When The Spell Is Broken

"It's less psychologically distressing to preserve the Trump fallacy than (for supporters) to confront uncomfortable truths about Trump, and themselves." -- Psychotherapist Nick Carmody.

Although Joe Biden has amassed the largest vote total ever (80 million) and achieved the highest vote margin (51%) to unseat any incumbent since Franklin Roosevelt whacked Herbert Hoover in 1932, his convincing victory is not a smasheroo.

It's really disturbing that the incumbent's vote total is the 2nd-highest ever (73,610,000), eclipsing the Obama 2008 mark. 73+ million voters decided that the last four years, and especially this last year, were OK.

Yes, 73 million apparently considered issues like COVID, the crippled economy, the racial reckoning of BLM and White Supremacy, the No Healthcare Plan, the anti-science/anti-expertise/anti-fact movement, the US unhitching from allies and alliances, the confounding and debilitating Putin romance, the denial of climate change, the 25,000+ lies, the deliberate and repeated steps towards autocracy, the embrace of QAnon, the diminishing world role of the US, and the support for someone who can be charitably called one of the most loathsome men in America, to be all good! Let's go for another round on the Tilt-a-Whirl!

So, what happened? Biden did his job. He got the historic votes, the percentages, and the electoral votes. He flipped the 2016 totals with excellent symmetry: 306 electoral votes for Biden in 2020, 306 for Trump in 2016. And just to recall, T has called that 2016 election, where he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million, a "landslide" of historic proportions. Biden now has the 306 votes, plus a popular vote victory margin that will settle in around 6 1/2 million. Not too shabby.

What is crappy is the awful performance of the Democratic Party and the DNC. The Trump/GOP Machine has flipped at least nine House seats to the Republicans. A few days before the election, DNC folk were predicting anywhere from 10 to 20 additional seats being won. What happened?

And no state legislatures flipped from Red to Blue. Democrats were expecting at least a few states to go their way. These are important for developing a Bottom-to-Top strategy, and determining future voting district boundaries/preventing gerrymandering.

And though Georgia came through for Biden, it will need to vote in both Democratic Senate candidates in the early January run-off to achieve a 50-50 balance in the Senate. It's more likely this won't happen and that Dems will have picked up just ONE Senate seat overall, when the pre-election conventional wisdom was more like four or five!

All told, this was a craptastic performance for the Democratic Party, particularly because their Top Of The Ticket performed historically well, and GOP opponents were so blatantly flawed. So why was there such a terrible result?

Well, sure, "Defund The Police" is an awful slogan. It would get an "F" in any marketing course. It scares the bejesus out of potential Blue voters. It makes them think of Hard Crime and Criminals running free in their neighborhood. It makes them think of Riots (some of which were a product of White Supremacists posing as bona fide enraged BLM supporters) and uncontrolled mayhem.

But I think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit the button by describing the DNC culture as being insular, dysfunctional and poorly run. With the exception of the remarkable 2018 Blue Wave MidTerms, the DNC has been in charge of recent devastating losses in 2010, 2014 and 2016. While Obama and now Biden won, the rest of the down-ballot got pummeled, especially during mid-terms.

It's not like the Democrats are being beaten by a remarkably formidable and well-run organization. The RNC is headed by this person. The RNC, like its leadership and its base, is kooky. They utilize a Far Right media ecosystem that is a closed-off world. It's immune to the power of ideas, persuasion and factual thinking.

What it does well is attach down-ballot candidates with the top tier candidates. Elect Trump/Joe Blow for County Supervisor. The Dems simply don't do this as much. Their candidates often are out on their own, unattached to the top tier. They're usually policy-and-persuasion-driven. They're trying to hit the voters' heads with information while persuading them with facts. Republicans simply go for the gut. They are far more "belief driven" and their feelings aren't necessarily tethered to the facts that ground the real world.

Our current post-election scramble is a perfect distillation of these two parties. The top of the GOP ticket lies with wild abandon. His claims simply have no basis in reality. But with repetition, The Big Lie technique can work. T's lies are repeated constantly by his GOP,  in social media/Facebook, Fox News, Hate Radio and the rest of the Right Wing ecosystem. This constant barrage keeps supporters convinced that these crazy claims are true!

Moreover, to entertain countering thoughts is to allow doubt into the certainty of their beliefs. The majority of the GOP are highly patriarchal and evangelical. They are authority-driven and believe in things that require a sense of magical thinking.

