Polling

Posted on September 25, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 25, 2023

Voter preference polling is one of the media’s favorite tools for grabbing attention. It plays a vital role in ratings wars and attracting sponsors, but the lingering question remains: are the results meaningful? Public response to polling, especially more than a year out from an election and before a single primary vote has been cast, is mixed. Some people read polls on the edge of their seats while many others ignore them. Sadly, most people don’t understand them well enough to judge.

To people who do understand, particularly in a presidential election, national polls don’t mean much, because in today’s world, a handful of swing states determine the outcome. In 2020, the margins in five swing states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona) totaled 280,000 out of 155 million, less than 0.2% of the votes cast. They mean even less the further away the election is.

Some polls, like the just-released ABC-Washington Post survey on the 2024 presidential election, generate considerable controversy. There are many polling organizations, some that purport to be entirely objective, while others have clear biases. Those biases can manifest in the way sampling is conducted and in the way questions are worded. In virtually every poll I’ve participated in, I felt that most of the questions weren’t biased as much as worded in a way that I didn’t have a clear response.

The problem with the Post-ABC poll, which was conducted from September 15-20, was that its results were very different from polls conducted by other groups. The Washington Post acknowledged that simply by describing it as an outlier – a correct conclusion, but one that caused me to ignore it completely. Even if it had agreed with other, similar polls, I’d have had trouble taking it seriously. Why?

Consider how polls are conducted today. According to The Post, it used “a random national sample of 1,006 U.S. adults, with 75 percent reached on cellphones and 25 percent on landlines,” and the results have a margin of error of at least 3.5%, 4% among registered voters, and it’s much larger than that when results for smaller subgroups are presented. Four percent doesn’t sound like a lot, but that number is only valid if all the assumptions made in conducting the poll were correct.

The most important assumption is that the sampling universe accurately reflects the opinions of likely voters. One problem is that 11% of the people sampled for the ABC-Post poll were not even registered to vote. But the more serious problem is whether even the 89% who were registered actually represented the nation at large.

The Post reported that about 750 people were contacted on cellphones and roughly 250 on landline phones. Thus, the entire poll was conducted by interviewing people who answered their phones and were willing to speak to pollsters. And for people who work for a living, that means they could only be contacted outside their work hours. Does that sound like anyone you know is represented by the sample of people questioned? I and virtually everyone I know ignore phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize or those identified as likely spam or marketing calls. So, who is actually being counted in the results?

It sounds to me like the only people who respond are those who answer their phones every time it rings. Maybe they’re lonely or bored or have nothing better to do, given that more than nine times out of ten, the caller is either a robot or someone trying to sell you something you neither need nor want. But that group certainly doesn’t think the way I or most of the people I know do. Another factor is that even among those people who answer a pollster’s call, most are too busy or disinterested to take the time. My guess is that people who are willing to spend fifteen minutes talking to pollsters have intense feelings, usually including anger bordering on rage about one of the candidates or a hot-button policy issue.

I cannot take such polling seriously. I have no confidence that either the sampling universe used represents actual voters who enter a polling place or that the questions they posed really touch on what most voters think is important. As RCA Chairman David Sarnoff, in the movie Twenty One, says to the federal investigator who proved that the quiz show of the same name was rigged – No one ever said it was honest. It’s just entertainment.

I recommend that we view national polling the same way. State by state polls, for either primary or general elections, especially close to voting days are likely to be a lot more reliable, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Your vote belongs to you.

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Ostriches

Posted on September 19, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 19, 2023

Ever since Donald Trump decided that his narcissism could only be satisfied if he became the first American dictator, I’ve been confounded by the way major events have evolved. How often in the past have we asked, “How could this possibly have happened?” How could we have spent the decade of the 1920’s hollowing out the bases of our economy until everything crashed and burned? How, in the 1930’s, could Europe and the United States have sat back and watched Fascism devour most of Europe and Asia? How could we have allowed Russia to beat us into space while we were letting ourselves be dragged into a decade-long conflict in Vietnam?

I could ask a dozen more questions like those, but my intention is to avoid having us all wake up one day in, say, 2028 and ask how we could have turned our country over to a bunch of nihilistic, right-wing extremists and shredded our Constitution. Our founders’ vision, flawed as it was by eighteenth century norms and values, was of a Republic based on majority rule and freedom to speak and worship (or not) as we choose. It was of a government that prioritized the common good and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

If you need a clear example of how wrong things can go, recent polling revealed that while fewer than one in ten Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, Tommy Tuberville, a football coach turned U. S. Senator has the power to scuttle our nation’s defense appropriation because he doesn’t like the military’s policy of granting leave to servicewomen who believe they require an abortion; an extremist rabble representing a small fraction of the House of Representatives seems to have the power to shut down the government until its demands on abortion, Ukraine, climate change, and public education are met; and most red state legislatures are attempting to enact bans on abortion and books they don’t like into law while recognizing that they do not represent the views of the majority of their constituents.

