Trump’s One-Trick Act is Getting Old

Posted on August 6, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 6, 2024

“Stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history.” That’s what Donald Trump posted when pre-opening stock movements augured a bad trading day on August 5th. Sounds pretty apocalyptic, but then, he’s been telling us the sky was falling for nine years, though he’s unclear about why and when.

First it was immigrants’ fault. Then it was China’s unfair trade policies, Biden’s infrastructure spending, inflation, and NATO’s unwillingness to cede Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Savvy investors know markets are on hair triggers, a condition that’s exaggerated by program trading – computer-driven buy and sell orders that react to certain triggers, often incorrectly. Things like program trading feed fears of an AI revolution. Markets tend to overreact to unexpected stimuli and most often correct themselves when their panic responses turn out to be baseless.

Japan’s markets crashed first, for reasons unrelated to Friday’s disappointing jobs numbers in the U. S. Today, the markets quickly regained more than half of what they lost, and Japan’s markets gained back 80% of their losses. So, Donald, the world will not end this week, and it has nothing to do with you. June’s job numbers were unexpectedly high, and they were very good throughout the Spring quarter. These things tend to average out. By September, we’ll be looking at better than average monthly job growth for all of 2024.

Trump’s knee-jerk reaction to the one-day crash was typical. He baselessly lashed out at Kamala Harris. He’s gotten away with hyperbole and outright lies since he entered the political spotlight, but everyone except his angry base is tiring of it. If yesterday had really been the start of a global economic collapse, it’s far more likely it would have been other major world economies dragging ours down, than, as Republicans suggested, the rest of the world panicking because America’s economy was crashing.

Candidates who lash out impulsively without facts to support them inevitably self-destruct. The record of the Biden-Harris administration speaks for itself in hard numbers and in new roads, bridges, factories, and internet lines all over the country. When red Ohioans and Kentuckians see the new Ohio River bridge connecting Cinncinnati, OH and Covington, KY being built with their tax dollars, they don’t see red or blue. They see their government meeting their needs.

Trump has made a number of missteps. His selection of J. D. Vance as a running mate backfired, as most of the country joined in labeling him weird. Having Goofy the mini-Trump on his ticket makes Trump feel good, but it’s more likely to cost him votes in moderate states than buy him votes that help him win, and being labeled weird is not good for being taken seriously.

Trump’s gut instincts aren’t working, either. Going off script at rallies and whining about personal grievances instead of offering solutions to problems has many Republicans pulling their hair out. Crazy stuff like challenging Harris’ racial identity, so reminiscent of Trump’s fake birther conspiracy which did nothing to damage Barrack Obama’s career, evoked only ridicule. His remarks at the Black Journalist conference probably reversed any inroads his campaign may have previously made in the black community, and they made him no friends among journalists. And childishly attacking popular Republican Governor Brian Kemp could cost him Gerorgia.

Trump’s base cheered when he backed out of the ABC debate with Vice President Harris and proposed moving it to a Fox News venue with cheering crowds, but everyone else saw it for what it was: fear and desperation. He’s terrified of facing off one-on-one with Harris without gimmicks, tricks, or a friendly network’s fingers on the scale. If you don’t believe that, watch this You Tube video of Senator Harris eviscerating Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017. I was wrong when I called Trump Donald Duck. From now on, it’ll be Chicken Donald.

Trump’s biggest problem is that his only political skills are shamelessness and intimidation. The former had both parties back on their heels in 2016, somewhat less so in 2020. This year, with help from the Supreme Court and President Biden’s apparent decline, a Trump victory was starting to look inevitable. But with Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz running against him, neither of those will be effective, except to get his base to cheer and wave their guns around.

Harris and Walz are unfazed by Donald Trump. They mock his attacks and otherwise command the attention of the media at his expense. Today’s polls have them tied nationally, and that’s before the Democratic Convention begins. If you believe in trends and momentum shifts, we will inaugurate our first female/black/Asian (take your pick) president on January 20th.

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Donald Duck and Goofy

Posted on August 2, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 2, 2024

We’ve watched Donald Trump’s antics long enough to know that he thinks he’s wonderfully subtle. The master wordsmith who can barely put an English sentence together does have one talent in that area. He has decades of experience, thanks to his disgraced former attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn, who taught him how to say things without quite saying them. The idea was to always leave the door open for another possible interpretation so he could avoid being sued. How many times have we heard Trump say something outrageously crass and slanderous and then disavow it like a kid who just pulled his hand out of the cookie jar?

Another of his disgraced former attorneys, Michael Cohen, explained how that works during his testimony when he was on trial and ultimately convicted of fraud. Trump would give him benign-sounding instructions like, “fix this,” and Cohen would be expected to read between the lines and understand that that meant, “destroy so-and-so,” or “make sure the books are fixed.” A rhetorical wink.