They are certain of their religion, certain of their place in the socio-racial hierarchy, certain of their political views as pronounced by their media spokespeople. Doubt isn't allowed in their world of faith. These are people who will NEVER admit they are wrong about ANYTHING - just ask them!

So... how does the spell get broken?

Given the extremes we've endured this year, it's not likely that many GOP-ers will change by experiencing familiar forms of pain. If there was a time for the bubble to burst, it would have been three weeks ago. Instead, apart from Biden/Harris winning, things got worse for the Blue Team.

Maybe if COVID gets much worse (looks like it will).  Maybe if the economy continues to decay. Maybe if the US Government won't do anything about either (hello, Mitch McConnell). Maybe if the rest of the world completely recovers while we languish and decline.

It's more likely that the solution is a long-term one, requiring a generational change. White Boomers (not the Aussie variety) have demonstrated over the years to be kinda stupid, self-absorbed and Me First. There needs to be a demographic clock reset. We need less privileged white people. We need more diversified populations. We need more immigrants seeking jobs that no whites want or can perform. We need more immigrants seeking education that some whites don't want or can't afford.

Yes, we need lots more education for all people. Two-Thirds of the White Population have no college degree. And they vote overwhelmingly Republican. Their educational system failed them. Their perceived place on the top ladder rung is threatened when People Of Color/Immigrants are working, thriving and they are not. It's a little bit of economic anxiety, and a lotta bit of racial resentment.

The Democrats try to win their policies with voters through facts and persuasion. But you can't persuade a racist to not be an intolerant racist/misogynist/bigot. It has to be a realization coming from within. Their inner world needs to fundamentally change. But for the last several years, Trump has given encouraging voice to them, saying the toxic things that they think, and thus "normalizing" them. It's no wonder that this cult is so amazingly devoted to him - he makes them feel correct, loud and proud instead of feeling ashamed. They have risen from society's shadows and they won't go back easily.

Eventually though, after some years, our current level of racial animus and 'belief > fact' way of thinking will wane.

A shortcut to all this exists by undercutting their allegiance to Trump. In the next years ahead, he's going to be immersed in court proceedings, both civil and criminal in nature. Trumpism will need a new name brand when the official Trump model falls apart. People who have lashed themselves to his mast are bound to struggle as they see him, his family and his sycophants get into DEEP LEGAL/ FINANCIAL TROUBLE. 

When this happens, the layers of the rotten onion will begin peeling away. There might be enough people that realize they've been snookered. Some, not most, but maybe just enough to finally break the spell.

To Whom Will We Flip The Finger After Trump Goes Away?

It's gonna happen: at some point, President Toxic Shiteforbrains will no longer be Chief Executive. Somewhere between leaving with subdued, quiet dignity to reflect and begin work on his memoirs and Presidential Library (0.1% chance), or fleeing on a hijacked Air Force One to Russia to set up a Government-in-Exile, he will have entered into the ash heap of history.

Yep, the Mad King will be gone. It could be in 84 days, Inauguration Day! And then what? How will we fill our time? El Stupido is such a central fixture in our lives that his absence will be a bit jarring, even in a good way.  

Of course, most Americans don't spend much time at all contemplating the state or course of the nation. And a significant portion that do are members of the GOP Zombie Party that is hooked into Fox/State News and Rush Limbaugh Hate Radio. That's a big part of the reason why we are in the pickle we are in. These folk are willing participants in the Trump/GOP death cult experiment. You can't reason with a zombie.

So when The Trump Administration is nothing more than a deeply horrible memory that triggers PTSD for up to 60% of Americans, who will fill the Awfulness Vacuum?

And when The Trump Administration is nothing more than a golden memory for up to 40% of Americans, who will fill the gaping hole of public conversation when Resentment based on Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Bigotry, Willful Ignorance, Delusion and Dunning-Kruger thinking isn't being foisted on us by a President?

For the Trumpanzees, the question of who will manage the Fountain of Alternate Facts is easy to answer: whoever is best able to deliver the Middle Finger towards the majority of Americans. 

