers have so far avoided even scheduling a debate with Warnock, much less putting him on a stage with the vastly quicker minister. They know that in a clash of wits, intelligence and knowledge, Warnock is the Heisman-quality talent and Walker is a water ___.

You can fill in the blank. I won’t say the word because I am white and might be accused of making a racist remark even though I am just making another football analogy.

This, however, does underscore a serious potential flaw in the GOP’s strategy, the other side of a double edge. Warnock can say things to and about Walker that a white Democrat could not. 

So far, though, Warnock has mostly stayed above the fray. TV ads in which he’s featured on camera focus on who he is and things he’s already accomplished, such fighting for help for American soldiers ill from burn-pit exposure. 

Warnock ads that don’t feature him hit Walker hard. One spot, culled from a 2008 CNN interview, shows Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, tearfully claiming Walker put a pistol to her temple and threatened to blow her brains out and, another time, threatened to cut her throat.

Walker hasn’t quite denied these allegations. He’s has, however, attributed past misbehavior to his suffering from dissociative identity disorder, or DID — what we used to call multiple personality disorder.

Comforting, no? I mean, we’re used to politicians being two-faced, but Herschel may be taking us into Three Faces of Eve territory. He could be a Sybil servant.

I am hoping and praying Georgians of the right-ish persuasion have a come-to-reason moment and either stay home on election day or vote for the preacher from the Savannah projects.

As for Herschel, well, I agree with what the Auburn cheerleaders used to chant:

Push him back, push him back, waaaayy back.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

Angel With an Orange Face

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By Noel Holston

I’ve been thinking about Donald Trump and Angels with Dirty Faces.

You know who Trump is. You may need a reminder about the movie. It’s a classic 1938 crime melodrama in which James Cagney and Pat O’Brien costar as boyhood pals whose lives went in opposite directions. Cagney’s adult Rocky Sullivan is a vicious gangster, O’Brien’s Jerry Connolly a Roman Catholic priest.

The movie wraps up with Rocky getting convicted of murder and being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Father Jerry visits him on death row. He pleads with Rocky to drop his cocky defiance and beg for mercy so that the young hoodlums from the old neighborhood who idolize him — the “Dead End” kids — will feel betrayed and rethink their own criminal ambitions.

Rocky refuses, telling Father Jerry that his reputation is all that he has left. He’s going to walk the last mile with a swagger and “spittin’ in their eyes.”

Jerry walks the corridor with Rocky and shakes his hand farewell. Then Rocky suddenly breaks down and screams for mercy. The guards have to drag the whimpering tough guy to the chair. He dies a coward’s death, and the delinquents who revered him, upon reading the news of how Rocky “turned yellow,” start to question their choices.

In the Trump remake, soon to be a major motion picture —I mean, like, HUGE — the former President of the United States, a career con artist, is finally brought to justice after giving John Law the slip so many times. For his role in facilitating and encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and the deaths it caused, he gets 10 years in a federal prison for reckless endangerment and depraved indifference — life, essentially, given his age and obesity.

Still, he loudly maintains that his “landslide” win in the 2020 election was stolen from him and his backers, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

As he awaits the van that will take him to a secure federal prison, Trump gets a visitor. It’s not a boyhood friend. He has none. It’s not an adult running buddy. Jeffrey Epstein is dead. It’s not a priest or a minister. He doesn’t really know any that well. It’s his daughter, Ivanka.

She pleads with him, for the sake of the divided country, to disavow the “big lie” that he was a victim of election fraud and to tell the Proud Boys, the evangelical Christians and the everyday MAGA millions that idolized him that he was always in it for his own gain and glory and never gave a flying fork about them or their issues.

Like Rocky Sullivan, the Donald refuses. He says all he has left is his notoriety, his image as a badass who speaks for America’s beleaguered conservative citizens and isn’t afraid to insult or belittle anybody, regardless of race, gender or disability, who gives him any lip.

Ivanka rides with her father on the golf cart to the prison van. She hugs him farewell. And then, suddenly, Donald J.Trump breaks down, begging not to be put away in a cell without a seat on its toilet and apologizing to all the voters who trusted him and cheered him at countless rallies.

And his followers, including the Proud Boys, watch his pathetic, whimpering display live on TV, and begin to question what they’ve believed and done in his name for the past six years.

OK, the remake’s a fantasy. So was the original movie.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

Lying in political ads is legal. Really.

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Guest column by Noel Holston

Athens, Georgia — Throughout the day, and especially around evening news time, Atlanta’s commercial television stations are bombarding viewers in the greater metro area with paid political advertising. The primaries for Georgia governor, U.S. Senate and other races are just three weeks away.

One spot in particular jumps out. Former President Donald Trump, in a voice-over, endorses David Perdue for Georgia governor over incumbent Brian Kemp. Trump derides Kemp for refusing to find him the votes to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and for failing to exercise his supposed authority to simply throw out the ballots.

This is, of course, a bald-faced lie — indeed, part of the “Big Lie” that is even now being investigated by a U.S. House select committee.