These days, Trump dispenses with the wink. He has become so desperate, he no longer masks his intentions. When his handlers and the Republicans who remain true to their basic principles begged Trump to tone down his lies and slanders, he did so for about thirty minutes during his nomination acceptance speech. Then, he told the delirious crowd, “they want me to be nice, but if you don’t mind, I don’t want to be,” and he launched into flinging insults, childish taunts, and of course, more lies and invented nonsense.

Trump touted his hand-picked running mate, J. D. Vance, as a great boon to his ticket, a true MAGA Koolaid drinker. But since then, most of America has decided that Vance is too weird to take seriously. Yesterday, Trump told reporters that Vance is insignificant because vice presidential candidates historically have no effect on the outcome of presidential elections. It was one of those moments when I couldn’t decide whether Trump was purposefully lying or so ignorant he didn’t know he was lying.

2008 wasn’t that long ago, Donald. Is your memory slipping? That summer, Barrack Obama was in a horse race with John McCain. The polls had them virtually tied. McCain was a centrist Conservative who was highly respected by most Americans, including me. Obama was a wonderfully charismatic campaigner, but we knew very little else about him; that is, he was the kind of candidate who scared me, not because he was black, but because charisma in the hands of a skilled unscrupulous politician is dangerous.

I gradually warmed to Obama, largely because of America’s love affair with his wife, Michelle, but I was still on the fence…until McCain was forced to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate. That sealed my vote for Obama, and many strategists believe Palin put Obama over the top. Think about it. If Trump had a stroke the day after he was inaugurated, how would you feel about having Vance as president for four years?

When Kamala Harris labeled Vance “just plain weird,” her audience laughed. She hadn’t intended to be funny, but her description was so apt it stuck. Vance was instantly nullified as a positive force for Trump. It must be driving those remaining principled Republicans crazy. Not only has Trump gotten worse, but Vance doubles down on the worst things Trump says, and where Trump lies and flings insults, most of us shake our heads in wonder when Vance speaks.

Take yesterday, when the multi-nation prisoner exchange was announced. President Biden and Kamala Harris had been working the delicate diplomacy of getting all the countries involved in the deal on the same page for more than three years. Harris was tasked with the trickiest part, convincing Germany to release an assassin they were dead set on keeping in prison. Yet, Goofy Vance claimed the deal happened because Putin was preparing for a second Trump presidency. That’s so far-fetched it defies the imagination. I can’t see how millions of voters laughing at Vance will have no effect on the election.

Picking a running mate like Vance was pure Trump, whose massive ego has him convinced he knows more about everything than anyone else, including generals, physicians, economists, and scientists. All Trump cares about is personal loyalty. There’s no doubt Vance passed that test, but all he brings to the ticket is ridicule and the impossibility of ever calming Trump’s rhetoric.

The difference between 2016, when Trump’s outrageous style worked against both his own party and his Democratic opponent, and 2020, when he angered enough people to lose the election by eight million votes, is that in 2024, Trump might as well be Donald Duck, quacking away incoherently. Wait a couple of weeks, and you’ll see the numbers show Trump starting his long slide into oblivion.

Quack, quack.

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Meltdown

Posted on August 1, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 1, 2024

Earth’s polar icecaps are melting. The best-known glacier in North America, the Athabasca, in Alberta’s Columbia Icefield, is only half of what it used to be. Standing on a pile of gravel, knowing that very spot was under tons of ice a few decades ago is aptly chilling. Even more so, however, will be the meltdown that has already begun closer to home.

The recession and melting of our ice fields occur over extremely long time spans. The meltdown of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement will not occur at glacial speed, however. It will happen live on our television screens over the next three months. The idea of a three-mile deep mass of ice disappearing is shocking, but more so will be the meteoric collapse of Trump’s political future. We failed to address the fact that our planet is getting hotter, but we can act decisively in November to eliminate the most immediate threat to our future.

Trump, the ultimate narcissist, sees himself as an irrepressible force much the way we used to view mountains of ice as everlasting. Both impressions are false. The change in Donald Trump’s prospects in November since the Republican Convention are stunning, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. Trump has always been a one-trick pony who succeeded to the extent he has through sheer brazenness and spending millions of dollars on lawyers.

He is an empty shell who knows only one way to function – through lies, fraud, and intimidation. Demagogues like Trump have a run of early success because they crash onto the scene which so much violence and malevolence, our system is unprepared to deal with them. When that happens, they invariably overreach, and ultimately self-destruct. Sheer luck and timing enabled Trump to do serious damage by packing the Supreme Court with extremists, but even that is repairable if Americans wake up to the threat they pose and act.