It might continue to be Trump. Once out of office, he will need to distract himself from the coming barrage of indictments, fines, penalties, collapsing businesses and a wife filing for a divorce. He'll pull together some investors/suckers and start up his long-rumored Trump Media, complete with a cable channel, radio syndication, podcasts and, of course, non-stop Twitter, all featuring him! No doubt he will continue to broadcast his inimitable brand of BS 24/7, and his base will be there for him. Unless he's sent to prison, in which case it all goes into re-runs.

Speaking of prison, there are other Administration officials who won't be taking up the Mantle of Hate Rhetoric. I expect Jared Kushner will be spending most of his foreseeable time with lawyers, seeking to stay out of prison. His wife will probably end up leaving him and settling with the kids into a comfortable existence in a place like Montenegro, where there is no extradition treaty with the USA. From there, she'll cast a wide net and come up with a Dodi Fayed type of new rich husband to support her lifestyle whims.

For Tweedledum and Tweedledee, well... Don Jr. will be spending his time disengaging from his crazy soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, and then will vanish from public view for a while. I see a big future in multiple 28-day rehab programs. Maybe he'll come out of it all as a Recovered Addict who goes on the self-help speaking circuit, addressing church groups and recovering QAnon gatherings.

Eric "Gums" Trump can't speak for 10 seconds without saying something ridiculous, so he's a good bet to be the next Voice of the Idiocracy. But he's also the titular head of the Trump Organization. I expect he'll have his hands full over the next several years, staving off one bankruptcy after another while trying to avoid criminal and civil charges. 

Outside of the family, there aren't many figures poised to secure the demagogue's berth. Batshit media figures like Mark Levin and Dinesh D'Souza will benefit when Rush Limbaugh finally passes away to a worse place. The Force of Crazy is strong with these two. On the other hand, they present as extremely unlikable dour scumbags, so there's that. 

Over at Fox, we have the always reliable array of meatheads that will tote whatever aligns with their owner's positions. There will some scrambling for who will hold the scepter of The White Power Hour - Laura? Tucker? Hannity? Why not everyone? This three-headed monster works pretty well right now, so it could just roll on... Unless Sean Hannity is caught up in the investigative web of his pal Trump's criminal investigations. Then it will be a two-headed monster.

From the fetid swamp world of GOP Politics, there are some real contenders. 

It won't be Mitch McConnell, who probably will still be around, but won't be selected by his Republican Senator peers to lead them as Senate MINORITY leader. 

The new leader of the GOP will spring forth from the batch of 2024 Presidential Hopefuls. Some will stumble early and possibly be indicted (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell). Some will be perceived as not having enough projectable strength for a Macho party (Senators Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and Rick Scott). Some will not be white enough (Senator Tim Scott). You'll even see Mitt Romney try to position himself, but he's too smarmy, is perceived as a loser, and doesn't enunciate Hate strongly enough. 

But from this crop of hopefuls, there emerge a few real gems. Former governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. And South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Any of these folk are capable of flinging a hefty bag of bile at a convenient target. And some are pretty good at framing their hate, evangelical fervor, and displays of willful ignorance in somewhat diplomatic language. They are all well-versed at presenting themselves for friendly media coverage.

That their ideology and partisanship are endemic causes of the disaster we are in will keep them in good stead with the 38%-ers. So until we get closer to 2024 and a front-runner emerges, expect a lot of media coverage on all of this cruddy crew.

Yes, there will be plenty of competitors ready to take over the Trumpian helm once he's gone. His followers will seek out a proper substitute. But he's a Sui Generis, a one-of-a-kind. When he's out, no one will be able to replace him for what he does with his base. 

Instead, we'll see a fall-back while the voices of this contending class struggle to be heard above the rest. It will take a while for a single person to personify and manage the rank vitriol that animates Trump's base. Until then, we will witness the ongoing "try-outs" and get to flip our own middle fingers at them all while Biden and a Democratic Congress attempt to fix the enormous damage done over these last four years.

It won't be easy. But over time we'll get the country on a better course. And as the GOP continues to slide into irrelevance over the next ten years, the ideals of Progressivism will become the accepted and celebrated core values of our country. It's gonna happen.

Where Will The Hard Core MAGA Go?

 

November 4, 2020. Or December 15, 2020. Or January 21, 2021. The days after Election Day, or the Electoral College vote, or Inauguration Day. One of these dates will reveal who will lead the country for the next four years. 