The problem is far deeper than a Republican Party at war with itself. Trump and his supporters showed us that the political system we have touted as the best and fairest in the world is seriously flawed and at risk. Our two-party system is incapable of defending itself and doing the people’s business when it loses its moral compass and openly supports a culture of lies. And it’s appalling that our media normalize the behavior of people who are willing to destroy our government for the sake of their own power and greed by referring to them as Conservatives.

These people are the anathema of Conservative leadership. Think about what the word conservative means – acting in a manner to conserve and preserve the things we need and value. Referring to radical extremists who prefer government by a fascist oligarchy that subjugates women and non-white populations while telling everyone who they can love and marry and censoring unpleasant truths from public education as Conservatives is a perversion of our language. The point was made clear by a tee shirt I saw while my family was touring the Naval Academy: Make Orwell fiction again.

Unfortunately, true Conservatives like Liz Cheney, Paul Ryan, and Jeff Flake were purged from our Congress because their gutless colleagues were more concerned with their own re-election than what was good for our country. And centrists, who for decades were the glue that held the warring factions in Congress together and enabled it to function, have decided to leave for greener pastures. I can’t say I blame them, but if we don’t react to those things as the glaring warning signs they are, the next generation of Americans will reside in a country we wouldn’t recognize.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President in 2012, said much the same thing in his new biography: Romney: A Reckoning. While roundly criticizing his Party, he revealed that at the times of Trump’s impeachments, not a single Republican Senator believed Trump to be innocent, yet he was the only one who voted to convict because the others were terrified of Trump’s base. That’s the same base that spawned the insurrection at the Capitol and who still threaten civil war if Trump fails to win a second term as President.

If you still wonder how once thriving economies and civilizations suddenly collapse, we’re watching the process unfold today. I don’t know a lot about ostriches, but I’d bet that burying its head in the sand never saved the life of a single creature that chose to hide rather than defend itself. If we try to hide from the danger of Donald Trump, we’ll be as pathetic as those ridiculous birds.

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The Circus is Back in Town

Posted on September 12, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 12, 2023

When I heard that the Ringling Brothers Circus was making a comeback, my first thought was that when I saw it as a kid, except for the tightrope walkers, I was underwhelmed by The Greatest Show on Earth. I’m even more discouraged to learn that the circus cloned itself, appointing a new tightrope walker-in-chief. We couldn’t have two circuses with the same name, so the clone found a new one. To all appearances, the cloned circus will provide even more balancing acts than the original, with the added dimension that not only will the performers be risking their own lives, but those of every American as well.

The new circus is called the United States House of Representatives, and its chief tightrope walker is Kevin McCarthy. As a kid, I never understood whether tightrope walkers were motivated by the challenge, a need for fame and public adoration, or a strong death wish. As I watch the cloned circus perform, I still wonder the same thing.

In the original circus, tightrope walkers had a safety net. If they fell, the worst thing they usually experienced was embarrassment, and given their training and experience, their actual “death-defying” feats weren’t as daunting as they looked. But McCarthy appears to be struggling for balance every time he speaks, and while a circus performer has the support of their entire cast, McCarthy’s lust for power left him out there on his own. Even worse for poor Kevin, in order to become Speaker, he had to grant one of his crew, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, the power to cut the rope out from under him on a whim.

If it were a real circus I would ignore it, but I can’t, because McCarthy has the power to create almost as much havoc as Trump does. And in addition to living on a tightrope, McCarthy added juggling to his act. He hasn’t dropped anything yet, but in the coming weeks his show will become more perilous every day. The balls he’s juggling include next year’s budget, without which the government will shut down, our federal deficit, and the civil war being fought between the Trump faction of the Republican Party and responsible Conservatives. Should one of those balls fall and shatter, it could take our entire economy with it.

This morning, Gaetz announced from the House floor that he has taken McCarthy’s balls hostage, and he intends to crush them if the Speaker doesn’t comply fully with his demands. I don’t know whether Gaetz’s arrogance or McCarthy’s impotence is more shocking. McCarthy is being held for ransom by a small gang of right-wing thugs, and his colleagues in the House seem as unable to deal with them as his entire party was when Trump steamrollered it.

If this weren’t bad enough, to gain favor with Trump, that same group of thugs has decided to switch sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. Any tightrope walker will tell you success is all about balance and knowing exactly where you’re next step is. Yet, McCarthy would rather waffle, saying one thing to appease Gaetz’s thugs one day, and the opposite the next day when saner Republicans react negatively.