Trump is not a racist or misogynist in the classical sense, but his disdain for people he dismisses as beneath him – non-whites, women, and hard-working Americans struggling to pay their bills – blinds him to the power these people possess. Piss them off long and often enough, and collectively, they will bring him down. But he can’t behave any other way because he is seriously mentally ill, and that will do him in as surely as meeting an alligator on his Florida golf course and poking it in the eye with a putter.

It’s already happening. When attacks on Biden’s age and apparent frailty resulted in Kamala Harris emerging as an unlikely unifier, Trump’s entire election strategy fell apart. She stole Trump’s limelight and made it clear that she’s not the least bit intimidated by him. Her rally in Atlanta was as loud and raucous as Trump’s was in Pennsylvania before some idiot took a shot at him. But there was a palpable difference: the energy at Trump’s rally was fueled by hate and bigotry; the energy at Harris’ rally in Atlanta was a celebration of love and unity.

While Trump blusters and rants incoherently, throwing insults and lies around indiscriminately, Harris smiles and mocks him. Her self-assured confidence and competence, and her ability to read and work a crowd have Trump panicked. She has already taken from him the thing he craves most – the attention of the media. He is raging with frustration, because even he senses he can’t win against an opponent who has burst on the scene with as much impact as Harris.

It’s no secret that Trump’s most loyal supporters are racists, haters, and losers, who Hillary Clinton characterized as a “basket of deplorables.” She was right, but in 2016, Americans weren’t yet ready to hear her. It’s also no secret that many people who vote for Trump despise him, but despise progressive Democrats even more. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu made that clear, when he said he would hold his nose and vote for Trump because he still believed the Republican Party would return to its basic principles.

As a professional politician, Sununu has neither the courage nor the vision to abandon his party even though it’s been taken over by thugs and criminals. Contrast that with Geoff Duncan, the former Georgia Lieutenant Governor who personally faced down Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election results in his state. Duncan has endorsed Harris and speaks out regularly about the threat Trump poses.

We saw a Trump meltdown, yesterday, during an interview with three black, female journalists. To Trump, they were surrogates for everyone he has viciously attacked who are now aligning against him. He is so enraged by the reality that Kamala Harris, a black/Asian woman, is ready and able to take him on, that he came off petulant and pathetic. His performance was so awful, his handlers cut the hour-long interview off after thirty-six minutes.

If Trump had any real substance, if he were anything like the man he pretends to be, he might recover and regain his momentum. But he is neither. He will self-destruct because he has only one talent, spreading hate and discord. Reasonable Americans have had enough of him and are ready to send him packing.

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Kamala Harris’ First Campaign Rally

Posted on July 31, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 31, 2024

Last evening, Kamala Harris held her first campaign rally. She selected Atlanta, a great choice. Atlanta is where the bulk of Georgia’s Democrats live. It’s also where a large concentration of non-white voters live, both critical to keeping Georgia in play in November.

She was brilliant! There’s no other way to describe her performance. She can work a crowd as well as Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama, although she adds a woman’s touch, which in a campaign against Donald Trump will make her even more effective. Her rapport with the crowd was seamless. The rhythm and flow in the hall were palpable.

She is damn good at this, so good that she vindicates Joe Biden’s decision to leave the race. Even those of us who love Joe could feel the difference and relish it. Harris is twenty-two years younger than Biden, and last night she was clearly representing an entirely different generation. It should be interesting to see if Trump, at 78 and not in the best of health, can match her energy for three months. Her mood and demeanor were infectious, and she not only grabbed the attention of her audience, but quickly had them responding in a back-and-forth interaction like an old-time preacher.

The contrast with Biden was stark and immediate. Where Biden had much of his audiences on edge, hoping he wouldn’t stumble or appear flustered, Harris seemed to be enjoying herself. She smiled constantly and never missed a beat. It was only one sixteen-minute speech, but it set the tone for the campaign. She is in her element in front of a crowd, and while Donald Trump can work a crowd masterfully as well, he does it by riffing and rambling and sounding incoherent much of the time, and there is rarely anything of substance in his rants. He’s just there to stoke up his base.

Harris, on the other hand, intends to broaden her base, and showed that she has no need for a teleprompter. She speaks as coherently as a law professor. She speaks in whole, grammatical, English sentences, something we rarely hear from Trump. And instead of constantly throwing out random barbs and insults, she faced her opponent, speaking directly to him. She taunted him for backing out of the September debate and challenged him directly, woman to man. “He and his running mate seem to have a lot to say about me….Well, Donald, [crowd erupts and cheers] I do hope you’ll reconsider and meet me on the debate stage. And as the saying goes, if you have something to say, SAY IT TO MY FACE.”