Much has been said about Never Trumpers packing up and leaving the country if President Hot Mess is the victor. This would be very difficult. Most of the countries in the world are not accepting any U.S. citizens from entering for any reason because of our amazing, miraculous response to COVID-19. The ones that do accept Americans have significant caveats, including quarantines and advance testing proof. 

It's tough enough today to travel internationally as a tourist. To emigrate to another country is like leaping through a series of flaming hoops while being attacked by ravenous tigers and landing in a pit of quicksand. But if The Orange One wins, there would be those who'd be up for such a gauntlet.

But what happens if Biden wins? How will the hard-core Trumpanzees react? Will they be drawing up their own travel escape plans? Or simply use their vast stocks of guns and ammo to make their unhappiness well known? Exercise some Second Amendment solutions? Perhaps kidnap a few Democratic governors? 

Well, let's imagine where MAGA refugees might wish to flee from a USA governed by Democrats. Wherever could such a place be? Not just any old place! It would need to align with certain strong MAGA values. Not somewhere effete like Canada or France, for cry-yi. 

No, it would have to be somewhere that has no abortion rights. No public healthcare insurance either, uh-uh. A big Negatory to wearing anti-COVID masks. A solid Nope to regulations on Business. No Sir to Environmental Regulations. Noppity-noppity to Immigration seekers like themselves. 

Major Nuh-Uh to "Socialistic" government programs. Forget about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal agencies like Federal Housing Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Trade Administration, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Environmental Protection Agency, (so many to list), public works programs/infrastructure improvement, subsidies to businesses and farmers, unemployment insurance, these products of "Socialism" go on and on... And, naturally, No No NO to taxes (which is theft!).

Yep, the smaller the government, the better. As anti-tax heart-throb Grover Norquist once famously said, reduce government to the size where it can be fit into a bathtub, and then drown it.

Is all this too negative? OK, how about a resounding "yes" to EZ access to guns? Yes to tearing down the wall between Church and State. Affirmative to providing support to private and religious schools. Yepperoo to allowing Politically Incorrect Hate Speech terms back into the common vernacular.

And a Great Big Yes to having a gargantuan military that doesn't back down to anyone! Yes Sir!!

OK, that's enough of a MAGA wish-list to search the database of nations and create a reasonable array of potential destinations for far-right refugees. Let's see here...

No Abortion: A select few nations are represented here - El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Malta and Vatican City. There are plenty of countries that don't allow abortions on demand, but nearly all allow abortions for cases like "saving the life or health of the mother," "rape or incest," or "fetal impairment."

No Public Healthcare: Aside from the good ol' USA, countries that lack any sort of universal public or private health care system are Bangladesh, Burundi, the Congo, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, Paraguay, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. You know, "shithole countries."

No COVID masks: Most developed countries require or strongly urge wearing masks. One exception is Sweden, which had a real problem with COVID earlier in the summer. But they've stayed steadfast with their No Mask attitude while stabilizing their number of cases and deaths. It's because they've introduced massive amounts of testing! So MAGA folk can circle Sweden as a possible exit site, if they can get past the Cradle to Grave social policies in that hellhole there.

No Business Regulations: Maybe the best way to look at this is to list the World Bank's 2015 Top Ten Nations for Business Friendly Regulations - Singapore, New Zealand, Denmark, South Korea, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, UNITED STATES, Sweden, Norway, Finland. Maybe things aren't so bad in the USA?

No Environmental Regulations: Currently, the US is #7 for countries doing the most to protect the environment. Well, that won't do. So how about the bottom-seekers? Environmental regulations are a luxury for desperately poor nations like Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Rwanda, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Eritrea, Lesotho, Haiti and Burundi. They'll roll out the red carpet for MAGA folk, I'm sure.

No Immigrants: It's a problem when you're seeking to enter and live in a country that doesn't welcome immigrants. Here are the Top Ten Nations that are Immigrant Unfriendly: Croatia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Israel (!!), Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, Montenegro and Macedonia. Huh. Heavy on the Balkans and former Soviet-controlled states.

No Taxes: MAGA-heads have some no/low tax interesting choices here for their Top Ten Destinations - United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara, Bermuda, Somalia, Bahamas, Monaco, Andorra, Belize, Brunei, Cayman Islands. Set up on a hot fancy beach with your oil or crime money, or live in a failed state.

