The Debacle of November 5th

Or America in the Age of Trump

                                  

From the beginning of the evening it did not look good.  And for two reasons.  It did not appear that Vice President Kamala Harris was going to win in either Georgia or North Carolina, which meant that the south was going to be pretty much a wipeout. Secondly, Harris seemed to have the Hillary Clinton problem: the Blue Wall had been breached.  By that I mean Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had tottered and then fell.  From an Electoral College standpoint, you cannot allow the second after the first has happened. And in terms of pure arithmetic, if Harris had taken those three states, she would have been at 270 electoral votes.

But she would have still lost the popular vote.  And that is startling since it has only happened happened once in two decades, when W got more votes than John Kerry. If one goes back to the shattering steal of the year 2000, Democrat Al Gore got more popular votes than George W. Bush. Democrat Hillary Clinton got more popular votes than Donald Trump in 2016. The shocking thing about the weakness of the Harris campaign is that a woman of color did worse among Latino and African American voters than the Irish-American Biden. That is an historic disconnect.  Because in terms of sheer practical fact, the GOP has done little or nothing for minority groups.  This is something Harris should have noted in her polling numbers and hammered home.  It has been the Democratic Party, going back to JFK, RFK and King, that has historically taken up that baton.  The first serious African-American candidate for president, Jessie Jackson, ran as a Democrat. While the GOP has scaled back the Voting Rights Act, never championed raising the minimum wage, and practiced voter suppression of minorities. Without that tactic, George W. Bush would not have been president. And 650,000 dead Iraqi civilians would be alive today.

One of the reasons that Harris lost was supposedly due to the inflation factor. Senator Joe Manchin warned about this, but he was told it was just transitory. In the view of many, this was not really an inflation problem.  It was really a price gouging problem.  Just take a look at the profits for Publix, the largest supermarket chain in Florida, and Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in America.  From my own experience I know that prices on some items in those stores more than doubled over the past year.  To the point that I do not buy those items anymore. 

There are two reasons why this happened. First, state governments have allowed a consolidation of supermarkets in the last few decades.  There used to be about nine of these major chains in southern California; today there are about four. The less competition, the easier it is to raise prices. And since Harris was the DA in San Francisco and Attorney General of California, she watched some of this happen. Harris did mention this late in her campaign, but it was too little too late.  The second reason it occurred was that the Justice Department did not move when these prices started their surprising and spiraling ascendency. In my opinion, it would have been an easy case to prove.  But Attorney General Merrick Garland sat it out.

This is not the only key issue Garland sat out.  Garland’s Justice Department spent a long time indicting and imprisoning the rioters at the January 6^th, 2021 Insurrection. Even though many of these defendants said that they were only in Washington because of President Trump’s pleas of voter fraud. And, in fact, there was an organized effort subsidized by the White House to encourage people, particularly in the south, to come to Washington and protest the filing of the state electoral votes.  And beyond that,  President Trump had participated in attorney John Eastman’s fake elector scheme to substitute ersatz electoral college votes for the real ones on January 6^th. This was all done out in the open, anyone could see it. And time after time, both Trump’s White House attorney and the Department of Justice lawyers told him that there was no real case for voter fraud.  Because they had investigated the alleged cases and found them to be wanting. People like Attorney General Bill Barr told Trump this. And for telling the truth Barr was fired.

Merrick Garland, who I think was Biden’s worst Cabinet choice, just sat there for two years.  It was not until congress decided to call open hearings on the Insurrection that Garland appointed a special prosecutor. That committee was admirably led by congressman Bennie Thompson and ended up recommending criminal charges against Trump and others involved in the planned and staged riot to thwart democracy.  I have little doubt that if Garland had acted immediately upon taking office, or even six months later, that Trump and several others would be in prison now. Instead, special prosecutor Jack Smith will drop his cases, and so likely will the DA in Atlanta, Fani Willis.  Since one cannot prosecute a sitting president on criminal charges.

Another issue that Trump used to effect was that the Democrats have become the party of war.  He even used this to neutralize Liz Cheney, one of his fiercest Republican critics, who backed Harris. (And by the way, this collection of Republicans for Harris did not matter either.). This, in my opinion, was a leftover from President Biden. Joe Biden turned out to be almost as much of a neocon as Hillary Clinton. There is no way the war in Ukraine should have lasted this long. In fact, many people, including myself, do not think it should have ever started.  As President Kennedy once said, “Never negotiate out of fear,  but never fear to negotiate.” 

