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October 29th , 2024 Len’s Political Note #681 We have a presidential election to win
2024 General Election
WE HAVE A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO WIN
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
We can see that the odds of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz winning the election are better than they were originally. Strengthen the odds. Every donation, large or small, makes a difference. Larger donations mean more money for the campaign. But small donations count. They are a measure of enthusiasm for the candidate and they add up. Make a small donation if you cannot afford a large one. DONATE TO KAMALA HARRIS AND TIM WALZ.
I have included a paragraph like the one above at the conclusion of almost every piece for the past several weeks. We need to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Winning the Senate and winning the House, both of which are possible, would be insufficient without Kamala Harris becoming president. DONATE. VOLUNTEER. It is not too late. The Democratic ground game is crucial. Door knocking and phone calls are giving way to helping people get to the polls. Let’s donate to Harris and Walz and ensure that every voter who leans Democratic actually gets to vote.
Democrats welcomed Kamala Harris with enthusiasm, with cheers and tears, when Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race and then endorsed her. They had good reason to be enthusiastic. This is not to say that Joe Biden was anything other than an extraordinary president. He rescued the country from Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic. He made us healthy. He made Trump’s weakened economy, so severely damaged by the disease, healthy as well. He rescued the country from being a Russian vassal. He revived the Europe-American alliance Trump was intentionally destroying.
Nevertheless, Joe Biden was not popular. And Joe Biden understood that — reluctantly. No matter how effective a president he was, he was not going to get reelected; he had to give it up. Nancy Pelosi helped him see the light.
Kamala Harris took it from there. She took the list of names she had to call. Was every one of the nearly 2,000 delegates to the Democratic convention among them? She called Democrat after Democrat and secured, not just Joe Biden’s support, but the Democratic Party’s support. After that came Zoom calls for dollars. She raised $100 million.
Is she different from Joe Biden? Certainly. Not just because she is a woman and 20 years younger, not just because she is half Black and half South Asian while Joe Biden is pretty much all Irish-American. She is different because she approaches campaigning and governing differently.
Joe Biden has been a believer in compromise. He has been a believer in the people with whom he compromised. He is proud to have worked, as a Senator, with the segregationists. He understood the compromises he agreed reflected the country and its representatives. He understood a need to achieve goals most Senators could support even if it meant slow progress. He was not a push over. An effective negotiator, he came away with some progress with every negotiation.
Kamala Harris is a cautious and disciplined politician. The caution is important because when she takes a position or a viewpoint, she stays with it. When she ran for San Francisco’s District Attorney, she relied on a coalition built by her ally (and former very close friend) Willie Brown – elite donors, the LGBTQ community, and the Black community. By promising to replace a DA who touted his efforts for rehabilitation rather than incarceration, she added the police to her coalition notwithstanding her opposition to the death penalty.
She was elected with the help of that coalition. Not long after she took office, however, a San Francisco cop was shot and killed. She lost the police, temporarily, when, despite tremendous pressure, she refused to ask for the death penalty. As for the kind of DA she was, she was indeed a tough prosecutor of perpetrators of major crimes. For lesser crimes, her effort resembled that of her predecessor – an emphasis on rehabilitation and avoiding incarceration.
Kamala Harris’s policy emphasis is different from Joe Biden’s. As James Carville says, it is not be hard to say that the administration should have acted earlier to bring order to immigration on the border. She has approached articulating that view, but has not completed it. Discussing the Israeli-Gaza war, she has expressed empathy for Palestinians without stepping away from support for Israel. Unlike Joe Biden, whose ethos is deeply rooted in his Roman Catholic background, she supports reproductive rights for women, the right to obtain an abortion without embarrassment or hesitation. She is a champion of women at a time when an attack on women has been the most important issue of the election.
Kamala Harris has given a name to and extended an approach that was common to both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Her vision of an Opportunity Society, without getting entangled in the complicated processes of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, they go beyond the post-World War II common man solutions like the GI Bill, easier mortgage loans, and highways to the suburbs that helped move white Americans into a new suburban middle class. Proposals like child tax credits and funding for home medical and child care provide transformative support b for those who were and those who were not targeted for assistance in reaching middle class status after World War II. There will be no red lining for who gets child tax credits.
In this presidential race what is truly important is how Kamala Harris differs from her opponent, Donald Trump. Just about everyone in America know the kind of danger Donald Trump represents for democracy. Trump’s opponents take that danger seriously. Trumpers think the danger is merely a claim. Instead Trump and his supporters respond with phony claims about how Democrats are the dangers to Democracy. As always, every Trump accusation is a confession.
Kamala Harris has recently been raising questions about whether Donald Trump is up to handling the presidency. Lunatic fringe claims about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets; Trump’s focus on Arnold Palmer’s male anatomy; Trump’s incoherence at his own rallies and his cancellation of appearances all suggest that Donald Trump’s cognitive decline, she says, make it impossible for him to be President.