It wasn’t just what she said, though. The expression on her face was joyful. She was laughing as she said it, and the message was, “I’m not afraid of you. I’ll go head-to-head with you on any stage any time.” That message of strength and confidence, and the response of almost everyone who watched her speech, has to have Trump quaking today. We know how desperate he is to always appear strong, but Harris made a mockery of that idea, essentially laughing in Trump’s face on national television. And she was kind of laughing at herself, too. What she said was deadly serious, but the image of a dark-skinned, eloquent woman thoroughly enjoying herself at Trump’s expense was priceless.

Harris also demonstrated her prosecutorial skills. She addressed Trump the same way she used to talk to convicted criminals in her courtroom. She held him accountable for every bad act he has committed, from sexual assault to business fraud, from attacking voting rights, to staging an insurrection. Her voice was strong and resonated throughout the hall in a way that Hillary Clinton’s never could during her campaign. Harris showed that she’s ready to take on Trump and the world, not to mention making history as our first female president.

But Harris wasn’t only about taking on Trump, last night. In a relatively brief speech she talked policy, too. She addressed the border bill that met almost all the Republicans’ demands, but was scuttled by Trump’s allies in Congress because they thought that would give him a edge in the election. She pledged to sign it as soon as Congress passed it, acknowledging that Presidents are not all-powerful in our system. She talked about the economy in terms average people could relate to, noting the Biden administration’s accomplishments, while acknowledging that prices are still much too high and saying exactly what she intends to do to lower them. And she reiterated the Biden message that the country is only as strong and prosperous as its middle class.

In less than two weeks, Harris showed the world that she’s ready and able to step up to serve as the President of the United States. This is her moment, and more important, this is our moment and the country’s moment.

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Why Kamala Harris Will Defeat Trump

Posted on July 27, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 27, 2024

Despite knowing that you can’t believe a word Donald Trump says, it’s relatively easy to tell when he’s desperate, and Kamala Harris’ meteoric rise in just one week has made him so. How do we know? He told the crowd hosted by the Christian conservative group Turning Point Action, “You won’t have to vote anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians.”

That’s sickening on one level and horrifying on another. Trump got evangelists to vote for him by promising to overturn Roe v Wade and pack the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists. It was quintessential Trump pandering. He couldn’t care less about abortion or women’s health, and he cares even less about Christian values. He thinks he can use bigotry against LGBTQ individuals to pull off the same trick again, but not so fast, Donald. You’re a convicted felon, now, and most Christians don’t approve of that. They also don’t approve of sexually assaulting women, and a court has also found you guilty of that. They don’t like being defrauded, either, and that’s kind of your calling card, as another court found.

When Donald Trump, circa 2016 screamed “witchhunt,” “lies,” and “deep state conspiracy,” Christians and other people with positive values and moral consciences might have been taken in. But in 2024, the entire country has watched Trump flaunt laws, be indicted for more than ninety felonies and convicted, so far, of thirty-four, and stage an insurrection at the Capitol. Kamala Harris will remind everyone of every despicable thing Trump has done at every opportunity. She rarely says Trump’s name without preceding it with “criminal.”

If you believe what Trump told those “beautiful Christians” he privately disdains as losers, you should be motivated to do everything in your power to stop him short of violence. However he backtracks and rewords his statements, they’re unambiguous. He says Christians will never have to vote again in four years because he intends to have undermined our Constitution by then. Not that he’d ever be able to pull that off, but he could catastrophically damage the country trying.

Even with the bar at Trump’s low level, those words smack of desperation. The polls show that Harris has completely erased Trump’s former lead over Biden in just a week, and that’s before half the country has a chance to get to know her. And she doesn’t slur her words or forget the names of foreign leaders. She can speak off the cuff without rambling incoherently. And she’s a healthy, fit woman whose energy on the campaign trail will exhaust him.

When Harris stands before a microphone and reads off Trump’s crimes, she is America’s prosecutor, and she’s very good at it. Ronald Reagan was a successful campaigner because he used his acting skills to endear himself to voters, which made him seem natural at politics. That works for Harris even more so, because this presidential campaign will be a metaphor for prosecuting Trump. She won’t be acting, she’ll be in her element. She need not resort to slander or hyperbole, because the facts speak for themselves.

In 2016 and 2020, Democrats told voters that Trump was exactly what he seemed to be, a power-obsessed narcissistic sociopath. Listen to what he says he intends to do, and take him literally. When the uproar hits, he’ll claim he meant “you won’t have to vote because after I fix everything, it’ll all be okay.” But that’s not what he meant. He meant that if he’s elected, he will spend four years dismantling everything that has made America great. He’s insane, and he’s dangerous; he treats the government like an organized crime family, with equal ruthlessness. He meant that after more years of Trump, there will be no more voting.

The Trump campaign keeps changing their message about debating Harris. Biden’s staff never figured out that presidential debates have nothing to do with issues, and they only have value if both sides abide by the rules. Trump will probably back out in the end, because he’s quails at the thought of standing up to a strong, competent woman. It doesn’t matter to Harris. If she debates him, she’ll eat his lunch, and if he won’t play, she’ll simply dress cartoon Trump in a chicken suit.