Mainstream media ads also amplify The Big Lie.

Even as a grand jury convenes in Atlanta to determine whether Trump criminally interfered in the election when he phoned Kemp and pressured him to alter election results.

Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, both Republicans who themselves had voted for Trump, simply declined to exercise powers that didn’t have. They refused to ignore recounts and facts. They refused to cheat.

But still the ad runs and runs, with Trump kvetching about what was “stolen” from him and his supporters.

How can this be? How can these TV stations keep showing attack ads that make claims that their own news anchors, both local guys and their respective network counterparts, routinely mention only with the modifiers “false” or “baseless”? Is there no “truth in advertising” requirement?

Short answer: No.

At least not where political advertising is concerned.

I emailed my concern about this a couple of days ago to WXIA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Atlanta that I most often watch for news. What can I say? I have a crush on Andrea Mitchell.

A WXIA representative got back to me this afternoon. Here’s the reply. I’m guessing you did not know this:

“The Federal Communications Commission’s political broadcast rules actually prohibit television stations from refusing or altering political advertising from any legally qualified candidate,” WXIA’s spokesperson said.

“More specifically, the FCC says that a person who has publicly announced his or her intention to run for nomination or office, is qualified to run under the appropriate federal, state or local laws to run and has met all of the other necessary qualifications to run for and hold the office they are seeking, is permitted to purchase political advertising time within 45 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general or special election in which that person is a candidate.

“Additionally, television stations cannot censor or alter the content of political ads being run in any way. The ads must be run in their original form — even if their content differs from the ordinary program content that the station would regularly air.

“A station is also prohibited from rejecting a political ad from a candidate, despite its content. As a result, broadcast stations are not responsible for the content of those particular political ads, even if the content may be demonstrably false or defamatory in nature.” (bold italics mine)

So, even if Trump accused Brian Kemp of sheep shagging or Kemp said Trump and Perdue are having an affair, the Atlanta stations would be obligated to televise their ads uncut. And so, in similar situations, would all other federally licensed commercial TV stations in other parts of the country, including yours.

And we worry what Elon Musk is going to do with Twitter.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

Yellowstone Offers a MAGA-era Rorschach Test

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Paramount Network’s television series Yellowstone is a huge hit, and I’ve been pondering why.  After all, raising cattle is not something that one would guess most contemporary Americans would likely find particularly riveting.

It strikes me that there are two very different ways to view Yellowstone.  To many like me, it’s consumed as a mafia story. Mafia families use extortion, violence, and other criminal methods to make money and preserve power and privilege, and that is precisely what Yellowstone’s Dutton family is all about, episode after episode.

There’s a lot to like about Yellowstone. It is entertaining, beautifully shot, and well-acted.  As with many a mafia story, the story about what will become of the family members pulling out all the stops to maintain their power and privilege has been worth watching.  Before watching it, I might not have believed that a Montana-based Sopranos yarn would work, but it does for me.

It’s far from perfect. The story line gets preposterous at times, the trash-talk scripting often feels particularly contrived, the level of violence displayed is gratuitous, and the simplistic characters seem mostly unwilling or unable to see gray areas in the situations they encounter.  Talented actresses like Kelly Reilly could have been even more interesting to watch with scripts that weren’t so simplistic and over-the-top.  

But beyond the familiar mafia formula, there is another very different way to view Yellowstone.  Many viewers see mega-rancher John Dutton and his loyal family as superheroes, not criminals.  They see an ultra-honorable family fighting for what they believe was once great about America – more hard work, more family loyalty, more agrarian lifestyles, less “politically correct” nonsense, and a might-is-right approach to ensure you always get your way. 

In this case, the superheroes’ superpowers involve guns-a-plenty, humiliating trash-talking, bullying of dissenters, corruption of state and local government, and an unflagging certainty that it’s their God-given right to control anything they damn well want, despite what “the others” – urbanites, environmentalists, the insufficiently macho, and Native Americans – do or say.

A lot of people seem to see Yellowstone this way.  Go to any rural or small town area, and you’re going to see folks wearing Yellowstone gear, just the way people wear Captain America, Superman, and Wonder Woman gear.  These folks not only want to watch the Duttons, they want to be them.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yellowstone first became a hit in smaller, more rural markets, not on the coasts.

The show wrapped its fourth season Sunday night with an average 10.4 million total viewers on the Paramount Network, up from 4.5 million in season 1.  The unconventional path “Yellowstone” took to ratings dominance shows how audiences can accrue and change over a series’ lifespan and how regional differences still matter…

Lafayette, Ind., is a “Yellowstone” stronghold. The area around Purdue University had the highest proportion of viewers during season 1 of any small market outside Montana and Wyoming, the region where “Yellowstone” is set, according to Nielsen data on viewers ages 25 to 54.

Loyalists there include Jim Hedrick, 62, whose company Horizon Ag Consulting works with farmers across the Midwest. He says “Yellowstone” mines issues that matter in his circles, such as family cohesion and the development of rural areas.