Thus, on March 1st, when a Russian reporter asked McCarthy if his comments during the previous few months meant he no longer supported Ukraine, McCarthy said, “I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children, … and I think [Russia] should pull out.” One week later, on March 8th, after Gaetz and his gang read McCarthy the riot act, he rejected an invitation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit Kyiv to discuss F-16 fighter planes. McCarthy knows as well as anyone that support for Ukraine is a yes/no issue. He can’t have it both ways any more than a tightrope walker can survive if he constantly changes his mind about his next step.

Over in Ring Number 3, today, McCarthy ordered a formal impeachment inquiry over President Biden’s alleged involvement in his son’s business dealings when he was Vice President. House committees have been investigating the charges for nine months already. If they had found evidence of wrong doing, would the Gaetz mob have restrained themselves from crowing about it?

Eleven days ago, McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry required a vote of the full House, which was a repetition of what he said when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to start one into Donald Trump’s actions. But poor Kevin presides over a badly divided House, and he didn’t have the votes, so he ordered it without asking the other members.

I fear that this could be the end of a viable Republican Party. If you’ve ever been to the circus, you know what’s left in malodorous heaps after the show ends. It takes a dozen strong men hours to shovel it all up.

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Turn the Other Cheek?

Posted on September 7, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 7, 2023

When we were kids, our parents, teachers, and clerics all taught us to “do unto others…” and “turn the other cheek.” I quickly learned, however, that such idealistic advice didn’t work in my working-class tenement neighborhood in Brooklyn. Do unto others made us look weak and defenseless to bullies who’d been taught to hate Jews. Like the fledgling State of Israel, I knew at a young age that turning the other cheek would simply get the other cheek hit, too.

As much as we would like to live in a world in which everyone treats everyone else with respect and kindness, all those black eyes and bloody noses taught me that Christian values only work when everyone plays nice. Sometimes, the only way to keep from being destroyed is to fight back. I prefer the survival values of the Old Testament to the Christian ethic. “An eye for an eye,” or as I like to phrase it, ‘If you take one of mine I’ll take three of yours,” works a lot better than smiling at the person who’s trying to rip you apart.

Traditional politicians learned that lesson in 2016. Politics is always a nasty business, but Donald Trump elevated it to an unprecedented level. Most politicians won’t even mention their opponents’ names, but Trump named them and assigned them nasty, insulting nicknames. Most politicians exaggerate and many have a problem separating truth from hyperbole, but Trump introduced lying as a normal mode of campaigning.

For the first time in my memory, a candidate whose primary skill was creating chaos turned lying and misrepresentation into an art form. It was despicable, but it was also entertaining to many and proved effective in enabling loud, angry voices of people with grievances looking for someone to blame for their problems. Never before had we seen a shameless clown run for president. The other fifteen Republican candidates had no idea how to deal with him. Some turned the other cheek, some ignored him, and the few who tried to take him on drowned in a deluge of right-wing extremist money.

Trump might have been defeated if not for his opponents’ egos. Stopping him required a coordinated effort by the other candidates, but that meant some of them who were polling so badly they never stood a chance would have to fall on their swords. That hasn’t happened in American politics since Lyndon Johnson took himself out of the 1968 presidential race because his Vietnam policies were so unpopular.

Democrats failed to learn anything after witnessing how Trump picked off and annihilated his 2016 primary opponents. Thus, the politics of lies, misdirection, and slander that won Trump the nomination won him the presidency over Hilary Clinton, who was as helpless against his onslaught as her Republican colleagues.

The new Trump-dominated Republican Party and other right-wing extremists have honed their approach for 2024. Their candidate is carrying ninety-one indictments, many of which could result in decades of prison time if they end in convictions. President Biden, on the other hand, has managed to pass the most impressive package of legislation since the New Deal with a razor-thin majority in Congress. He inherited the economic chaos caused by COVID and Trump’s massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals that included runaway inflation caused by pandemic-induced production shutdowns and broken supply chains. His policies have steadily reduced the inflation rate, created millions of jobs, breathed new life into American manufacturing, and brought unemployment down to a fifty-year low, yet he’s tied in the polls.

Trumpers react to the fact that their candidate will likely be on trial against serious felony charges throughout the election campaign by attacking Biden’s son over business dealings that occurred when his father was Vice President over a decade ago, and for which there is no evidence that Biden senior did anything unethical or illegal. They react to our rapidly expanding workforce and economy by repeating the lie that our economy is in a shambles, assuming that if they repeat their lies with millions of dollars in right-wing media ads, people won’t know what to believe.