This attack targets the heart of Trump’s appeal to his base. If he is not strong, he is nothing. Even Republicans question Trump’s current abilities. His image of being indominable is disappearing. Previously, even in defeat, in the eyes of his supporters, he could not be defeated. He generated the confidence and sense of dominance felt by New York Yankee fans or Chicago Bulls fans when their teams were champions year in and year out. His commitment to winning regardless of the facts or the rules is not a drawback to his admirers. He and they care little for the rules. He resembles athletes and coaches who seek to outwit or intimidate the referees in order to win
Blogger Bill Alstrom, author of MAtoMainetoMA on Substack noted a statement by Republican Dennis Wright describing why Donald Trump should not be president and, in effect, the enormous gap between who Donald Trump is and who Kamala Harris is.
Wright cited Trump’s past disqualifying decisions. Here are a few.
“*Unilaterally surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban and deserted our allies in the region. He stupidly announced the date we would withdraw.
*Unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear ban, throwing the Mideast into chaos.
*Cozied up to the leaders of our three top enemies — China, Russia and North Korea — while alienating our European allies.
*Promised to wipe out the trade deficit with China. The trade deficit was $481 billion when he took office and $679 billion when he left.
*Promised to wipe out the federal debt by the end of his second term. He had the largest deficit in history $7.8 trillion.
* …. his greatest failure was the disgraceful mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to his failure to encourage mask wearing, social distancing, expediting development and distribution of test kits and taking the vaccine when it became available, the U.S. had one of the highest deaths per 100,000 people in the world.
The percentage of deaths in red states was markedly higher than blue states. Over 1 million Americans died of COVID. How many Americans needlessly died because of Trump’s leadership failure? At least tens of thousands if not more than a hundred thousand Americans would still be alive today if Trump had done his job.
For that failure alone, he should never be allowed to hold any office, much less president.”
Heather Richardson Cox whose Letters from an American is also on Substack, helps us contemplate a future with Trump as President.
“He would achieve his goals lawlessly. He promises to fire federal workers and replace them with loyalists in a grotesque politicization of the spoils system that existed in the 19th century. In his most fascist-like moment, he promises to use the military against civilians – whether civilian opponents or the millions he plans to deport from the country. That kind of fascism elicits more from followers. Virginia governor Glenn Younkin, in an interview, denied that Trump had promised the use of the military even when the interviewer read Trump’s quotations to him. Trump and his followers evoke the dystopian novel 1984 about authoritarianism by George Orwell. In that novel, Orwell wrote: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” (Bold and italics are mine – LJL)
Do not be intimidated by reports that Trump is ahead among early voters. That report comes from a poll which asked people if they would vote early and who they would vote for when they vote early. It is better to actually rely on actual early voters, not surmises.(Remember, this year, unlike 2020, Trump is encouraging early voting):
Simon Rosenberg, another columnist on Substack has collected some data:
He gives us a seven battleground state (Plus Nebraska’s blue dot) aggregate of early voting at the same stages in the voting:
2020 2022 2024
Democrat. 5,621,425 (47.7%). 2,908,156 (52.9%) 4,075,993 (48.4%)
Republican. 4,905,520 (41.6%) 2,007,004(36.5%). 3,614,787 (42.9%)
Other 1,268,649 (10.8%) 586,439 (10.7%) 733,974 (8.7%)
NBC tracks early voting. Here is the affiliation of early voters they reported on October 26:
Midwest (plus PA):
Michigan Democrats 52% Republicans 38% Other 10%
Wisconsin Democrats 36% Republicans 22% Other 42%
Pennsylvania Democrats 61% Republicans 30% Other 9%
Southwest:
Nevada Democrats 35% Republicans 41% Other 24%
Arizona Democrats 35% Republicans 43% Other 22%
Southeast:
North Carolina Democrats 34% Republicans 34% Other 32%
Georgia Democrats 45% Republicans 49% Other 6%
A Democrat, Rosenberg concludes on October 26 as follows: “…we should feel good about where we are right now. We have a modest lead in the national and battleground state polls. The early vote is good and is getting better. Our more muscular and energetic campaign has a far greater capacity to keep moving that vote towards us in these final days. And perhaps most importantly, I think how this election is closing – with a focus on Trump’s fitness. madness, extremism, misogyny and fealty to Putin – is how we want this election to be closing. For fear and opposition to MAGA has been the most powerful force in our politics since 2018, and is now likely to be the most powerful force in this election too. (LJL– Italics and Bold print are mine)
Let me remind you here: Make your efforts in the last few days count. Volunteer to help with the election at your state Democratic Party. Donate to the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign. They will use these funds to get out the vote. Turnout is key in this election. DONATE. VOLUNTEER.