When “Yellowstone” premiered in 2018, the show ranked fourth in the 25-to-54 age group in the least-populated TV markets, categorized by Nielsen as D markets. In the country’s most populous areas—dubbed A markets, which include New York and Los Angeles—“Yellowstone” didn’t crack the top 50.

Like other superhero tales, Yellowstone sometimes gets pretty unrealistic.  In the real world, no business, including ranching, is immune from criminal law enforcement, environmental protections, eminent domain rules, and political realities.  Deep red rural states trend in those directions, but they’re not nearly as extreme as the Dutton-dominated Montana.

As such, the Yellowstone fantasy offers an escape for viewers who dream of a world where people who look and act like them find ways to control everything. That seems like the “secret sauce” that makes Yellowstone so delicious for so many.

Why are the Duttons viewed by so many as heroes rather than criminals?  For many viewers, the Dutton’s brutal crimes are forgiven – lustily cheered on, even – because of the enemies involved.  The Duttons hate the same people that Trumpists hate — fakey latte-sipping urban dwellers, clueless environmentalist brats, rule-bound government dweebs, hopelessly soft beta male, snowflake cucks, and coddled minorities.

And who doesn’t want to see someone stick it to those guys?

Yellowstone is a kind of Rorschach test that is being seen different ways depending on the individual viewer’s biases and values.  How you interpret it reveals personality characteristics, such as an authoritarian instinct and willingness to rationalize violence and other crimes. 

I have no proof of this, but it seems a safe bet that there is a strong correlation between Trump fans and people who view the corrupt, murderous Duttons as righteous superheros rather than a privileged, power-obsessed crime family.

(By the way, the other way that Yellowstone is fantasy is that the actors like Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly who are playing right wingers’ heroes are not conservative in their real lives. After campaigning for Reagan earlier in his life, Costner has campaigned for Barack Obama and the Biden Administration’s Pete Buttigieg. And the English actress Reilly is reportedly a Democrat.)

Because Yellowstone has proven so overwhelmingly popular, we surely will see more programming like it. We can expect more “us against them” narratives giving comfort and encouragement to viewers whose fondest wish is to own the libs without pesky laws in the way. 

If I were a right-wing billionaire intent on fanning the culture war flames as a means to maintain and grow my financial power and privilege, I’d bankroll more Yellowstone-like shows to provide entertaining propaganda tools to compliment the news-like propaganda tools that those billionaires already control to great effect.

Everyone likes to fantasize about being a superhero, and shows like Yellowstone offers heroic role models and road maps for white people bending and breaking laws to maintain their privilege in a rapidly changing world. 

And you know what? If the acting, story, scenery, and production levels are as good as they are in Yellowstone, the chances are that plenty of liberals like me will probably watch the coming Yellowstone clones, though through a very different lens.

Five Reasons To Never, Ever Vote For the MyPillow Guy

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Mike Lindell, the “MyPillow Guy,” seems to be the front-runner to become Minnesota Republicans’ nominee for Governor in the 2022 election.  This seems like a big joke to many, but we need to take it very seriously.

Lindell has many advantages that other GOP gubernatorial candidates lack — minor celebrity, statewide name recognition, tons of personal money, a compelling personal story of redemption, the wink and a nod endorsement of Minnesota GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan, and most importantly, a likely Trump endorsement.

In a GOP primary, where the most slavishly Trumpy Trumpists rise to the top, Lindell can point out that he not only supports Trump, he practically deifies him.  Take his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):

“As I stand before you today, I see the greatest president in history. Of course he is. He was chosen by God. God answered our prayers, our millions of prayers, and gave us grace, and a miracle happened on Nov. 8, 2016. We were given a second chance and time granted to get our country back on track with our conservative values and getting people saved in Jesus’s name.”

Top that, Paul Gazelka, Pete Stauber, Scott Jensen, Chad Greenway, and Matt Birk.
To any swing voters paying close attention, it’s obvious that electing Lindell governor would be a disaster. But are they paying attention? I don’t want to take it for granted that Minnesotans won’t elect a narcissistic minor celebrity.  See Jesse Ventura in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2016.

So here are five important reasons to work like hell to keep Lindell out of power.

Crooked Businessman.  The MyPillow company Lindell founded has earned a humiliating “F” grade from the Better Business Bureau due to the number of consumer complaints it has received.

He also was forced to pay a $1 million lawsuit settle for making false medical claims about his pillows.  It turns out that pillows cannot cure insomnia, sleep apnea and fibromyalgia.

Over his career, Lindell has shown himself to be a rich, fast-talking, serial-lying, TV-empowered con man running a shady business. Sound familiar?

Admitted Stalker.  Mike Lindell has been divorced twice, and violated a restraining order obtained by a girlfriend who accused him of physically abusing her. This is how Jim Heath TV describes those events:

Lindell was divorced for the first time by 2008, and was arrested in January of that year on suspicion of domestic assault.