Yes Guns: Understanding that to leave the US means leaving the Easiest Place On Earth To Get A Gun, here are the other runner-up nations for MAGAs: Honduras, Finland, Serbia, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Panama, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Of course, illegal guns are awash in plenty of poor and failed states. But these are the nations with the easiest gun ownership laws on the books.

No Church and State Separation: OK, this is problematic for our MAGA buddies. The countries that have no such separation may not make it to the top of their go-to list. That's because such nations are predominantly Muslim. There are three nations that have a Christian requirement for its leader - Andorra, Lebanon and Vatican City.

Mammoth Military: It kinda goes without saying that a country needs deep tax pockets to finance a large military. If a migrating MAGA seeks the security of a big army, concessions will need to be made. Most of the top militaries belong to nations with "socialistic" governance, such as China, India, Russia, France, Germany and other developed countries.

So what does all this tell us? When the GOP loses the Presidency and Congress, its fanatics won't be going anywhere, even if they could. They will be staying right here, working to create a campaign of governmental intransigence designed to bog down any progress sought by the Biden Administration. 

They will fight the Democrats with their media weapons. They will fight with their parliamentary maneuvers. They will fight them in the courts. They will fight them on the beaches, they will fight them in the fields, they will fight them on the streets. They will never surrender.

But they will still lose and become, by their appalling amoral behavior, a permanent minority party in search of lost power and meaning. Our children are witnesses to what is happening and will not allow this debacle to ever happen again. So it is written. 

It's Time For A Laugh

 

Right! After having survived everything that 2020 has thrown at us, including that ridiculous Debate last night, isn't it a good idea to seek and enjoy a good laugh?

The following may or may not generate a good laugh; humor is famously fickle in the mind of the beho-ho-holder. But give it all a chance and there just might be something here that makes life worth living again...

We begin with something I saw this morning. While it may not be laugh-inducing, it really is a fantastic picker-upper:

The Best Thing You'll See All Day

That was entirely too heart-warming. Let's move on to the more cynical, satirical realm of The Onion. In the spirit of surviving this awful year, here is their breaking news report on America taking a five minute break, headlined "Nation To Take Five":

https://www.theonion.com/nation-to-take-five-1845208368

"At press time, the nation announced its plan to delay a couple more minutes until everyone was back."    

Brevity is the soul of wit.

For another taste of Onion humor, here is their interview with a grumpy ceiling smoke detector:

"Smoke Alarm Sick Of Being Yelled At For Doing Its Job"

And then there is this hard-news article that examines how Mail Boxes are being sold online to Trump supporters. Oh, it's not real. It's just The Onion. Or is it?

Trump Online Store Begins Selling Decommissioned USPS Mailboxes So Fans Can Own A Piece Of History

A long-time Daily Kibitz favorite is this website:

There are hundreds of one-minute great groaners here. Check out this one as an example: 

Old Jews Telling Jokes: "A Good Time"

Here's another website that has aggregated thousands of jokes and categorized them for your convenience. They are mostly awful, but once in a while one clicks:

The Laughline

Okay, enough already on the creaky joke format. Here are some really silly examples of modern cartoon humor, compliments of The Nib:

Yes, it's been a tough year. And now that some book stores have re-opened, they are rolling with the punches:

Not the Green Party, not the Libertarian Party, not even the Democratic Socialists of America. It's the Dread Pirate Robert Party:

Here's a fun twitter account that is composed of ridiculous, specious and stupid assertions people make about what is legal and what is not:

Bad Legal Takes

"My Cousin Vinny" is filled with lots of Bad Legal Takes...

The other day I came upon the Clickhole website. I believe it's an off-shoot of The Onion, although I'm unsure. Regardless, there is plenty of funny. Here is a video that is quite stupid, but it got me laughing out loud:

"The First Time I Drank Gatorade"

Another long-time favorite here at The Daily Kibitz is the website "Pictures Of Walls". It features hundreds of photos of, well, mostly outdoor walls that are decorated with mostly hilarious graffiti. Try it:

Pictures Of Walls

Finally, we leave you with a nod back to the classics. When I was a wee lad, I recall watching this movie on the ol' black and white TV. It was so odd and surreal, yet my nine-year-old mind accepted it and found the great humor in it all. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Laurel and Hardy attempting to move a piano across a spindly rope bridge over a deep mountain chasm and encountering... a gorilla.

They don't make 'em like that anymore. Anyway, hope you found a laugh or two with this post!!