The sad and dangerous truth is that polls indicate they’re right. The people clinging to Trump’s coattails and defending him are as craven as he is. Their only priority is power and the corrupt wealth that accompanies it, with no regard for the damage they are doing to our country. The sadder truth is that Democrats are making the same mistakes everyone who opposed Trump has made for eight years.

Biden’s nice guy image won’t win in 2024. It’s time he and his supporters took off the gloves and fought back. If you want to fight sewer rats, you have to get dirty, and if Biden wants to win, instead of talking about the working-class values of Scranton, Pennsylvania, he needs to show us the bare-knuckled fighting he learned there. Instead of an election, how about a gladiator match between Uncle Joe and The Donald, winner take all.

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Neither Above Nor Below the Law

Posted on August 28, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 28, 2023

“[F]or a federal prosecutor to suggest that we could go on trial in four months is not only absurd, it’s a violation of the oath to do justice.” That’s what John Lauro, Donald Trump’s new lead attorney in the January 6th insurrection case, told Judge Tanya Chutkan this morning. “This man’s liberty and life is at stake and he deserves an adequate representation,” he went on. That was the beginning of his argument to move Donald Trump’s trial date to sometime in 2026. Judge Chutkan promptly informed Lauro that while she understood the pressure of time, “you’re not getting two [more] years.”

Lauro stated what every other attorney has said: Donald Trump is not above the law, adding, “But neither is he below it.” He argued that in order for Trump to receive a fair trial, his attorneys would need three years to prepare his case. Lauro used the word “absurd,” but it applies more to his own argument than the prosecutor’s request for a speedy trial to be held in 2024, before Americans have to decide on whether Trump is fit to serve as president again.

Absurd would be allowing Trump to inject the process with chaos in an attempt to render the entire legal proceeding moot. Absurd would be using our laws and Constitution against themselves as only someone with millions of dollars to spend on his legal defense can do. If our laws are to apply equally to all of us, a defendant’s ability to raise a hundred million dollars from gullible donors based on the same lies that caused him to be indicted cannot be the determining factor in the case.

My favorite part of Lauro’s request was his reminder to Judge Chutkan that Trump’s life and reputation are at stake. First, I’d point out that Trump’s life is not at stake here, only his right to remain free and continue to be the most destructive force in American politics since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. And his reputation? That seems pretty well sealed in concrete as a result of the public spectacle Trump has made of his life.

To say that Trump’s life is at stake while ignoring the lives, mostly of law enforcement officers, that were lost during the insurrection Trump incited is beyond absurd. To also ignore the reputations of everyone Trump has slandered and maligned, the women he has assaulted in various ways, and the thousands of people he has hurt, like the entire population of Atlantic City, New Jersey, throughout his life would make a travesty of our legal system. He is not on trial for those things now, but we can’t ever forget who he is, and those things define him.

We are repeatedly told that trying a former president on several dozen felony counts is unprecedented. The fact that such trials raise constitutional issues that affect every one of us, and that they are likely to establish new legal precedents makes these trials bigger than life and critical to our future as a nation. Add to the mix that the entire world will be watching to see if American justice chokes and gags, and we have what President Biden might refer to as the most important inflection point our nation has ever faced.

There is a clear line between justice as defined by the history of our badly tarnished legal system and common sense. The broader implication of our Constitution is that our government is charged with acting in the interest of the general welfare of all Americans. When prior precedents do not point to a clear path forward, and our laws have not been tested under comparable conditions, we must take a step back and ask what is in the best interests of the country. Our founders did a remarkable thing when they agreed on our Constitution, but they were neither prescient nor infallible. Not one of them could have conceived of someone like Donald Trump as president; thus, our system is not prepared to deal with him.

For our democracy to survive and prosper, the cases against Donald Trump must be brought to trial before the 2024 election, and before the Republican Party is so committed to Trump that we could effectively wind up with a one party election. When the only argument that can be made in Trump’s defense is that the system is rigged against him, that should be enough to convince most Americans that he’s not fit to hold any office again, and if it were legally possible to prevent, to ever participate in a political campaign again.

Trump is a deadly cancer eating away at America’s strength and vitality. Like any malignant tumor, the only way to deal with him is to excise him from system.

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Russia, Bots, and Tragedy in Maui

Posted on August 22, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 22, 2023

Karl Marx wrote that “capitalism is inherently a contradictory system [that] breeds its own seeds of destruction.” Although that notion is most often associated with Marx, it’s an adaptation of the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel’s assertion that “every civilization (but the final one) contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.” As America appears to be spiraling toward dissolution, it’s enlightening to examine whether those ideas apply to us today.