Given her brilliant start, I would remind voters that in 1992, most of America had never heard of Bill Clinton, and in 2008, most voters had no idea who Barrack Obama was except (oh no!) that he was a black man running for president. Kamala Harris is in a stronger position today than either of them were. She has a groundswell of support that can only grow through the Democratic convention. And she has an opponent who disqualifies himself every time he opens his mouth.

If that’s not enough, let me introduce you to J. D. Vance.

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Prosecutor Versus Felon

Posted on July 23, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 23, 2024

For all the hand-wringing and angst that preceded President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2020 election, for all the times we’ve heard “woe-is-me” and “what-will-we-do now,” the Democrats and the country may have found a real diamond in the rough. The very things that worried some of us about Vice President Harris may now be exactly what we need to defeat Trump.

As politicians go, Ms. Harris has always been a little rough around the edges. In the past, she was tough and demanding and not always easy to work for. But that was the past, and with the opportunities President Biden gave her to prove her mettle, she has grown into a far more polished politician and campaigner. There is suddenly so much energy among Democrats who felt everything slipping away two weeks ago.

The mood is almost euphoric, and it should be. Ms. Harris had a record-breaking first day, raising more than any candidate in history. Even more significant, the New York Times reported that 62% of the people donating to her campaign were first-timers. That must have Donald Trump’s people wetting themselves. Right out of the box, Harris is widening the Democratic base. The hope was that she would re-energize younger voters who hated the idea of two octogenarians running for President, and that she would catalyze women’s anger at Trump and firm up Democratic support among nonwhite voters. The initial indication is that she may already be doing just that.

As to her alleged roughness, I love her new image; her likability is infectious. And in light of who her opponent is and the threat he poses to our future, this time around her tough exterior is an asset the entire country will come to love. Joe Biden’s gentle, man-of-the-people style was exactly what the country needed in 2020. But in 2024, Trump has changed. He is the same amoral sociopath he was then, but now he’s gone feral, almost rabid. In 2020, he had a narcissistic need for power and adulation. In 2024, he’s added a desperate need to stay out of prison to his motivation, and the Supreme Court has already assured that if he wins re-election, he will never face any consequences for his crimes.

The old Trump was profane, bullying, misogynistic, and racist. The new, unhinged Trump is all those things, only more so. He has never been shy about lying, insulting, and slandering his opponents, but this year, there will be no gloves, and Trump has no filters at all. His acceptance speech at the Republican Convention showed us what the campaign will be like. His staff desperately wanted him to project a softer image and pull back on some of the extreme rhetoric of Project 2025. But after thirty minutes of reading from a teleprompter, Trump couldn’t control himself. The next hour was a litany of largely incoherent rants about everything he hates. He was completely off the rails, much scarier than Biden looked in his disastrous debate performance.

Biden was unprepared for Trump’s calculated assault. Harris won’t be. Harris won’t make the mistake of trying to campaign on issues, because since 2016, Trump has proved that campaigning on issues and past accomplishments doesn’t work. In 2016, he showed that lies, false accusations, and appealing to the fears and prejudices of his base was enough to win. In 2020, that didn’t work as well, and Trump’s campaign knew it from the outset. That’s why they said the election was rigged before it started.

Harris will remind African Americans that their employment and income numbers have never been better, assure young people that she hears them, and remind immigrants that America knows what it owes them. She will not sit back and let Trump attack her. Nor will she waste time defending herself against lies and nonsense. She knows that the way to take down a bully is to confront him face-to-face. She has made it clear that she intends to prosecute Trump in the only court that really matters in light of the Supreme Court shielding him from justice. Her court will be in session every time she holds a microphone or stands in front of a television camera, and she will recite every vile or criminal thing Trump has done every chance she gets.

Trump will not be able to withstand that kind of campaigning. He will erupt, and she will keep hitting him until it’s clear to everyone who can still think clearly that he is nothing more than an empty shell, albeit, one with the power to destroy our democracy if he isn’t stopped. It’s becoming clearer every hour that Kamala Harris is the one to stop him. It took her only one day to capture enough delegates to win the nomination. Imagine what she can do in a hundred days of campaigning.

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Fighting Inevitability is a Losing Battle

Posted on July 21, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 21, 2024

One day, when my mother was 88, she drove down a gentle hill that terminated at a stop sign. I don’t know whether she saw the sign, but she hit the rear end of an eighteen-wheeler that was passing through the intersection. She claimed the truck had hit her car, which was absurd. The incident was witnessed by an ophthalmologist who told me, afterward, that my mother had a perception problem that he could diagnose just by watching her drive. Her insurance agent put it more graphically: “Every time we see her car coming, we duck.”

I had no choice. I knew it would hurt her, because at her age retaining her independence was more important than anything. As the oldest of her offspring, I had to take her car away from her and help my sister get her into assisted living. She fought and protested until the very end, but by that point it was obvious to everyone who knew her that her time had come. For the remainder of her life, every time she saw me, the first thing she said was, “You ruined my life.” That always hurt, but I knew I’d done the right thing – for all of us.

My sister and I had accepted the inevitable. Putting it off would have endangered my mother and everyone in her path, and accomplished nothing except deferring a very unpleasant task until it was too late. As a nation, we face a different inevitability that might have catastrophic consequences. President Biden is at the wheel of the ship of state. As president of the United States, he holds what is still the most powerful and influential office in the entire world.

No one knows if Biden is up to serving as president for four more years, but it’s become clear that he may not be up to the job of both running the country and campaigning for fifteen weeks. My feelings are similar to when I had to deal with my mother. She’d lived a long, often hard life, and she had earned the right to end it with pride and dignity. Because she couldn’t accept her situation, I wound up taking those from her.

I hate the idea that America seems to be doing that to a president who sincerely loves this country and who has saved us, at least for now, from disaster. But there’s far more at stake than there was in my mother’s case. I love Joe Biden, but the future of our country is more important than his feelings. America has three priorities between now and Election Day: preventing the Middle East from exploding, keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russian aggression, and by far most important, guaranteeing that Donald Trump never sets foot in the White House again.

Looking at the next election as the defining moment for the survival of our democracy and our Constitution is not an exaggeration. The only way to assure that Trump doesn’t win is to attack him with the same ruthless energy he uses against every opponent. Whether it was his advisors or Biden himself who set their previous course, he has not done that. He wasn’t prepared for Trump’s onslaught during the so-called debate, and I’m not sure he was equipped to fight back even if he had been. It is that uncertainty that has caused young people and many of his peers to lose confidence in him, and there’s far too much at stake to risk losing.

To win, Democrats must wage a campaign as cold and hard as Trump’s. They needn’t reiterate Biden’s record – his supporters know it already, and rehashing the past won’t overcome the doubts of voters who have lost confidence in him. Democrats must bash Trump with his own words and deeds, repeatedly hammering home who this sociopath is and what his values are. Biden might not be able to do that effectively for more than three months – but Kamala Harris can.

Vice President Harris would be a controversial, risky candidate. The recent history of American politics says she’d start with two strikes against her – she’s a woman and she’s not white. But Harris has shown herself to be very much up to the task leading the charge for women’s rights in the wake of damaging decisions by a revisionist Supreme Court, and she’s young and energetic enough to appeal generations X and Y. I had my doubts, but a new vision has crystalized in my mind.

Picture Kamala Harris, the hard-nosed prosecutor and Attorney General at the campaign microphone. Imagine a dark-skinned woman going nose-to-nose with a blustering old white bully who sounds like a raving lunatic when he’s not in front of a teleprompter. She’ll eat him alive, and in doing so she’ll win the hearts and minds of millions of voters who have been telling us for months that they hate both of their November choices.

Team her up with someone like Andy Beshear, who is serving his second term as Governor of bright red Kentucky, and the Democrats will have a team that can address all of America, and most important, defeat Donald Trump.

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Time to Say Goodbye

Posted on July 18, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 18, 2024

I love you, Joe, and I wish I didn’t have to say this – but it’s time. There’s not much left, and every day that passes makes the situation more urgent. You’ve been an outstanding president, the perfect man for his time. You held off the first wave of MAGA Fascism like no one else could have. You fixed our economy and rebuilt NATO. You brought inflation to its knees and put people to work in jobs that didn’t de-humanize them. You showed exactly the right strength and fortitude when Russia invaded Ukraine, and you have kept the lid on the most explosive situation that has existed in the Middle East in fifty years.

Fifty years – that’s about the length of time I have admired you for your service and basic decency and honesty. Your genuineness has gotten you into trouble in the past, but I always thought “Gaffe Machine” was a term of affection. You simply told the truth too much. To those in the Trump Republican party, that’s a worse crime than assaulting women or instigating insurrection, and we love you for it.

But let’s be realistic. I’m six months younger than you. I still have all my marbles and I can analyze and argue as well as ever. But when people see my obvious physical problems, they don’t see someone they want to entrust their future to. I believe you’re up to the job, just as I’m sure Hillary Clinton was, and would have been a far better and more empathetic president than Trump was. But the voters didn’t see it that way, because the qualifications for being a presidential candidate have very little to do with the qualifications for being president. With an opponent like Trump, and helpful public servants like James Comey, she never stood chance against the onslaught of lies and slander spewing from right-wing media.

This time, it’s even worse. The only way to defeat Trump is to be as mean and vicious as he is, at least until Election Day. You can’t fight sewer rats without getting down in the filth. He needs to be hit hard every time you or VP Harris is near a microphone. Voters need to be reminded in his own words and all the videos he loved starring in of the sociopath he is. Every voter who hasn’t already overdosed on MAGA Kool Aid needs to see and hear it every day until the election. You could do that, but it’s really not in your nature. It is very much in your Vice President’s, however.

You have said for four years that she’s ready to step in and be president any time she needs to, and this may be her moment. Imagine Kamala Harris, a dark-skinned woman going head-to-head with the bullying white misogynist, Trump. Imagine her with her no-holds-barred prosecutor’s hat on, trying him in the court of public opinion using everything he’s said and done against him, complete with audio and video confirmation from Trump himself.

Throughout your career, I only seriously disagreed with you once, when you failed to defend Anita Hill against Senate Republicans during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. And look what happened as a result? That one misstep put a nasty, corrupt Justice on the Supreme Court for life, and we’re all paying a price for that. We can’t afford another misstep now, because the result could be Donald Trump in office long enough to destroy everything you hold dear.

Whether your supporters, those of us who have revered you for decades are willing to gamble on your ability to continue, the problem is that undecided voters, particularly those who are too young to understand the trade-off between advancing age and wisdom, don’t. They will never unsee your occasional lapses and moments of frailty, just like my friends and family can’t unsee mine.

Joe, it’s a tragedy that it’s come to this. You deserve the legacy of a great American leader, to have the history books refer to you as the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, holding back the forces of hate and Fascism until younger, stronger reinforcements could take over. It’s time to retire with grace and dignity, basking in the love and adoration of the nation and party you have served for so long.

Whether you pass the nomination on to Kamala Harris, or your party holds an open convention, the result will be a far better one for America than one that sees you defeated, with your legacy tarnished. We still need you, but as an advisor and commentator, a beloved, avuncular old friend with a voice worth listening to. Stay at the wheel and steer us safely home until January, and let someone else carry the load of campaigning.

I can’t sing it as well as Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, but It’s Time To Say Goodbye. Play that in the background when you go, and feel it’s triumphant climax.

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Trump’s Flirtation with God

Posted on July 16, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 16, 2024

Apparently, the theme of the Republican Convention and for now, the Trump campaign, is that Donald Trump was chosen by God to save America. That sudden switch in tactics may have been entirely a result of Saturday’s failed assassination attempt. Powerful MAGA Republicans like Tim Scott (R-SC) and J. D. Vance, who is Trump’s running mate, claimed that God directly stepped in and made the assassin miss. I find that horrifying, not only because it supports the idea that Trump intends to turn America into a Christian oligarchy of billionaires and clerics, but because Trump himself, as Pope Francis told us in 2016, couldn’t be less Christian or more immoral.

For devout Christians who truly believe that belief in Jesus Christ can forgive even the most venal of sins, that probably makes sense. If I were a political strategist who believed that the majority of Americans believed in God and interpreted the Bible literally, I might propose just such a strategy. Who, after all, is less deserving of forgiveness than Trump? Americans love underdogs and repentant sinners, but casting Donald Trump as the second coming of Mary Magdalene is comical.

Yet, the Republicans, who have shamelessly pandered to Christian Evangelists since Ronald Reagan’s election, believe this will carry the day. Tim Scott as much as said The Devil sent the assassin and God stopped him. What a change from 1960 when Republicans attacked John F. Kennedy’s candidacy by asking voters if they wanted the Pope making decisions in the White House. What an even more profound change from our Founders, and most of the earliest Americans, for whom religious freedom was what drove them to cross the Atlantic.

I don’t think it will work for two reasons. First, religious extremists, most right-wing extremists, for that matter, always overreach when they smell power, and it always backfires. More to the point, the vast majority of Americans won’t buy it. Gallup has been asking Americans if they believe in God and if the Bible is God’s word for decades. His surveys usually report that at least 80% of Americans say yes to the first and more than half do to the second. But – and this is a huge but – if Republicans actually believe that, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d love to sell them.

There are some questions that invariably cause most people to lie. Did you eat the last cookie? Were you speeding? Do you cheat on your partner? I believe more people lie when asked about their religious convictions than on any other subject. It’s possible that the circles I travel in are atypical, but most of the people I know are either some version of agnostic or atheistic. Some of my friends are devoutly religious, and obviously sincere in their beliefs, but I’d bet my life that not one of them thinks the failed assassination of Trump had anything to do with God – in fact, they think of him as the Antichrist.

If this is what Trump’s handlers meant by a gentler version of himself, it makes me laugh. I can’t imagine anything more cynical and ridiculous. If you were walking through the woods and you met a wolf dressed like a sheep, would you be fooled? If I told you that a man who’s had no respect for law or religion throughout his life was our savior anointed by God, my guess is you’d avoid me from then on.