There were at least three opportunities to either prevent or stop the Ukraine War. The former chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, later revealed that the NATO allies were only playing for time by appearing to entertain the Russian proposals, Minsk I and Minsk II.  They used this as a diversion to arm Ukraine.  When Volodymr Zelensky was ready to sign a treaty with Moscow in Istanbul in 2022, Boris Johnson was sent there to advise Zelensky not to finalize it.  It is difficult not to interpret this as the United States extending the war purposefully.  The alleged reason is to somehow “weaken Russia”.  Which has not been the case.  In fact, I would argue that it has strengthened Russia  and driven China, Russia and North Korea closer together, thus contributing to the rise of BRICS. Let us never forget: this whole strategy of encircling Russia through NATO began with a Democratic Neocon, namely Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Who was hoisted on President Clinton by his wife.

And what has Biden done in the Middle East to ameliorate--forget stopping--the savagery of what is going on in Gaza?  Joe Biden cannot even protect UNWRA in their effort to aid wounded and sick Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip. Again, there has been no serious pressuring of the Benjamin Netanyahu government to negotiate for the hostages in return for a truce.  In fact, some observers think that the real reasons for the endless bombing and shooting of civilians is dual: 1.) to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and 2.) to keep Netanyahu out of prison on the charges pending against him.

But because of Biden’s failure to restrain him, Netanyahu has now expanded the war into Lebanon and Iran.  This has clearly been a mistake in pure military terms.  It is one thing to attack a small band of guerillas in an area you have already occupied.  It is quite another to try and assault an army of 100,000 well-armed Hezbollah soldiers in an independent country, an army that is already sickened at what happened in Gaza.  Reportedly, the IDF has done so poorly there that some of them refuse to report.

But whatever tactical mistake Israel made in Lebanon, that probably pales with what they are doing with Iran. Iran is a country of 89 million, with an army of well over 500,000. Israel is a nation of about 9 million with about 170,00 active duty soldiers. But more importantly, Iran has developed a missile force that is quite formidable.  It is estimated at about 15,000 rockets and drones. Contrary to what Trump says, this missile force did not begin recently.  It began as a result of the Iran/Iraq war. The USA backed Iraq, so Iran had to go to Russia and China for help in building rockets. And recently, Moscow has sent a fourth generation fighter jet, in parts, to Tehran to neutralize Israel’s F 35. Plus Iran’s air defenses are so efficient that some sources say the Israelis had to launch their rockets from a distance during their last raid.  Those air defenses were supplied by Moscow. Again, this has contributed to the rise of BRICS.

Can one imagine a Democrat saying: let us make peace in both areas. Let us bring home well over 200 billion dollars, and use it on domestic policies? Screw the Neocons and Madeleine Albright.

But, at bottom, was this any way to nominate a presidential candidate? In effect what happened was that the White House concealed Joe Biden’s infirmities.  Not very well, since as I reported here, Lisa Pease knew about them. Then Biden announced he was going to run again, even though he said he was really a placeholder. In fact, in Politico in December of 2019, it was reported that due to his age, he would only serve one term. But here he was at 81, running again. This resulted in the Trump/Biden debate disaster. But still, even though everyone could see he was not all there, he hung on for another month. Finally, pressure was brought to bear, by Nancy Pelosi. Biden said he was withdrawing.

But he and Pelosi appointed Harris as the automatic successor. This is a woman who had a previous run at the office which ended ignominiously.  She never even got into the primaries. There was never even any talk of a mini convention.  The man who would have beaten Trump, Gavin Newsom—who I promoted from the start—should have been the nominee.  And I have little doubt he would have won, since he would have energized the Democratic base.  Which Harris did not do, with either Latinos, African-Americans, youth, or even women.

There was a key moment in the campaign. People were wondering when Harris would appear in public and take questions. She decided to do this on a friendly program, The View. Up until that time, the polls—for whatever reason-- indicated she was perceived as a change agent. And Trump’s campaign was really worried about this.

On The View, she was asked if she differed with President Biden on any issues.  She said that she did not disagree on anything.  Trump’s handlers, as revealed in The New York Times, rejoiced. They could not comprehend that she was not prepared for that question in front of 11 million viewers. They were taping it and then joyously blasted it out to ten million more. That moment froze Harris’ image and she could never unlock it.

Trump and his entourage—the billionaires club of Musk, Thiel and Bezos--will now be out for blood. Amazon will not be organized.  Musk and Bezos will bust open the National Labor Relations Board. . There will be more government contracts for those two men.  Letitia James has already been threatened.  The rioters in prison for the Insurrection will now be pardoned. Social Security and Medicare, as well as Obamacare, will now be threatened. The Democrats, who have not been the same since 1968, have now apparently lost every branch of government: the White House, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court. The Age of Trump has arrived—again.

Just remember, if not for the DNC, Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016. And he would have done so in such a manner that we likely would not have heard from him again.