Trump

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Why I expect a blue wave

Everyone is nervous; the election seems so close. What are we going to do?

Well, I’m going to out on a limb and predict a blue wave. If I’m right, I get to brag about what a great Political Scientist I am and if I am wrong, I will act like every other person who makes wrong predictions about the election and pretend I never said this. (wink wink)

I have posted before about why I expect Harris to win, but let me add to that list and explain in a bit more detail. Here are my reasons:

Harris is more popular than Biden. I mean, c’mon, man (as Biden would say). Biden won handily over Trump and Trump’s support has not grown in four years. Oh sure, his cultists will absolutely come out for him, but there’s a finite amount of them. (More on this below.) Here, look at how Biden did four years ago. You think Harris is going to do worse? (She may also pick up North Carolina, which is very close.)

Also, let’s not forget that the vast majority of people who died of COVID in 2020 and beyond were Trump supporters who refused to get vaccinated or wear a mask. There just aren’t as many of them now as there were then. (And many of Trump’s supporters, like Fox viewers, are over 70 and, well, there are not a lot of young people replacing them as they die off.)

Yeah, the polls are close in some of these states, but they have constantly shown Harris ahead. If the polls went back and forth between the two, there may be more room to worry but here in Pennsylvania (for example), Harris has kept her lead pretty constantly.

 We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should have gotten the numbers that Biden got in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he was lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Harris, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home. Hell, the vast majority of people who worked for Trump in the White House are out campaigning for Harris.

Harris has enthusiasm. People are excited about her campaign in a way they never were about Biden. Plus, historically, “hope” and “joy” and “optimism” beats “anger” and “fear.” Polling just opened in Georgia and it has already broken records for the number of people voting. Here in Pennsylvania, early voting shows that Democrats are voting more than Republicans in record numbers, and the number of women voting is even higher than in 2020.

Her poll numbers among the young are excellent and way beyond Trump’s. Harris is energizing younger voters in a way Biden couldn’t, and these voters don’t answer polls so they’re not always counted. Their presence, along with people who want to vote for the first woman President, may make all the difference. (Keep in mind many Republican women won’t tell others that they’re voting for her, but in the privacy of the voting booth…)

Trump chose a terrible Vice President. Trump needed to win back those Republicans mentioned above who don’t like him, but instead, he got a guy who is even more extreme and who has a lot of former baggage, not the least of which is being anti-Trump in the past, calling him the “Republican Hitler.” He was right, of course, but that won’t help get more independent voters. There are only so many Trump cultists and the nomination of Vance was what the cultist wanted but it won’t attract others or widen his appeal beyond the cultists.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Meanwhile, Harris has literally raised a billion dollars for her campaign, mostly from small donations. Money means ads, workers, mailings, and many other campaign expenses. It’s tremendously important.

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Do you know where that money is going? If you do, tell Republicans, because many are worried that it is all going to Trump’s pockets. It certainly isn’t being shared with other candidates (unlike what Harris is doing, to make sure we can win the House and Senate as well). It’s all about Trump, after all.

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they fired all those who do. The campaign is doing stupid things, like having rallies in blue states that Trump will never win, and insulting the very places he is visiting in red states. (It’s actually fun to watch how incompetent they are.)

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who have no problem voting for a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Trump is old. Hey, if they could spend all their time talking about how old Biden is, we can turn it around on them now and point out that he is the oldest person ever to run for President. He’s showing more and more dementia as he campaigns, he’s refused to do debates (even on Fox!) and his rallies have people leaving as he just stands there and rambles nonsense. There’s no way that will help him.

Everyone hates Project 2025. Republicans can’t run away from it. The more people learn about it, the more they hate it. Democrats are going to constantly remind everyone of what it is and how it is essentially the GOP Platform.

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. This may be the most important indicator and why I am making this prediction. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections over the past few years, and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states have the issue on the ballots in November, which should bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well).

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important, like we did when Obama was elected. A huge turnout will guarantee our victory.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they are using their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

The advantage we have this time, however, is that we have the Presidency, the Department of Justice, and are ready for what they plan. Lawsuits are already filed in some cases and some have been successful (such as the one in Georgia which stopped the Republicans from claiming that the people who man the voting booths have the right to refuse to certify the vote if they feel like it).

So there’s my prediction and the reasons for it. Let’s all hope I’m right.

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Harris is a Marxist?!!

During their debate, Trump said Harris was a Marxist and everyone knew it. One of the great things about the debate is that unlike Trump’s previous opponents, she refused to take him seriously, treated him with the disrespect he deserved, and laughed at all his crazy statements.

But let’s discuss that. Why did Trump say that when there is absolutely nothing in Harris’ resume or record to indicate Marxism?

Well, first, remember that one of the key attacks Republicans constantly do is to claim that all Democrats are socialists and Marxist and so on — an attack which works less and less these days as more and more people are saying “Socialism? You mean with national health care and child care leave and free public colleges? Yes, I’d like some socialism, please.”

But mostly, he is basing this on the fact that Harris’ father (who did not raise her) taught politics and economics, which includes a course on Marxism.

Because you can’t study economics and politics without learning about Marxism.

I took a course on Marxism when I was a Political science student, and among other things, we discussed why it didn’t work. Just because someone studied Marxism doesn’t make them a Marxist. I also took a course in Philosophy of Religion but no one would call me religious.

The other problem is that many people who did not study this have no idea what Marx was about or what he said.

I do admit, however, to being a big fan of Marx — in fact, all of the brothers.

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If the election were held today

If the polls were exactly accurate and the election were held today (August 30, 2024), Harris would win enough states to be President.

I made this map using 538’s page where the team averages out the polls based on the reliability of the pollsters (they currently says Harris has a 59% chance of winning) and then used 270 to Win‘s mapmaking.

But let’s be realistic about these numbers.

First, remember that anything can happen between now and November. You can rest assured that Putin and others will be doing everything they can to get their toady back into office, and already the Trump folks are planning to disrupt the election, kick people off the voting lists, challenge the results (but only in blue states, of course), and otherwise cheat to win.

Note as well that polls can be inaccurate and have constantly under-estimated Trump fanatics. Pollsters now claim they are taking that into account, but this is not an exact science.

See all those very light blue states? That means Harris’ poll advantage is less than 5%, and often within the poll’s margin of error. In some states (like Pennsylvania, where I live) her poll advantage is less than one percentage point. This is going to be close, people. We have to get every single vote we can.

If Trump wins, it will most likely be like last time, where we won the popular vote and he squeezed by due to the Electoral College. (Remember that absent that stupid Electoral College, Democrats would have held the White House going all the way back to Bill Clinton.)

I still predict a Harris win (for reasons I have stated here before) but we cannot afford to be overconfident.

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The GOP’s fake issues on the economy and immigration

Besides the fact that the GOP is now running an angry, elderly felon against an optimistic, joyful woman, they face other challenges, such as finding a winnable issue. No, arguing over crowd sizes isn’t it, and many in the GOP are begging Trump to shut up about that. (Apparently Trump is losing his mind over the thought that he could lose to a black woman, two things he hates. This is not new. ) The two main issues the GOP raises often are, of course, lies.

The economy is doing terrible! Actually, unemployment is at its lowest, real wages have risen sharply, the world-wide inflation problem didn’t hit us as bad as the rest of the world (and is now very low), overall the stock market has boomed, mortgage rates have fallen… Sure, it’s not perfect, but it never is.

Illegal immigrants are destroying our country! Okay, let’s begin by pointing out that this is largely an appeal to racists who hate the idea that brown people are coming here, because they never object to immigrants from Western Europe. But the fact that these people are illegal is simply because we made them so, and we could easily make them legal just like it was for many immigrants last century. And many are refugees, legally arriving and asking legally to be let in. (Also illegal border crossings are much lower than they were under Trump.)

But the fact is that, unlike Trump claims, these immigrants commit less crime than citizens. They pay their taxes, they want to work, they’re coming here for a better life, and they’re nothing to be scared of unless you are a white supremacist who worries that in the future, you will be the minority in America and then the majority will treat you as terrible as you have been treating them for generations.

Democrats and Republicans worked on a bipartisan plan to help immigrants and to make sure they all come in legally, but Trump told his cult not to vote for it because he needed to blame Biden for not fixing the problem. So if illegal immigrants are destroying our country, we can blame Trump for ignoring a solution.

They are trying to hide their positions on abortion and gay rights and the other extreme things in their Project 2025 because they know their views on these issues are hated by a majority of Americans. Their plan was to win and then force all that on us against our will, like they have always done.

I’m more optimistic now that we will be able to hold these liars back, but it will require everyone to vote, because you know the MAGA cult always will.

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Trump can be impeached again

Donald Trump — the only US President to be impeached twice and the only one to face criminal charges — can be impeached in his trial.

Oh, it’s not the same thing.

You see, during a trial, a witness’ credibility can be “impeached” by evidence that the person is dishonest.

For instance, if a defendant takes the stand and says “I didn’t do it!” a prosecutor can say “Isn’t it true that you have a record for theft, false reports, fraud, and slander?” These are crimes of dishonesty (the latin term used in courts is crimen falsi) and it is perfectly fine to bring that up so during your closing argument you can say “We already know the defendant is dishonest based on this record, so don’t believe him when he says he didn’t do it.”

Well, Trump clearly has a record of dishonesty. There’s that fraud case where he and his family stole money from a children’s charity. There’s that February verdict where he fraudulently stated the value of his assets for economic benefit. And there are the two defamation cases…

They can also use his own words against him to show that he has changed his story and is inconsistent in his defense.

So yeah, I’m anxious to see Trump impeached. Again.

(And if he manages to get elected and the Democrats take the House, he’s certain to be impeached again and again and again.)

cartoon by Phil Hands
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Trump from the people who know him best

The people around Trump know he is a terrible guy, but they don’t care if it gets them money and/or power. So they remain silent until those things are no longer available, and then they finally say what they had been thinking all along.

No, this isn’t a hit piece. These are actual quotes from Republicans who worked with Trump. (I did not create this meme, but I can confirm that these are real quotes that I have seen elsewhere from reliable sources.)

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Why I am cautiously optimistic about the election

While Biden was not even in my top 5 choices last time, I still voted for him over Trump and will again. And I’m pretty sure he is going to win, for the following reasons:

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should be getting the numbers that Biden is getting in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he’s lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Biden, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Which leads to the next point:

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they just fired all those who do.

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who can’t tell the difference between as a well-meaning old guy and a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

cartoon by Patrick Chappatte

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Supremes allow insurrectionist to stay on the ballot

cartoon by Ann Telnaes

I don’t say this very often these days, but I agree with the Supreme Court, which held today that states cannot remove federal candidates from state ballots.

I don’t want Trump on the ballot, of course — I want Congress to kick him off (which they won’t do because of all the Trump cultists in the House).

But I also don’t want states getting to decide this. You know that if the court agreed that states could do this, half of the red states would find ways to keep Biden off the ballot just because they can. It’s not like they need a reason.

That’s why this decision was unanimous, with even the liberals agreeing.

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Let’s ask Aaron Burr if the President is immune from prosecution

A guest blog post from Hoyce McGurgle

I find it awfully interesting that there is so much discussion about the ludicrous claims Donald Trump and his lawyers are making about him essentially having total immunity because he used to be President of the United States. Full disclosure, I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a degree in History and I feel like a pretty important precedent was set on this kind of thing already in our history. Gather ‘round, folks. It’s story time!

Let me tell you a tale about a member of the executive branch at the highest levels of power blatantly committing the highest of crimes and facing the consequences for it. No, I’m not talking about Richard Nixon — he wisely bowed to reality and resigned before being hit by that particular legal freight train. No, there’s an even better precedent in our nation’s history. We need to go back waaay further than the Nixon Era though. All the way to 1804, in fact. I’m talking about Aaron Burr. 

Most folks today know who Aaron Burr was because of the spectacular musical Hamilton. Or, if they’re old enough, perhaps from a famous Got Milk commercial that was aired a lot in the 90’s. But a lot of history nerds like me already knew about him. For those who have somehow missed the musical (you’d be forgiven for missing or forgetting about the commercial) a brief recap. 

This is what Burr really looked like, although history doesn’t record what his singing voice was like or whether he smiled more and talked less

Aaron Burr was an orphaned scion of a rather well respected family. He served in the Revolutionary war and was considered a bonafide war hero. After the revolution he went into the legal profession and, eventually, politics where he ran in the election of 1800 against Thomas Jefferson to be the third President of the United States. He lost, of course, which is why you’ve never heard of President Burr. However, back then the Constitution called for the runner up in the Presidential Election to be Vice President under the guy who had just beaten him. (As an aside, even the Founding Fathers realized this maybe wasn’t the best idea and it was promptly amended in time for the election of 1804.)

Vice President Burr was awfully salty about his loss and blamed Alexander Hamilton for it, as Hamilton had supported Jefferson in the election despite the fact that the two had always been political enemies. This was compounded when Burr, realizing Jefferson would not select him to be his running mate under the new VP selection process, ran for Governor of New York and was defeated, thanks again in part to Hamilton. This naturally led to the famous duel where on July 11, 1804, a sitting United States Vice President shot a man and killed him (probably with less singing involved than Lin-Manuel Miranda implied, though). It was the 18th century equivalent of standing on Fifth Avenue and shooting a man. 

And so it came to be that the Vice President of the United States became a fugitive. The states of New Jersey (where the duel took place) and New York (where Hamilton subsequently died) both issued warrants for the arrest of Burr, who decided it would be a fine time to visit his daughter in South Carolina for an extended period of time. Burr would go on to be officially indicted by a New Jersey grand jury. 

Burr never saw trial for the death of Hamilton though because he still had enough friends in high places to pull strings and because there was a legal complication of the circumstances. New York had strict laws against dueling, but the duel had taken place in New Jersey which didn’t. Not to mention that by this point, three years had passed and Burr was facing a whole heap of new legal trouble and had been arrested for his part in a conspiracy to secure a chunk of American and Mexican territory and proclaim it as a new nation backed by England. So, in the face of actual treason, the legally complicated murder trial was just kind of forgotten about. 

All this is to say that it seems pretty clear by Burr’s legal woes that the answer to the question of “can the highest levels of executive power be held responsible for crimes committed” is a pretty clear and definitive “YES.” Burr was subject to arrest, indictment, and trial for crimes committed as Vice President AND after he left office. The only time any arguments of executive privilege came up was in Burr’s treason trial when the defense wanted documents from President Jefferson’s administration and Jefferson cited Executive Privilege … and lost! Justice John Marshall famously denied Jefferson’s claim and ordered the president to supply the requested documents.

At no point did anyone claim that Burr should have immunity for crimes he committed while in office or afterwards just because he used to be Vice President. In fact, Justice Marshall’s ruling that Jefferson had to produce the subpoenaed documents was specifically viewed as setting the precedent that the President himself is not above the law and needs to accede to the judiciary. 

And it’s not like a whole lot of interpretation of the Constitution was left to guesswork back in those days. There wasn’t a whole lot of “oh, what did the Framers mean when they wrote this?” This was 1807, the Framers of the Constitution were still alive (the biggest hint of that is the fact that the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence was President at the time.) Surely they’d have chimed in with their two cents if the interpretation wasn’t what they intended. Or even changed things afterwards like they did with the process of electing a Vice President!

The arrests and trial of Aaron Burr told us 220 years ago everything we need to know about the ludicrous claims of immunity for Donald Trump today. No one is above the law, no matter what their office. Period.

I’m just hoping that nobody tries to write a hip-hop musical about this mess though because the thought of someone rapping in Trump-speak is making my brain hurt. 

Hoyce is a Boston-based transplant from the Pocono Mountains. Although he has a degree in History with an emphasis in Political Science, most of his writing tends to be for fantasy gaming or occasional posts on Facebook. 

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Trump not immune

A federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office.

The reason this sets a precedent is because never in the history of this country have we had a President who was charged with crimes committed while in office. I am sure if the Founders ever thought in their wildest dreams this was a possibility, they would have added something into the Constitution making it clear that Presidents are not above the law for crimes they commit.

To put it in more legal terms: Duh.