When A Minority Rules

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an historic moment during an historic time. It's remarkable how one person's life can be so consequential for the well-being of Americans. Remarkable, too, how her death reveals the institutional rot within our rapidly diminishing Constitutional Democracy.

What we now live with is a Federal Government that is a blend of Kakistocracy, Autocracy, Kleptocracy, emerging Theocracy and just Bad Kabuki Theatre. And it's RBG, in life, in death, who shines the spotlight on it all.

Her Supreme Court seat vacancy demonstrates the high-level hypocrisy and amoral ruthlessness of the GOP. As we all know, when Antonin Scalia went away, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland. This jurist languished without any Senate hearings, no nothing, for 293 days until his nomination expired. 

Senate Majority Leader McConnell put the kibosh on it, declaring that the March vacancy was too close to the November election. The American people - not the Senate - needed to make the decision, he said. RBG's seat vacancy came at 45 days before the election. But McConnell now will fast-track the President's nominee for a pre-election confirmation vote. Nothing says Autocracy like a disregard for your own precedents and rules, as long as you keep your power intact. Whatever it takes...

Also: our election is already underway. Early voting is happening in 10 states, with a dozen more set to start within a couple of weeks. McConnell's new argument that the seat must be confirmed before the election is clearly fallacious. But no matter, it's the way it is when a minority party has tyrannical control over the majority.

Yep, that's our Supreme Court at night following RBG's death. Mrs. Daily Kibitz and I went to pay our respects. Several thousand like-minded and masked folk were already there, singing and praying for a turn away from the madness in our country. Getting there, we needed to walk past the Senate, and that's where the Minority Rules rot really resides.

The Senate is a curiously undemocratic piece of government. Each state gets two senators, regardless of its population. The purpose, I think, is to protect smaller, less populous states from being swamped by larger, more populated ones. But the result is a Wyoming (population 550,000) having the same Senate representation as a California (population 39,700,000). More to the point, the Red States of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Alaska, Utah, West Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansas have a combined population of 37,377,282, slightly below California's amount. Those 16 Red States total 32 GOP Senators, versus California's 2 Democratic Senators.

"Hold up, Daily Kibitz! What about Texas versus small Blue States?" It's a fair point that's worth an overall look. According to elections guru Dave Wasserman, the majority of Senate seats represents 18% of the entire U.S. population. The 26 smallest states, Red & Blue, elect the majority of Senators and have 18% of our population. Check out his tweet thread from August 20, 2018 why he sees this boding poorly for Democrats as "we could be headed for a Senate that's largely accountable to a white, rural, pro-Trump minority of the country. At some point, the coastal/urban majority could run out of patience - threatening democratic stability."  He was right:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1031639944551378944

Another demographics guru, Nate Silver, provides a fantastic analysis of how the Senate skews to rural, white Americans. He pegs the GOP Senate advantage at 6 - 7% above and beyond what the GOP enjoys throughout the country as a whole because of how the Senate is constructed. He sees the current 47-53 Senate split for Dems/GOP as representing 167 million vs. 160 million citizens. Disadvantage: Democrats.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court/

Further evidence of Minority Rule comes from Govtrackinsider. "In 2017, for the first time, the Senate's decisions were often made by a coalition of states representing less than half of the U.S. population." It's a fascinating look at how the sausage is made. Their post-2018 midterms take was that the House would prevent a total Minority Rule takeover of legislation, but the Senate would ram through judicial and agency nominations all the live-long day. This is exactly what has happened:

https://govtrackinsider.com/the-senate-has-never-been-as-un-democratic-as-it-was-in-2017-2018-and-minority-rule-could-801e1046af28

"Over the last month nearly every Senate roll-call vote has related to a judicial appointment - not one addressed mounting hunger, school closures, financial desperation or American deaths," writes stellar scribe Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post. Election security funds? COVID relief measures for small businesses and individuals? Anything to strengthen Voting Rights and reduce voter suppression? Ha haha ha ha ha. Never before has there been such an assembly-line of young, ideological zealots moving through to receive lifetime judicial appointments. Read it and weep:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-traded-democracy-for-a-supreme-court-seat-and-tax-cuts-it-wasnt-worth-it/2020/09/21/d0c364c4-fc22-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social#comments-wrapper

The structural flaw of the Senate is not limited to that institution. The Electoral College totals are constructed from each state's two senators and however many members of Congress each has. For example, Wyoming has 3 electoral votes. California has 53 electoral votes. This works out to Wyoming getting one electoral vote per 195,000 residents, and California getting one vote per 723,000 residents. It's not designed to be fair.