The right-wing extremist concept of unfettered, unregulated capitalism, which in the hands of Trumpers looks more like Fascism, can be thought of as a surrogate for unrestricted democracy and free speech. Our Constitution and our republic will only endure if we recognize that there is a basic truth in the words of Marx and Hegel: the freer and more open a society is, the more vulnerable it is to those who would destroy it for their own ends.

As Americans, we have spent our lives basking in self-praise and the belief that the ideals our Constitution seems to support are unassailable. Who would argue against democracy and free speech? In principle, not many, but with no controls or protections in place, those very ideals have the potential to destroy our way of life. It’s a cliché that we do not have the right to scream “Fire” in a crowded theater. The fact that only a crazy person or someone who stood to profit from the resulting chaos would do such a thing makes the point.

There are always those among us with nefarious intent who will attempt to use our freedom and openness against us, and with today’s burgeoning technology the risk is of existential proportions. The internet and artificial intelligence are amazing feats of technology and engineering that have transformed our economies and means of disseminating information. But they are completely unregulated, which raises the question: are we willing to entrust our future to Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Ruppert Murdoch?

There is ample evidence that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and various others are guilty of flooding our media with bots and bad actors writing under false flags. They attempted to influence our elections in 2016 and 2020, and beyond that, their goal is to incite unrest and dissension among Americans. They understand us better than we understand ourselves. They know all about the divisions in America based on race, income, social status, religion, and personal values. They also understand that as a nation we often behave with the kind of intellectual laziness that makes us susceptible to any well-crafted lie.

Fortunately, there are experts who recognize the kind of subversion that weaponizes our own institutions against us. One is Caroline Orr Bueno, who pens the Weaponized Spaces newsletter. Yesterday, she addressed an issue that chilled me, more so because it represents only the tip of the iceberg of similar threats. I urge everyone to read the article referenced in the link, but if you don’t have time, I’ll summarize it here.

Dr. Bueno identified an entirely false campaign to influence America’s policy toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that revolved around the phrase “Hawaii, not Ukraine.” The point was to plant the idea in the minds of Americans who are ignorant of the facts that the Biden administration was ignoring the needs of victims of the devastating Maui fires because of the cost of assisting Ukraine’s defense. Think about that for a moment. Whoever began this thread, which soon went viral as a result of a skillful, well-coordinated campaign by influencers and provocateurs, was willing to use the devastation on Maui to mislead people who were unaware of the truth. More than willing – using the tragic circumstances of the victims to gain sympathy for Russia’s attempt to destroy Ukraine was the whole point.

Dr. Bueno goes into compelling detail about her analysis of the way people trying to end our support for Ukraine went about their task. She draws a clear picture of the coordinated effort, which included retweeting the initial thread on right wing media outlets with hundreds of thousands of followers, one of which was an account owned by a far-right candidate for State Attorney General in Arizona.

The final act of this play was when Russian state media jumped on board, the real intended end game. Russian media began attacking President Biden for not caring about the loss of life and homes in Maui, despite Biden taking every measure he was empowered to, to help. No surprise, Russian media claimed that if Biden cared about his own people he’d stay out of Russia’s military action in Ukraine.

Russia would only go to the trouble and expense of mounting such an internet campaign if they knew it would pay off. Not coincidentally, the same dozen Trumpers to whom Kevin McCarthy ceded control of the House of Representatives immediately issued a list of demands, with cutting aid to Ukraine at the top. Bueno identified a clear thread connecting these events. The only remedy is for Americans to think for themselves, close their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and find a safer way to share pictures of their kids online.

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Is Trump Eligible to Serve as President Again?

Posted on August 19, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 19, 2023

With less than fifteen months to go before the 2024 election, we all need to take the process seriously and stop letting Donald Trump dictate the narrative and control the news cycle. Regardless of how you feel about Trump, that’s a dangerous situation for the country. It might help to take a step back to where the daily noise he generates can’t muddy our thoughts. Do that, and our priorities become crystal clear.

Most important is whether Donald Trump is eligible to serve as President again. There’s no doubt that will ultimately be decided by the courts, and given the way Trump approaches legal battles, he will try to stretch this one out until (he thinks) it’s moot. That would be a calamity whose negative impact is impossible to overstate.

We remember the impact FBI Director James Comey had on the 2016 election by announcing he was beginning an investigation into Hilary Clinton’s emails six weeks before the election, despite the fact that he found no evidence of criminal behavior. To have the Supreme Court rule on Trump’s eligibility to serve well into the campaign season would be orders of magnitude worse and make us look like the Italian Parliament of the last century.

Since a Supreme Court ruling on whether Trump’s past behavior disqualifies him from ever serving as president again is inevitable, it’s useful to have an idea of how the process might go. The Constitution grants the power to manage elections to the individual states, and state election officials have a legal responsibility to assess the qualifications of every candidate on their ballot. In a perfect world, that would occur in a nonpartisan, objective manner. In reality, partisan politics is likely to dominate in every state with an overwhelmingly red or blue legislature.

Suppose election officials in any of the states Trump tried to influence (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona) or any other highly motivated blue state decides Trump should not be on their ballot. That would trigger suits and countersuits that would have to travel through the local, appellate, and Supreme Courts of the individual states, federal courts, and ultimately end with Trump appealing to the U. S. Supreme Court, where he believes his three appointed Justices would be “loyal” to the president who put them there.

Let’s make some generous assumptions: one or more of those states rules Trump ineligible to be on the ballot in mid-September, 2023, and with the holiday season looming, the court resolution at each level requires an average of six weeks. At that highly optimistic rate, the earliest an expedited case could reach the Supreme Court is late March, 2024, well after most states have selected their candidates. A more realistic guess is that a final Supreme Court ruling wouldn’t occur until or after the national nominating conventions. A ruling that Trump is ineligible might be the death of the Republican Party and would create unprecedented chaos leading up to the election – exactly what Trump was aiming for.

But that’s not the only problem. If you recall the way Watergate dominated everyone’s attention for months, you get it. As serious as Watergate was, the Courts and the Congress were able to come to agreement on Richard Nixon’s crimes without the pressure of a looming presidential election. The way today’s media behave, Trump-related problems will dominate everything. There will be no time to talk about the real issues facing America, nor will an objective assessment of Biden’s record be possible. Trump’s ability to disrupt normal business has already blinded most Americans to the impact of Biden’s major legislative accomplishments: averting a major recession, getting runaway inflation under control, reducing unemployment to record low levels and providing ongoing confidence to Wall Street and the banking system.

This week, Biden accomplished what no president since World War 2 has, bringing together two nations who have hated each other for more than a century and convincing them to put their differences behind them so the Pacific Alliances Biden forged can stand united against the threat of Chinese expansionism. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida displayed the kind of courage we expect from national leaders – the kind we witnessed as Volodymyr Zelensky rallied Ukraine to hold off a massive invasion by Russia. Both leaders acknowledged that the new alliance is directly the result of “Joe’s” efforts.

Prominent legal scholars with both conservative and liberal backgrounds have recently written that the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits anyone who committed or aided in the commission of a crime leading to insurrection, is disqualified from serving as president. At issue is whether that individual must first have been convicted of a crime, but many highly respected legal minds believe that what is already in the public record is sufficient to disqualify Trump from running again. Their opinions are not unanimous; thus, they will have to be tested in court. They’d better get started as soon as possible.

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Trump’s Election Fraud Report

Posted on August 16, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 16, 2023

This morning, Heather Richardson’s Letter to America began with Donald Trump’s announcement on his Truth Social platform that next Monday, he will present “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia, … [and] based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others—There will be a complete EXONERATION!” The appearance of this statement, the absurd capitalization, makes it look like it was written to appeal to children. I should probably apologize to all the children I know for implying that any of them might be fooled.

In response came this tweet from Georgia Governor Brian Kemp: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.” I should note, for context, that Kemp himself has been accused by Democrats of stealing his own election from Stacy Abrams by manipulating the voter rolls. Whether or not that’s true, he’s certainly not part of a Biden conspiracy to interfere with Trump’s 2024 election campaign.

As for Trump’s promised report, we’ll have to wait and see, but after more than sixty losses in courts all over the country, which mostly dismissed Trump’s claims of election fraud for lack of evidence, it’s doubtful that we’ll see anything beyond the usual lies and distortions. When 150 million votes are cast in more than 175,000 precincts, there are bound to be some errors. But based on post-election audits in every key state, the incidence of errors was so low as to defy statistical expectations. That’s because elections officials understand the importance of what they do, and knowing how much scrutiny the 2020 election would receive, they doubled down on their usually competent efforts to assure that votes were counted accurately.

Nationwide, the number of votes brought into question numbered in the tens and hundreds. If they totaled 10,000 (they didn’t) they would still be less than a hundredth of one percent of the votes cast. Carefully watched audits found no evidence of significant fraud or cheating. This is old news, which makes it all the more confounding that so many Trump supporters seem unable to accept it. By way of explanation, former IL representative Adam Kinzinger noted that in order to admit Trump is lying, his supporters would first have to admit that they’d been suckered into believing his lies and contributing money for his defense for six years. Those years have been a fascinating study in mob psychology.

Professor Richardson addressed that today, describing Trump’s tactics as “political technology.” This benign-sounding phrase was explained by Opendemocracy.net in 2011 as “a term largely unfamiliar in the West – is the euphemism commonly used in the former Soviet states for what is by now a highly developed industry of political manipulation.” Much has been written about Trump modeling his political strategy on the methods used by autocrats to remain in power, but here, we have a clear correlation that no objective reader can refute. In short, just about everything in Georgia’s RICO indictment of Trump for attempting to reverse his election loss is a component of Russia’s political technology.

Some of Trump’s supporters get the connection and love it. There’s no accounting for what some people are willing to do for power and influence. But I’ve been an American long enough to believe that most of us, honestly faced with the reality of autocratic politics, would reject it. The problem, given our fractured, unregulated media, is how to effectively communicate truth. The only solution I can think of is a change in our national mind set from blindly believing whatever we’re told by snake-oil salesman and thinking for ourselves.

I have enough faith in the intelligence and integrity of most Americans to believe that once they are aware of how they’ve been manipulated, of how people skilled in the art of persuasion and misdirection get paid millions of dollars to influence their minds, they will reject that. They’ll realize that if all a candidate has to offer is reasons why you should hate your darker skinned or wealthier or immigrant neighbors, they have no interest in defending the Constitution or helping all of us prosper. If, other than outrageous bragging and lying, a candidate’s main appeal is that he’s being persecuted unfairly because he’s facing criminal indictments from two states and the Department of Justice, maybe all that smoke is hiding a fire hot enough to destroy us if we let it continue to burn.

The reality is that he who yells loudest that everyone else is threatening our freedom is himself its worst enemy.

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When Americans Lose Confidence in Government

Posted on August 14, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 14, 2023

As we enter the most important and potentially catastrophic election season in my lifetime (which is likely considerably longer than yours) two questions stand out. Amid all the hype fostered by both broadcast and social media, very little has been said about either of them, although both portend serious consequences if they are not addressed responsibly. The more general question is what happens when Americans lose confidence in their government. The more specific and directly related one is how we can ever have confidence in and move on from the results of Donald Trump’s criminal trials, however they turn out.

For contrast, I’d ask how we would have survived the Great Depression if not for the confidence Americans had in the Roosevelt administration. I grew up listening to stories about how my parents, aunts, and uncles sat around their radios listening to FDR reassure them about the future. That would never happen today, and this isn’t the first time Americans have a crisis of confidence in our leaders. The lessons of the 1960s and 70s make the point unambiguously. The Vietnam War shattered the faith of a majority of Americans that our government was acting in the best interests of our country, or that our leaders even had the vaguest idea what they were doing.

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford could not have been more different politically, yet all four failed abysmally in what may have been their most important responsibility: prosecuting an ill-defined war we were ill-equipped to fight with no clear justification or goal, that went on for more than a decade. The conflict resulted in more than 50,000 American military deaths and more than 150,000 injuries, and those numbers don’t reflect the tragic long-term effects on our country. Anti-government protests, riots outside the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the contempt shown to returning war veterans by an angry population all had impacts that foreshadowed the divisiveness we live with today.

If Vietnam wasn’t bad enough, we learned that a sitting president was behind an attempt to rig his re-election that included a massive attempt at covering up his crimes and led to a series of constitutional crises that could have permanently wrecked our government’s ability to function. What saved us, fifty years ago, was the underlying integrity of the federal judiciary and Congressional leaders like Barry Goldwater, who were able to put aside their political differences to act in striking bipartisan fashion to force Richard Nixon’s resignation. As awful and frightening as those years were, what pulled us back from the brink was the recognition by all sides that the future of our nation depended on adhering to our Constitution and the rule of law.

But that was before Roger Ailes and Ruppert Murdoch combined to create Fox News, which was unabashedly dedicated to spinning a politically polarized version of truth, and journalistic integrity be damned. It was before Trump senior advisor Kelly Ann Conway coined the phrase “alternate facts” which seems to have taken over our national discourse. Seriously? What does alternate facts even mean? It was and is as gross a contradiction in logic as Orwellian Doublethink that has exacerbated the divisions stoked by Trump himself. It has also brought us to a crisis that will determine whether our grandchildren’s America looks anything like the one we grew up revering.

Bluntly stated, politics aside, if as a nation we are unable to move past the indictments and upcoming trials of Donald Trump, our stability, our respect internationally, the future of democratic government everywhere, and our steadying influence that has avoided nuclear conflicts since World War 2 are all in jeopardy. All of the above dim prospects for a unified, productive future. Our discourse has become so toxic that reasonable-seeming Republicans at the Iowa State Fair said things during televised interviews like, “Why should we believe anything the government tells us about Donald Trump?”

The short answer is that if we don’t, we might as well be living in Sudan or Cuba. And before we even reach the trials, we’re going to face a crisis of confidence in our jury system. Suppose we apply the latest polling to the jury pools in New York, Florida, Georgia, and DC. Is there anyone left whose views of Trump and his behavior have not been tainted? Can we believe prospective jurors who claim they can be objective? Obviously not, which implies that any jury hearing evidence about Trump is likely to consist of five Trump supporters, five Trump haters, and if we’re lucky, two independent thinkers. What if, like those Iowa Republicans, the jury simply refuses to believe the facts uncovered by the state and federal investigations?

This is not a prediction of doom, but a warning to all of us. We can get this right if we possess the integrity showed by Barry Goldwater forty-nine years ago. Do we?

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Cornered Rats and Hail Marys

Posted on August 8, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 8, 2023

My writer friends would be appalled: two clichés in one title! But clichés play a important role in our communication. They represent extreme, yet all too common examples of human nature and often illuminate situations we’d rather ignore. In this case, the two clichés fit together hand in glove (oops, there’s another one.)

Rats will gnaw their own legs off to escape a trap. When cornered, they will attack almost anything and fight to their last gasps. They display mindless frenzy driven entirely by survival instinct. Implicit in the phrase “cornered rat” is a creature acting without restraint that is incapable of rational thought, reason, or any sense of retreat or compromise.

Humans behave that way either when they are terrified beyond reason or completely lacking in moral or ethical principles. We behave like feral animals for two reasons. In a single event it’s a response to either panic or hopelessness, like a lone soldier who charges a machine-gun nest lobbing grenades. If the behavior is chronic, we’re dealing with a sociopath.

A rational person facing hopeless odds either concedes defeat or resorts to a Hail Mary – a 99-yard pass with one second left on the clock, a half-court shot at the buzzer. As fierce as competition and the drive to win are, when that last-second shot bounces harmlessly off the rim, the game is over. Opponents shake hands, ready to play another day. That’s what reasonable people do, but nothing short of death or restraint by overwhelming force can stop a sociopath. We applaud the competitor who fights to the end, but we applaud loudest the competitor who knows when the game is over and knows the difference between opponents and enemies.

Sociopaths obsessed with power appear in every generation. When they sense vulnerability, they strike. They succeed because most of us are unprepared for no-holds-barred aggression and a take-no-prisoners approach to people who disagree with them. (Yep, two more clichés.) If they try a Hail Mary that fails, they cry foul to extend the game, resorting to every conceivable underhanded trick and tactic until they are forcefully defeated. Negotiation and compromise are not in their vocabulary. Because all they understand is force, the results of their actions are often war, chaos, and destruction.

Americans are about to endure the most horrifying year of our lives, worse than nine-eleven and Vietnam. A man with neither scruples nor compassion for anyone but himself has taken over and redefined one of our major political parties, turning a principled movement based on moral integrity and conservative values into a platform for hate and extremism that respects neither the rule of law nor the Constitution. And somehow, his lies and sickly distorted view of reality have convinced more than a third of the country that he is a martyr acting on their behalf.

Donald Trump will stop at nothing until he is crushed or he destroys everything around him. He is the most serious existential threat our democracy and Constitution have ever faced. Even the Civil War didn’t pose that kind of threat. It was a symptom, not a cause. The Civil War didn’t split our nation in two – we were badly broken before the South seceded.

Trump is an inciter who won’t stop until he achieves his goals or destroys 250 years of progress. He will never quit voluntarily. He will lie and bluster and convince those he dupes into contributing their hard-earned dollars to pay his unprecedented legal fees and fund his divisive campaign to retake the presidency. If the courts or the voters don’t stop him, he will push the United States to the breaking point, and we will all have ringside seats over the next fifteen months. But if we treat this as the crisis it is, we can end it once and for all.

Georgia is about to indict Trump for attempting to defraud the people of that state in the 2020 election. We saw it happen on live television, and now, people like former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, a staunch Republican, are lined up to testify against him. If Georgia includes racketeering in its indictment, Trump could face a minimum five-year prison sentence. Even the self-serving cowards competing with Trump for the 2024 nomination are beginning to speak out. Trump supporters emulate Trump: blind loyalty until he throws them under bus, after which they stab him in the back (two more.)

Remember Mo Brooks, the Alabama House member who stood with Trump in front of the White House helping him spread his lies? Trump refused to support Brooks in the 2022 Alabama Senate race, and Brooks told interviewers, yesterday, that he can’t wait for Jack Smith to call so he can testify against him. For now, we must view every enemy of our enemy as our friend (last one, I promise!) Anyone who helps take Trump down will be forgiven all past sins.

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