The woman he was dating claimed he had punched and kicked her — even hitting her with “a four-foot wooden dowel,” according to documents.

Lindell denied the allegations, but an order of protection was still issued in the case.

He was arrested two months later for violating the order by allegedly taking the woman’s car.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to the order of protection violation.

Keep in mind the old adage: “Character is who you are when no one is looking.”

Dangerous Quack. You know those guys who crawl out from under rocks to con desperate people whose families are in crisis? Yeah, he’s that guy.

At a time when Americans were desperate for good science-based advice about how to survive the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, Lindell publicly promoted the plant extract oleandrin as “the miracle of all time.”

Meanwhile, scientists stress that there is no scientific evidence supporting these claims, and that oleandrin is poisonous even at very low doses.

Oh and by the way, Lindell just happens to have a financial and governing stake in a company that makes oleandrin, Phoenix Biotechnology.

This chapter tells us a lot about how Lindell would be as a governor. His instincts are to ignore science and put profits over people.

Murderer Protector.  Lindell shamelessly donated bail money to spring accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse from jail.  Kenosha, Wisconsin law enforcement officials have charged the young white male of the murder of two Wisconsinites who were peacefully calling for an end to police brutality.

Lindell later claimed he didn’t intend his donation to help Rittenhouse with bail, but he refused to seek the return of his donation. As with Trump, pay attention to what Lindell does, not what he says.

Keep in mind, Lindell didn’t come to the defense of George Floyd, or the police officers who were bloodied and killed at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists. But he rushed to the defense of someone murdering peaceful Americans who were speaking out for justice for black people. That speaks volumes.

Inciter of Insurrection.  After more than 70-days of bipartisan local, state and federal officials confirming 2020 presidential election results through legally sanctioned counts, audits, recounts, re-recounts, certifications, and court reviews, Lindell continues to publicly pedal the baseless, dangerous lie that Biden’s 7 million vote, 74 elector margin is somehow invalid. For good measure, he also claimed Senator Tina Smith’s 5-point victory over Jason Lewis was actually a loss. 

With no supporting evidence, and several court decisions tossing out the allegations, Lidell continues to falsely allege that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had conspired with foreign powers to rig voting machines to steal the election from Trump. As a result, Twitter has permanently banned Lindell and his company MyPillow, because they have seen that he is unable or unwilling to tell the truth, and is inciting violent attacks against democracy. 

Speaking of inciting violence, Lindell attended Trump’s infamous insurrection-inciting rally, which led to Trump’s second impeachment.  After supporting the incitement, Lindell aggressively pushed false claims that the murder and mayhem at the Capitol was done by Antifa members, instead of by Trump-supporting white supremacists and militia members. 

Weeks later, none of the arrested insurrectionists have been found to be associated with Antifa, or any other left-wing group.  

As Lindell’s infomercials say, “but wait, there’s more!”

Lindell was photographed entering a White House meeting  with a list of talking points that included encouraging President Trump to impose martial law to help Trump overturn the will of the people in the 2020 presidential election. Martial law!

So while we’re yucking it up at the cute SNL skit, remember that this guy isn’t just a harmless kitschy-cute infomercial huckster.  He’s a consumer-victimizing, protection order-violating, science-denying, serial-lying, insurrection-inciting, and martial law-advocating crackpot.

A Potential Silver Lining In the Dark Cloud That Is Trump’s Vaccine Rollout

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It’s painfully obvious that former President Trump badly screwed up the parts of the Covid-19 vaccine initiative that he actually controlled.  While he obviously wasn’t equipped to be in the lab developing vaccines quickly, he was in a position to order the right number of doses, develop a plan for getting the vaccine to at least 70 percent of us, and marshal resources to implement the plan.

He botched that assignment, and that has put a very dark cloud over President Biden, who needs a relatively swift end to the pandemic in order to have any hope of having a successful presidency.

But maybe there is a bit of a silver lining in that dark cloud–highly visible consumer demand created by the shortage.

As all good Adam Smith fanboys know, the law of supply and demand tells us that low supply will create high demand for a product.  In a nation with a sizable slice of vaccine doubters, creating more demand for the Covid-19 vaccine will be critically important. 

It’s no secret that shortages, or perceptions of shortages, are powerful tools for marketers.  For instance, the makers of Teddy Ruxpin and Nintendo Wii produced too few products, perhaps intentionally, and that generated tremendous consumer demand.  As a result of the shortage, those companies benefited from months of millions of dollars worth of free new media coverage of consumers waiting in line.  Sales ultimately surged, as consumers apparently thought to themselves, “I mean, if all of them want it so badly, I must want it too!”

This happens all the time in capitalistic economies. Shortages increases consumer demand.  That’s also why so many internet marketers go to great lengths to tell us how few of their products remain available.  It’s why the Starbuck’s Unicorn Cappuccino and McDonalds’ McRib sandwich are only available for “a limited time only.” 

Based on those examples and many others, all of this news and social media coverage about Americans fretting about vaccine shortages and bragging about getting their vaccine before the rest of us may help convince some number of Americans that they want this product as well. 

“I mean, if all of them want it so badly, I must want it too?”

And indeed, newer surveys are showing that more early skeptics are getting interested in getting vaccinated.  In September 2020, when Trump was still in charge, and wildly exaggerating everything about his Covid response, the number of Americans saying they would definitely get vaccinated was only about 51%.  This posed a huge challenge, because  epidemiologists tell us we need about 70% to get the Fauchi Ouchy in order to achieve the necessary herd immunity. 

By December, with Biden starting to take the reins and positive test results rolling in, the number had grown to 61%. That’s important progress.

But how do we get from 61% to 70%? The news media and social media obsession with the vaccine shortage, and Americans doing victory dances on their social media feeds after getting vaccinated, may do for Fauci what the Wii shortage did for Nintendo.

To be clear, there will be lethal implications of Trump’s bumbling of the vaccination distribution plan.  A delay of a month or two will mean many Americans will needlessly get sick and die. That’s tragic and inexcusable.

But as we continue to mop up Trump-generated calamities, we have to take the good news wherever we can find it.  And maybe this current vaccine shortage will help convince enough of the remaining vaccine fence-sitters to join the herd.

Post-election playlist

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Guest post by Noel Holston

The Washington Post’s Sunday magazine yesterday featured a powerful article about our bitterly divided country’s prospects for healing after Tuesday’s election. The author, Gene Weingarten, though he’s a humor columnist by trade, has a hard time keeping his optimism up.

I understand how he feels. So do millions of us.

A dear old friend, a naturalized American citizen who fled South Africa because of apartheid, told me the other day that despite accusations from the Right, she doesn’t hate Trump supporters, she simply can’t fathom their allegiance to such a creepy guy. Another old friend, a former Peace Corps volunteer no less, has been arguing with me on Facebook, determined to convince me that Joe Biden is thoroughly corrupt, senile and certain to drag the country down to socialistic hell.

They’re very civil representatives of the respective sides. I’ve actually had a gun-loving Facebook acquaintance use the phrase “Lock and load” during a testy exchange.

I’d say that the prospects of our healing and reclaiming some common ground are better if Biden wins, if only because he will at least try. That’s not only his promise, it’s also his history. Don’t forget he was harangued by his opponents in the Democratic primary for having been too friendly with Senate Republicans and “blue dog” Southern pols of yore.

President Trump, on the other hand, has demonstrated little if any interest in mitigating his policies or his behavior to win over Americans who disagree with him.  The notion that he would suddenly turn magnanimous and conciliatory in a second term seems pretty farfetched.

Whatever happens Tuesday – or the Tuesday after that or the Tuesday after that, depending on how the vote count and the likely challenges go – we’re going to have to make the best of another four years together.

 And because I would much rather us be singing and dancing in the streets than shooting, here, respectfully and not at all facetiously submitted, is a little playlist for the days ahead, a diverse, non-partisan Top 10 of songs that speak to wellness, optimism and unity:

“Peace in the Valley” – Elvis Presley

And the lion shall lay down by the lamb.

“Medicated Goo” – Traffic

My own home recipe’ll see you through

“Get Together” – The Youngbloods

Come on, people now, smile on your brother

“Coconut” – Harry Nilsson

Add lime, then drink ’em both together

“We Can Work It Out” – The Beatles

 Life is very short and there’s no time.

“A Spoonful of Sugar” – Julie Andrews

Helps the medicine go down

“Why Can’t We Be Friends” – War

The color of your skin don’t matter to me/As long as we can live in harmony

“Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills” – Ray Stevens

Guaranteed to be just what you need for quick, fast, speedy relief.

“(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” – Nick Lowe

Seriously.

“Sexual Healing” – Marvin Gaye

Helps to relieve my mind.

Bonus track for the hopelessly devastated:

“Whiskey River (Take My Mind)” – Willie Nelson.    


Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

MinneMirage?

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Why is Trump obsessed with investing so much time and money in Minnesota?

Last night’s Trump rally in Duluth was old hat for us. The visits from Trump and surrogates are non-stop, and the incendiary attack ads are wall-to-wall.

Yes, I understand that in 2016 Hillary only won Minnesota by 44,593, or 1.5 percent. Yes, I realize that there are “soooo many Trump signs up in rural areas,” where “real Minnesotans” live. Yes, I realize the Iron Range is continuing to evolve into a reliably red East Dakota or North Kentucky, politically speaking.

But still, the data from 2020 just don’t look all that encouraging for Trump, or puppets such as U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis. Despite all of those massive Trump signs in rural areas, 55% of Minnesota’s population is in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and Biden is doing well there. Here are the most recent polls, aggregated by fivethirtyeight.com:

(P.S. The Star Tribune/KARE-11/MPR poll published on September 26 had Biden ahead 48 percent to 42 percent, with eight percent undecided. It has Trump’s approval rating at 43 percent. Not sure why fivethirtyeight.com didn’t list that one, but that poll is consistent with the average of these other polls.)

As we all know, the 2016 polls didn’t match up with the 2016 results on Election Day, though for the most part the difference was within the polls’ statistical margins-of-error, or nearly so. It’s important to note that these most recent findings in 2020 are mostly outside the margin-of-error.

To be clear, I’m not saying Minnesota is a sure thing for Biden. The margins shown in these polls are not insurmountable, particularly if Trump continues to dump a disproportionate amount of time, money, lies, and voter suppression efforts here over the next 33 days.

But if these numbers qualify Minnesota as one of the most hopeful swing states in Trumpland, how bad must the other swing states look for Trump?

The False Equivalence Trumpists

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Trying to pick your least favorite type of Trump supporter is not easy. The competition is stiff, and there are strong arguments for all of them.

Trumpist Typology

Greed Trumpists. There’s the Greed Trumpists, who will put up with any Trump outrage – kids torn from mothers and put in cages, white supremacy encouragement, coordinating with foreign enemies interfering in our democracy — to get a tax cut, even a tax cut that represents relative crumbs compared to the mountains of loaves lavished on billionaires.

Personality Cult Trumpists. There are the Personality Cult Trumpists, many of whom watched far too many episodes of The Apprentice with an uncritical eye.  They find Trump entertaining and embrace the myth of Trump’s deal-making skills and “only I can fix it” hucksterism, despite his pandemic response debacle and tax returns that expose Trump as a bumbler of epic proportions.

Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. Then there’s the Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. They ignore of the dozens of Trump’s extreme anti-Christian actions—serial sexual abuse and infidelity and cutting food subsidies for the poor to name just a couple — that make a mockery of the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes  in order to hoard as many Fallwell-endorsed judges as possible.

Tribal Trumpists. Who can forget the Tribal Trumpists, who will let Trump take their loved one’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) health protections and Social Security benefits just to be able to say that their Red Tribe of “real Americans” stuck it to the Blue Tribe of “libtard snowflakes.” Go team!

Changeophobe Trumpists. Changeophobe Trumpists are fearful of our fast-changing world and ever-nostalgic about the glories of what they view as the good old days of their childhoods. They are particularly susceptible to Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” by keeping coal dirty, light bulbs inefficient, America white, global competition at bay, and bigotry unchallenged.

Racist Trumpists. The Racist Trumpists are obviously a very strong contender for least favorite.  They insist that Trump’s villifying of immigrants and people of color is a “refreshing rejection of political correctness,” instead of a wink and a nod to the full spectrum of racists, from those of us who are sometimes lousy at recognizing systemic racism to full-blown white supremacist activists like the Proud Boys, Aryan Nations, Volksfront, American Freedom Party, Ku Klux Klan, and White Aryan Resistance.

Thug Trumpists. And then there are Thug Trumpists, who can’t recognize the difference between bullying and actual strength, and gravitate towards authoritarian personalities to serve as a binky to make them feel more secure in the face of their overblown fears of our changing and more diverse nation.

False Equivalence Trumpists

But the last month of the election is when we unfortunately have to be hearing a lot from perhaps my least favorite type of Trump supporters — the False Equivalence Trumpists.  They continually declare that “both sides do it” to make their vote for the most bigoted, incompetent, and corrupt President in U.S. history seem somehow defensible.

Since last night’s presidential debate, the False Equivalence Trumpists were out in full force, complaining about “both candidates” being equally bad and lamenting that they “once again have to choose the lesser of two evils.” 

Though they carry an air of intellectual superiority in their assertions, False Equivalence Trumpists are among the most intellectually lazy of all of the Trumpists types. 

Obviously, both candidates have sold out to a special interest, lied, supported an unwise policy, or made a big mistake. Same as it ever was.  But from that truth, False Equivalence Trumpists quickly jump to the safety of “both sides do it equally,” instead of digging into the facts to determine which candidate does it more.  In a democracy, doing that kind of qualitative differentiation is a voter’s duty, and they consistently shrink from it.

Because False Equivalence Trumpists find it distasteful to be held accountable for supporting an imperfect candidate, they stubbornly cling to the truth of “both sides do it,” but not the whole truth.  The whole truth is that any fair-minded analysis comparing Trump and Biden will show that Trump is much more incompetent, much more bigoted, much more dishonest, and much more corrupt. 

But this group of Americans lacks either the judgement to see that truth, or the courage to speak it.

The False Equivalence Trumpists are top-of-mind right now because, we are entering the final month of the presidential campaign with about 6 percent of the voters somehow still undecided.  Tragically, these pathologically indecisive Americans could be decisive on November 3rd.  The fact that the fate of the nation, and maybe even the planet, falls to this group of Americans is crazy making and terrifying.

United States Headed for Splittsville?

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Guest post by Noel Holston

“Like they say, it takes all types to make the world. But sometimes you wish it didn’t.” — Gloria Naylor, Bailey’s Café

Our country hasn’t been so divided since the run-up in the 1850s to the Civil War, but this time, though there are similar moral and social issues at the heart of the conflict, the geographic aspect is not so defined than you can draw a Mason-Dixon line between North and South.

Animosity is festering among citizens who live side by side, albeit dispersed in different proportions from state to state. If shooting were to break out — as some worry it will and a few appear to hope — it would be like a massive barroom free-for-all, an ugly, bloody mess that would wreck our economy and make us easy pickings for a hostile foreign power.

Hand-crafted GOP political sign, outskirts of Watkinsville, Georgia

If one side firmly believes four additional years of Dirty Donald Trump would turn the United States of America into a fascist state and the other side is dead certain that a Sleepy Joe Biden victory would make us communist, is there anything we can do preemptively?

Secession isn’t an option, for reasons alluded already. Our hostile factions live cheek to jowl.

If we are indeed dealing with many of the classic complaints — irreconcilable differences, mental cruelty, unreasonable behavior — what about separation instead, a monumental divorce?

What if we divided up the property, the land mass of the continental United States into two roughly equal acreages, East and West, not North and South, so both factions get some Sun Belt,some coastline and some places to ski and snowmobile? We can flip a coin to determine who gets which slice.

Obviously, this restructuring will require a monumental migration/resettlement, the most complicated game of musical chairs ever attempted. First, however, we have to figure out who belongs where.

To facilitate any necessary reassignments, we’ll all fill need to fill out the following 13-question — in honor of the 13 original colonies — questionnaire:

1. Do you believe that being asked to wear a COVID mask in public infringes on your Constitutional liberty?

2. Do you believe that every American citizen should have the right to own and carry an assault rifle or pistol?

3. Do you believe climate change is a plot hatched by Chinese communists and/or anarchist scientists?

4. Do you drive an extra-large pickup truck as a leisure vehicle?

5. Do you believe George Soros is a closet Nazi determined to spend his vast fortune to turn the world socialist?

6. Do you believe Hillary Clinton operated a child-sex ring out of a Washington pizza parlor?

7. Do you still believe Barack Obama is Kenyan by birth?

8. Do you believe Black Lives Matter is terrorist organization?

9. Do you believe we need a tall, spike-topped wall along our southern border to keep Mexican and other Latino asylum seekers out?

10. Do you believe Redskins is a fine name for a sports team?

11. Do you believe windmills cause cancer?

12. Do you support fracking and oil drilling in national parks?

13. Do you believe Donald Trump’s face should be added to Mt. Rushmore?

If you answer yes to more than two of these questions, you could soon be a citizen of the new right-wing nation of Murica.

If you answer no to all but one or two of these questions, citizenship will be granted to you in leftist Portlandia.

Flag designs to come.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

The Super Spreader Event That Too Few Are Discussing

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For good reason, there was a lot of national discussion about the 6,200 Trump supporters who gathered at an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Americans were understandably concerned that Trump’s selfish rally would be a “super spreader event” that would needlessly cause a spike in COVID 19 infections and role model reckless behavior. 

While all of that national discussion was taking place, South Dakota’s ultra-conservative Governor Kristi Noem looked at that Tulsa scene and effectively said “hold my beer, Mr. President.”

In the midwest, you don’t have to be reminded when the ten-day Sturgis Bike Rally begins.  Even in my community, which is 600 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota, and even in the two weeks before and after the ten-day August Rally, motorcycles and trailers towing motorcycles are everywhere on our roads and highways.

The Sturgis Rally is massive. Last year, 490,000 people traveled from around the nation to the Black Hills.  That’s equivalent to about 80 Tulsa Trump Rallies. Oh and by the way, unlike the Tulsa event, the Sturgis Rally lasts for weeks, not hours. 

That’s a lot of cash for a remote, sparsely populated state like South Dakota. It’s also a lot COVID-19 exposure. Make a list of major COVID-19 exposure risks, and you’ve described the Sturgis Bike Rally: Inability to distance in small indoor spaces? Check. Unwillingness to distance due to libertarian “live free or die” attitudes? Check. Too few masks? Check. Obesity and related comorbidities? Check. Advanced age and related comorbidities? Check. Binge drinking and the associated increase in risk-taking? Check. No small amount of casual sex? Check. Lengthy exposures over multiple days? Check. A merger of exposure pools from around the nation, and lengthy cross-country travel in all directions. Check and check.

Granted, bikers at the Rally are outside a fair amount, riding and camping.  But indoor bars, restaurants, hotels, stores, and tourist attractions within a several hundred mile radius of Sturgis also are traditionally packed with strangers in close proximity with each other. When it’s loud in those indoor spaces, visitors are forced to shout at, and expectorate on, each other.   

If a super villain were to design a super-spreader event to try to harm their worst enemies, they perhaps couldn’t do much better than the Sturgis Rally.

Without a doubt, Governor Noem out-Trumped Trump by refusing to cancel the Sturgis Bike Rally this August 7-16.  From the beginning of the pandemic, Noem has supported basically no public health protections for her citizens.  She wants to show corporations that South Dakota is pro-business, tax visitors so she doesn’t have to tax her conservative base, and show her conservative fan base that she is “protecting freedom.” She apparently isn’t interested in protecting the citizens of her state, a state that is disproportionately elderly and therefore particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 deaths.

So, if you’re thinking about summer travel this year, my advice would be to take a lot of masks and sanitizer, and to take an extremely wide berth around Kristi Noem’s COVID-19 mushroom cloud in South Dakota.

If Trump Loses and Refuses to Leave, We Need A Plan

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We’re all thinking it, but are afraid to say it out loud. If Trump loses the Electoral College in a close race and refuses to leave the White House on January 20, 2021, claiming he actually won but was cheated, what will the guys in and around the White House with the guns do?

It feels paranoid to even discuss this.  This is what people living under dictatorships in Moldova, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and Gambia discuss, not citizens of the self-described “greatest democracy on earth.”  America has long have been admired for its ability to follow-up bitter political campaigns with the peaceful transition of power.  Our ability to consistently do this is arguably our single greatest achievement as a nation.

But with Trump, we can no longer be sure that the peaceful transition of power will be a given.  Keep in mind what Trump’s former right hand man Michael Cohen said: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” 

Trump himself, has more than said as much, as documented by The Atlantic:

“In December (2019), Trump told a crowd at a Pennsylvania rally that he will leave office in ‘five years, nine years, 13 years, 17 years, 21 years, 25 years, 29 years …’ He added that he was joking to drive the media ‘totally crazy.’

Just a few days earlier, Trump had alluded to his critics in a speech, ‘A lot of them say, ‘You know he’s not leaving’ … So now we have to start thinking about that because it’s not a bad idea.’

This is how propaganda works. Say something outrageous often enough and soon it no longer sounds shocking.”

One thing is almost certain:  Even if Trump suffers a clear defeat in the Electoral College, he will still claim mass cheating.  Remember, this is the guy who made the false assertion that “millions” voted illegally in California, and that was after he won the Electoral College. 

If he loses the Electoral College, and subsequently faces the prospect of multiple criminal prosecutions as a civilian, his claims of fraud will get even more desperate, expansive, and outrageous. The question is, will armed authorities in and around the White House listen?

(By the way, I’m being vague here, because I’m not sure who would ultimately be responsible for removing the President. Secret Service? U.S. Marshals?  The military?  We don’t have historical precedence to guide us here. )

Trusted Third Parties Needed

By January 20, 2021 at noon, the Secret Service, U.S. Marshal Service, and U.S. military no longer would be under Trump’s control, unless they decided that Trump’s claims of cheating were correct, and that Trump therefore was reelected and is still their boss.

Will those armed authorities agree with Trump’s claims of election cheating? I’m not sure. “Was Trump cheated in the election or not” is not something that will be easy for armed authorities to judge. After all, they’re not experts in election law or in a position to investigate claims of election fraud.

In trying to sort out the Trump claims of election cheating, I would hope that the guys with the guns will look to third parties who they find credible.  The courts obviously will be in play, but that will take quite a bit of time to reach a final decision in the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In addition to the courts, we need third parties that can act more quickly than the courts, and be credible with the American people and the armed officials who may need to remove Trump on January 20th.

Bipartisan Presidents Weigh In Jointly

Here’s my hope:  We need a bipartisan group of former Presidents from the past three decades to unanimously weigh in on this by mid-November. 

Specifically, I propose that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle (the second in command under George H.W. Bush, because he passed away), and Jimmy Carter privately pledge to each other right now that they will stand together to counter any false claims of mass fraud and publicly affirm the presidential election outcome as soon as it becomes apparent.

I understand that it could be that the election outcome won’t be clear enough for the quintet to make a unanimous declaration, and their decision has to be unanimous for it to carry the necessary weight.  In that case, all of this is mute.  (I also definitely understand that Trump could easily win reelection, and that it might not even be close enough to be contested.)

But if the bipartisan group can agree on the outcome, they should commit to jointly and publicly announcing the outcome in November, before Trump has a chance to send several weeks to sell his conspiracy claims unrebutted.

Why ex-presidents, and a vice president proxy?  First, their political careers are effectively over, so they can’t credibly be accused of wanting to further their political careers.  Second, they’re bipartisan, so it will be more difficult for Trump and his cult to marginalize them as a “partisan group.” Third, they have knowledge and credibility on the issue of fair elections, because they’ve worked in that world up close for decades. Fourth, ex-Presidents have extra gravitas, so their announcement will feel weighty, newsworthy, and historic.  Finally and perhaps most importantly, the Secret Service and Generals are used to following these former Commanders-in-Chief, and likely have residual respect for at least some of them.

If the nightmare scenario I describe here plays out, an early bipartisan declaration of the past three decades’ ex-Presidents won’t guarantee that the guys with the guns will do the right thing and remove Trump.  But it’s the best thing I can come up with to try to avoid an event that could mark the end of democracy in America. For something that historically consequential, we need a plan.