The Electoral College's rural skew keeps the GOP in control. George Bush lost the popular vote by a half million. Trump lost it, too, by nearly 3 million votes. He'll lose it again this time, probably by more. But he may still win, because of the EC. Here are the calculated odds according to our friend, Nate Silver:

Chances of a Biden win in Electoral College if he wins the popular vote by X points

Yeeeessshh, that is a really bad look for a supposed democracy.

So a minority-controlled Senate works with a minority-elected President to appoint minority-party lifetime Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, creating a minority-controlled Judiciary branch of the government. This minority-ruled government, along with Bill Barr's use of the Department of Justice as a tool for his ongoing religious crusade, makes for a disturbing night's sleep.

"Oh, Daily Kibitz, come off it. How bad can it really get, honestly?" OK, you want to know? Pretty F-ing bad. Like End of America bad. I happened to come across this thread from a tweeter I occasionally read, and it is SPOT ON. Her scenario is completely believable, knowing what we know about the President, the Senate and the Supreme Court:

What will happen when Trump disputes the election

This is disturbing as AF, because it is entirely plausible. And it's all the tyrannical consequence of Minority Rule. If you think she's off, check out the Washington Post's top political reporter, Phillip Bump. He says the same, in slightly more comforting language:

The concern in November is that, should voters decide to send a further message to Trump about his and his party’s leadership, there may be other tools, including judicial ones, that he and his allies might use to hold that power. Trump himself has repeatedly suggested that mail-in ballots shouldn’t be counted, hyping phony claims that they will necessarily be riddled with fraud. But the rationale is clear: He’s trailing in the national popular vote and will do everything he can to hold his position.

Here's the whole great article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/21/supreme-court-fight-highlights-new-political-reality-america-under-minority-rule/#comments-wrapper

Finally, here's the chestnut I often use from George Bush staffer/speechwriter and smart conservative writer David Frum. It remains true yesterday, today and tomorrow:

“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” 

We're In The Soup!

 

"Americans should be free to believe anything they want as long as it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."  Thomas Jefferson

This founding-father statement has long been regarded as a North Star sentiment for American conservatives and, well, anyone who regards the First Amendment as the key characteristic of our democracy. But like so many other norms and institutional beliefs, this maxim is taking a beating in 2020. Believing anything, as we've discovered, gave rise to Trumpism. And now we're all in danger of losing our dang democracy.

In the meantime, we can still mock President Porridgebrain and his followers. Consider his comments made regarding soup. First uttered in late July during the Portland, Oregon anti-racism demonstrations, they came back up for air a week or so ago. This is good, because they were buried beneath the usual Trumpian daily garbage heap of High Ridiculousness, and are now available again for our regard.

Yep, he really said that anarchists were placing bags of soup on the streets and sidewalks, so that other anarchists could come along, pick them up, and heave them at heavily-armored cops. It's beyond belief, if belief were still a thing that exists:

President Split Pea got a lot of flack for this whopper, so of course he doubled down and has made it a staple in his campaign rallies. In the meantime, much fun has been created:

Our favorite satirist of the age, Alexandra Petri, was not amused by any of it:

"This is not just soup. Soup is a very dangerous substance. For instance, some soup is very hot. Alphabet soup can spell ANTIFA." She is so good, you gotta read it all:

The Terrible Dangers Of Weaponized Soup

"Think of Cream of Mushroom. Cream of Mushroom held America in terror for the entire decade of the 1950s, forcing people to transform it into casseroles. Such was the whim of soup. Such was its awesome power. Chicken soup - it will heal you, but at what cost?"

It's hard to imagine how Trumpenstein could top all that, but he did! Following the Republican National Convention, he declared that a terrorist threat had been thwarted! In an interview with White Power Hour Fox Host Laura Ingraham, he insisted that there had been a plane full of "black-clad thugs" coming "from a certain city" to cause trouble and damage in DC during the convention. (His timeline of this fairy tale would have this plane arriving after the convention, but who cares about things like details and facts?)

When pressed, he doubled down, of course. He claimed that Joe Biden was behind it, but Biden was also  being controlled by people in "dark shadows" who ruled "the streets". 