This is no joke. The MAGA Republicans have driven themselves right onto the cusp of absurdity, which is a far worse outcome than simply getting trapped in a cul-de-sac. If the Democrats get their act together, whether they force Biden to step aside or not, they can and should win this election. They need to remind voters of what Trump really is at every opportunity, and he has given them more ammunition than they could ever use. His love of the television camera and his even bigger love for adoring crowds, combined with having fewer filters than a charging bull have left his opponents with hours of self-damning videos and speeches. President Biden keeps telling us that the election is an existential crisis for our democracy, and he’s right. His talented campaign staff need to step up and act like it is.

If I were writing Biden’s speeches – don’t laugh, I have a nephew who wrote speeches for Hillary Clinton – every one of them would be a direct attack on Trump’s actions and character using his own words and gestures. Voters will see an unending stream of Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors, and in the end they will convict him where the Senate could not. And after he loses, there will no longer be any time sensitivity to pursuing his indictments and trials. Defeat him in November and justice will eventually prevail.

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The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

Posted on July 15, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 15, 2024

Assassinations are among the worst things humans can do. They tend to occur during periods of anger and divisiveness when tensions are already high – clichés about tinderboxes come to mind. In an unstable situation with persons of good will attempting to find common ground and a peaceful path forward, an assassination, either foiled or successful can tip the balance into chaos and massive bloodshed. I refer you to World War 1, which was triggered by the assassination of the Austrian Arch Duke and set the tone for all the death and destruction in the first half of the twentieth century.

Do you wonder what would cause a twenty-year-old kid with a fascination for guns and explosives to attempt to kill a presidential candidate? He had to know he’d be killed instantly by the Secret Service or local law enforcement. If he thought he’d die a martyr, he was wrong. Either young Mr. Crooks, the deceased assassin, was mentally ill, or he was obsessed with a deeply ingrained movement that is a real threat to our country.

Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, who might be announced as Donald Trump’s running mate this week, took to social media: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

That’s a fascinating statement, one that Fox News began promulgating immediately after the shooting. Let’s try to parse it, together, and let’s try to put our biases aside and be objective. Vance’s first sentence is correct, although he meant to apply it to the level of anger that exists between the Biden and Trump campaigns, and I would prefer to apply it to the epidemic of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States. The anger in the campaigns was the catalyst for what Crooks did, but the culture that believes gun ownership should be completely unrestricted and that enables people on the fringes to feel entitled to use their guns any way they want to, is the more credible explanation.

Similarly, the issue of mental illness and the scarcity of health care resources which might have helped Mr. Crooks. And equally important, the destabilizing effect of unregulated social media. We live in a country in which for years, someone like Alex Jones was able to perpetrate the lie that the Sandy Hook shooting that killed twenty six people – teachers and children as young as six – was a hoax, until the courts finally caught up with him.

Vance also claimed that the central theme of the Biden campaign is that Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. Vance is right about that, but what he left out is that Trump has defined himself that way. Trump doesn’t have to call himself a Fascist or an autocrat directly when his actions speak for themselves.

Trump supporters don’t deny that’s what he is, and his most loyal supporters revel in the image of a strong leader unfettered by the Constitution or the Rule of Law. The most dangerous of them do things like surround state houses in Michigan and Kentucky and threaten Democratic Governors and their families. They also staged an insurrection at the Capitol, and told us afterwards that they believed they were following Donald Trump’s instructions.

That Mr. Vance’s statement is wholly disingenuous should not surprise us. After all, he wants to be Donald Trump’s Vice President. What better qualification could he have than practicing the Doublespeak his master is so adept at?
Vance is also correct that the rhetoric in the campaign undoubtedly affected the shooter’s view of the world. But you can look it up yourselves. It’s all documented in nine years of nonstop media coverage.

Only one candidate has been unrelentingly belligerent. Only one candidate campaigns with slanderous insults. Only one candidate pumps his fist in the air and screams fight. Only one candidate always fights to assure that no restricitions are placed on gun ownership and use. And only one candidate continuously advocates cutting back on mental health care benefits, especially Medicaid, which people of limited means depend on.

Every time we reel from the aftereffects of gun violence, the MAGA crew blames mental illness. But the same people have rejected every attempt by Congress to provide help for the people who continue to murder and maim. Trump pledged to increase mental health care funding after every shooting but went back on his word every time, just as he has always fought against restrictions on automatic and semi-automatic weapons like the one used to attempt to assassinate him.

We’re being told that as a result of his nearly being killed, Trump will present a softer gentler version of himself at the Republican Convention. Let’s see if he can pull that off for four days, but more important, how long it takes for him to revert to form.

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