"This was a first-hand account of a plane going from Washington to wherever," Trump said. He had suggested earlier that Washington was the destination, not the origin point. "The entire plane filled up with the looters, the anarchists, the rioters."

In fact, he was re-imagining a White Supremacist Facebook post from June that claimed Antifa protestors were flying from Seattle to destroy downtown Boise. Sadly, they never arrived. And yes, you must read the whole article, it is hilarious and it defies belief, if belief were such a thing anymore:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7309385/donald-trump-dark-shadows-planes-conspiracy-theory/

It could be he was thinking of this particular plane:

Moving along in our moments of Defied Belief, there is the phenomenon of the Trump Boat Parades. As the coronavirus prevented the usual Trump Rallies from happening, MAGA-friendly boaters took it upon themselves to festoon their tubs with Trump flags and set sail, flotilla-style. It worked in Florida (of course) and other states, but then last week in Lake Travis, Texas, disaster struck.

In what has since become known as "Dumbkirk", Trump Boaters sped out into the lake, but some of the larger craft kicked up some major wake waves, swamping and sinking five other boats and creating a real 911 marine emergency with scores of distress calls! What a metaphor...

For more, check out this report from the BBC:

DUMBKIRK

Daniel Dale is a Canadian. He used to work for a Toronto newspaper as a fact-checker. He works at CNN now, fact-checking Donald Trump. It very much is a full-time job, and he cannot be paid enough. Here is his recent moment of glory, sticking pins into The Orange One's statements at the RNC convention. I don't even think he stops for a breath here:

Three amazing minutes of non-stop fact-checking Trump's lies at RNC

As he said, "It's almost too stupid to fact-check..." It's almost beyond belief.

Speaking of stupid, there's the annual Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally. This year, over 400,000 attended. You'll note from this picture that there aren't any stores selling masks around there. In fact, this picture is a perfect image of Stupid White People:

"Epidemiologists had been worried about the Sturgis rally, given the huge numbers of people involved and opposition to mask-wearing and social distancing among many attendees. At a concert in Sturgis widely criticized by public health experts, Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell told the crowd: “Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. Fuck that COVID shit.”

Since the event, COVID cases in South Dakota and around the nation are on the rise (those 400,000 weren't locals). And as a followup, Trump supporter Governor Noem is using $5,000,000 that South Dakota received from the federal government for COVID-related relief funds... on producing tourism ads for the state. Can you believe that?!

The following weird moment happened during a recent Trump press appearance. No surprise there, but it was notable for Trump accusing Biden of using "Mafia Talking Points." Watch it. It's evident that he's reading these remarks for the very first time, written by someone else, and hasn't a clue what it means. He tries to wing it, but it still doesn't work:

Mafia Talking Points

He gamely goes on about how the Mafia works, but any planned connection to Biden is long gone. So dumb... who could possibly believe it?

Later, when asked by the New York Times about his plans for a second term agenda, he replied:

"But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we'd have a very, very solid, we would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done."

He did not clarify or expand... Considering everything that has been exposed over the last few days, it's understandable why he didn't elaborate. But it's clear that this lucid and powerful statement outlining his vision for America simply underscores his core beliefs.

We could go on and on about any number of recent stupid and numbing revelations, like Bill Barr enjoining the Department of Justice to defend Trump in a sexual assault case, or the Whistleblower at DHS indicating political resistance to exposing Russian election interference and the dangers of White Supremacists, or the Post Office outrage, or the sidelining of funds for Social Security and Medicare, or the politicization of Voice of America, or the continued distinct lack of information and transcripts on calls and conferences with Vladimir Putin and others, or illegally using the White House and Washington Monument as props during a political convention, or...

Oh yeah. The beat goes on. It's the same plan as before: "flood the zone with shit." It's the same playbook used by the Nazis and the Soviets and every Fascist and Autocrat who ever lived. Overwhelm people with a giant firehose of falsehoods, blasting out at all times. The result will be a population that is apathetic and cynical, not caring what is true or false. Existing belief systems break down. Instead, people will look to Dear Leader/The Party for constant direction. 

Finally, check out the quote below by the great Hannah Arendt. She literally wrote the book on how Authoritarianism works. It's pertinent because after everything that has happened since 2016 - hell, since January, since YESTERDAY - 40% of Americans are still supporting Trump and will do so, no matter what:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism