Vice-President Kamala Harris building a coalition to unite U.S. - gives brilliant speech on the Ellipse in D.C.

The Harris-Cheney partnership is not just a political marriage of convenience- opinion published in The New York Times by David French.

One of the great joys of my life is my decades-long friendships with people who are far to my political left. 

• They’re as pro-choice as I am pro-life. 
• They have different ideas about what religious liberty means.
• They opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom, but when I volunteered to serve, they printed T-shirts with my name on them as a symbol of support. 
• After I got there, they helped flood my unit with care packages.

And for election cycle after election cycle, the conservatives and liberals in the group debated the races — sometimes in email threads that stretched into thousands of words — but none of it shook our friendships.

Baseball brought us together. We met in law school, discovered our shared love for the game and formed a fantasy baseball league (yes, I’m fully aware of my abject nerdiness). It was a fun political marriage of convenience between relative strangers that I thought might last through law school, at most.

But 33 years later, our shared values have kept us together — a commitment to truth and compassion in our dealings with each other, a respect for open debate and honest inquiry, an underlying humility that told us that we needed to hear opposing views because none of us is perfect and a willingness to be able to live with disagreement without surrendering to bitterness or anger.

This part of my life is one reason I’m not surprised to see the easy rapport onstage between Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney, or to watch the mutual affection between Adam Kinzinger and the crowd at the Democratic National Convention this summer. I’ve seen Democrats erupt in applause and appreciation for other, less famous, Republicans who’ve laid careers (and sometimes their lives) on the line to defend American democracy.

There are political positions, and then there are deep values, and ultimately — when it comes to the deep values — like often finds like, and friendships that seem unusual can suddenly make sense. And so it was with us. Over time, the baseball part of our relationship faded into the background. The friendship is now the core.

It’s easy to be cynical about politicians (and pundits, for that matter). In fact, it can be naïve not to be cynical about politicians (or pundits, for that matter), but it remains a fact that not every move they make is coldly calculated self-interest. Maybe there is some place for some dissenting Republicans in a Harris administration, but if cold self-interest were the only factor in play, there is a much easier path to power for Republicans in 2024. They can bend the knee to Donald Trump.

I’ve spent much of the last nine years in the company of Republicans and former Republicans who can’t abide Trump, and while they’re a collection of human beings like anyone else — full of quirks and foibles and manifold imperfections — there is a common thread. There’s a sense that the Republican Party has changed its deep values, and that any remaining policy agreements are the decaying artifacts of times past.

I worry sometimes that the effort to describe this emerging American realignment is hampered by the shorthand phrases we use to describe big concepts. “Democracy is on the ballot” has a nice ring to it — and the virtue of raising the right kind of alarms after “Stop the Steal” and Jan. 6 — but it’s imprecise and potentially wrong. After all, I fully expect that America will have another election in 2028. My alarm is rooted more in the kind of democracy we’ll have than whether we’ll have any kind of democracy at all.

I’m perhaps more persuaded by a different, far less catchy slogan: the rule of law is on the ballot. If Trump wins and exempts himself and many thousands of his supporters from legal accountability, it’s more like America will have something like royal justice, where accountability exists for all but a ruthless ruling class.

We know that Trump loves the aesthetics and personality of royalty and autocracy. He lives an opulent, gold-trimmed life and has openly envied the perceived absolute loyalty and obedience that kings and dictators command. He has long sought their authority. Now he wants their freedom from accountability.

But when I speak of the deep values that are driving some Republicans toward Democrats and some Democrats toward Trump, I’m speaking of something beyond policy, to ways of thinking, being and knowing that make pluralism possible.

This week, Americans were treated to two very different closing arguments — one in Madison Square Garden (Nazi reenactment rally - 1939 redux) from Trump and his allies, and one in the nation’s capital on the Ellipse, from Vice-President KamalaHarris. The difference was striking.

Esquire Magazine headline: "Kamala Harris Had One Hell of a Night with That Speech at the Ellipse"

At the Capitol, on Tuesday night, Harris made the case for unity. “Unlike Donald Trump,” she said, “I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.”

Days earlier, at Madison Square Garden, an (flopped) insult comic called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage,” Tucker Carlson engaged in racist mockery, saying Harris would be the first “Samoan, Malaysian, low I.Q. former California prosecutor” to become president, and Trump himself, well, he was exactly who he’s always been.

When I watched Trump and his allies speak, my lawyer’s mind drifted to a common law concept called the “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” In law, extreme and intentional mistreatment of individuals could be so outrageous that it actually gave rise to a right to sue in court for damages.

That right is rooted in a transcendent cross-cultural revulsion at the idea that one would actually try to inflict pain on a fellow human being. In a very real way, Trump’s campaign — and the entire MAGA ethos — is rooted in a political version of that legal concept. He is trying to hurt his perceived enemies.

When we say that Trump attacks democracy — or that Trump attacks the rule of law — those are just symptoms of the underlying disease. He hates everyone who doesn’t serve him, and democracy and the rule of law have been two of the principal obstacles to his cruelty.

Those obstacles exist by design. The founders feared the damage that demagogues could do in democratic societies, and they placed roadblock after roadblock in their path. They divided power. They ratified a Bill of Rights. They established four-year terms for presidents so that they’d be accountable for their performance. 

During the second founding after the Civil War, the United States abolished slavery, codified equal protection of the law and extended the protection of the Bill of Rights to guard against oppression by governments at every level of American society.

Think back to my description of my friendships. There was passionate disagreement, but never cruelty. In those rare times when anger burned too hot, alarm bells rang in our collective conscience.

These basic principles of friendship are also basic principles of community. We can endure conflict. In fact, conflict is both healthy and inevitable in a diverse democracy. Truth and wisdom are not exclusive to any single American community. But nothing can close our minds and hearts to the virtues of our neighbors faster than outright cruelty and malice. That’s exactly the moment our consciences should rebel, when we should raise our hand and say, “Stop.”

That’s why it’s important to see former bitter political rivals unite as ex-presidents to present a united front in times of political transition or national mourning. That’s why it was important when Tip O’Neill, then the House speaker, was at Ronald Reagan’s bedside after he was almost killed in an assassination attempt. That’s why it’s touching to see George W. Bush and Michelle Obama hug in a moment of seemingly genuine affection.

That’s not the “uniparty” or “regime” or “elite” displaying malignant solidarity against the people. It’s leaders showing us what decency in a pluralistic democracy looks like.

It is just as difficult for a career pro-life lawyer to extend his or her hand to a career pro-choice activist as it is for the career pro-choice activist to take that hand. These are not small differences. Nor was it (or is it) a small thing to disagree over the Iraq War. But none of us should be arrogant enough to presume that disagreement over even the most consequential issues is proof of the thoughtlessness, much less bad character, of our opponents.

The longer that MAGA persists as the dominant faction of the Republican Party, the more we will see this realignment take place. At the level of deepest values, like will continue to find like. It’s not just conservatives who are crossing the aisle to join Democrats, there are liberals who are crossing the aisle to join Republicans.

MAGA brags that it’s expanding the Republican coalition to include Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard and people who like and admire them. Conspiracy calls out to the conspiracist.
Make no mistake, the realignment is not yet complete, and it may never easily track onto partisan politics. I voted for Kamala Harris this week — the very first vote I’ve ever cast for a Democrat in national politics — but if she wins I will oppose any effort to revive Roe, legislatively or judicially.

There will be arguments. Some may be intense. But this much I know — temporary tolerance can build into permanent affection. Wary partners can become fast friends. Many of us have been ejected from places we never thought we’d leave, and some of us have entered rooms where we never thought we’d be welcomed. And it is in these spaces where the seeds of American renewal are planted and nurtured.
Some other things I did:  I thought long and hard about what to write in these last days before the election, and I settled on a trilogy of sorts. Today’s newsletter was the second piece. The first came on Sunday, when I reflected on what I’ve learned from the ongoing failure of the Never Trump movement. Why did so many Republicans seem to change so much, so fast, and why did I misjudge the people I thought I knew so well?

If you came of age politically during the Reagan Revolution, you thought of the Republican Party as fundamentally and essentially ideological. We were the party of limited government, social conservatism and a strong national defense, and these ideological lines were ruthlessly enforced. Even after Reagan left office, ideological heresy against Reaganism was punished with the dreaded label “RINO” — Republican in name only.

In fact, that’s a prime reason so many conservative writers dismissed the Trump phenomenon out of hand. We were all familiar with the unyielding ideological litmus test. Many of us remembered the slings and arrows directed at anyone who stepped out of line. The story we told ourselves behind closed doors was the story we told in public — the Republican Party was a party of ideas and those ideas defined the party.

Right until they didn’t. Trump has changed the equation entirely. He’s a big-government, isolationist libertine who — despite nominating half the justices who helped overturn Roe — has made the G.O.P. platform more pro-choice than it’s been in almost 50 years. Not only has he not been punished for this ideological transformation, but devotion to him is the new Republican loyalty test.

Don’t think for a moment that is because he won an intelligent ideological argument. When he gained a critical mass of support, millions of Republicans faced a stark choice: ideology or community?

I also wrote a first round of thoughts for our blog about the Harris-Cheney alliance and the differences between the MAGA movement and the Harris coalition:

MAGA has a high floor and a low ceiling. The ferocity and group solidarity of MAGA means that it’s hard to ever see Trump polling below his 2016, vote share. His (cult❗)support is baked in and unshakable. At the same time, the same characteristics that bind MAGA together repel much of the rest of the country.

Harris’s coalition, which ranges from Liz Cheney to the Squad of congressional progressives, has a lower floor and a higher ceiling. Harris doesn’t enjoy the cult following of Trump, but there are more Trump opponents than Trump supporters, and if she can extend a welcoming hand to as many people and factions as possible — without alienating other people and factions — then she’ll probably win.

Puerto Rico Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez documents a response to criticize the terrible Trump Nazi Rally

Echo report published in the Catholic News Agency (CNA) by Tyler Arnold: 

Archbishop Roberto González* of San Juan, Puerto Rico, is asking former president Donald Trump to personally apologize to Puerto Ricans after a comedian told a joke about the island during a campaign rally that some found offensive.

“I call upon you, Mr. Trump, to disavow these comments as reflecting in any way your personal or political viewpoints,” González wrote in an open letter directed to Trump.

“It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize,” he added. “It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments.”

Stand-up comedian and host of the “Kill Tony” podcast Tony Hinchcliffe spoke at the October 27, rally at Madison Square Garden, an arena in Manhattan, New York City. He told a series of jokes for about 12 minutes, one of which mocked Puerto Rico.

“I don’t know if you guys know this,” Hinchcliffe said. “But there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.”

The joke did not get a laugh but was instead met with boos and groans from the crowd, after which Hinchcliffe nodded and said: “OK, all right, OK, we’re getting there.”

Hinchcliffe is most famous for his roasts and his brand of insult comedy. He often jokingly insults fellow comedians on his “Kill Tony” podcast. The show includes sets from career and amateur comedians in front of a live audience. Hinchcliffe then critiques the acts and takes jibes at the performers.

Guests on the show generally eschew political correctness. Hinchcliffe and other comedians on the show frequently make racial jokes and touch on other controversial topics.

The archbishop wrote in the letter: “I enjoy a good joke,” but added: “Humor has its limits.”

“It should not insult or denigrate the dignity and sacredness of people,” González added in his letter to Trump. “Hinchcliffe’s remarks do not only provoke sinister laughter but hatred. These kinds of remarks do not have a place in a society founded upon ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

The archbishop also said that Puerto Rico “is not a floating island of garbage” but rather “a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people.” He also referenced the U.S. military service of many Puerto Ricans.

“Yeah — I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he added.

“Hinchcliffe’s remarks do not promote a climate of equality, fraternity, and goodwill among and for all women and men of every race, color, and way of life, which is the foundation of the American dream,” González wrote. “These kinds of (hideous❗) remarks should not be a part of the political discourse of a civilized society.”
Trump campaign distances itself from joke

The Trump campaign is (failing to) distance itself from the joke after facing backlash from Puerto Ricans and from political opponents.

Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, said in a statement provided to CNA that “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Trump himself has not apologized for the joke as requested by the archbishop. When asked about the joke, Trump told ABC that he did not see what Hinchcliffe said and did not know the comedian, adding: “Someone put him up there.”

Trump signed a disaster relief package in early 2018, to provide Puerto Rico with $16 billion in funding for hurricane relief. Congress later allocated additional funds to Puerto Rico — but Trump faced criticism for delays in Puerto Rico receiving the funds and the strings attached to the money.

JD Vance, Trump’s (unpopular) running mate, told an NBC reporter on Monday that he had heard about the joke but had not seen it.

“I think we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America,” Vance added. “I’m just so over it. … Our country was built by frontiersmen who conquered the wilderness. We’re not going to restore the greatness of American civilization if we get offended at every little thing 😒. Let’s have a sense of humor, let’s have a little fun, and let’s go win in eight days.”

Hinchcliffe responded to criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, on X, saying it’s “wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.”

Catholic News Agency (CNA) reached out to the talent agency that represents Hinchcliffe for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, tonight, October 29. More than half of the residents in Allentown are Latino, the majority of whom are Puerto Rican. 

*Roberto Octavio González Nieves, O.F.M. (born June 2, 1950) is an American Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico since 1999. González previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston from 1988 to 1995, and as Bishop of Corpus Christi from 1997 to 1999 after two years as coadjutor. He devoted his first decade as a priest to pastoral work in the Bronx, New York City.

Republicans are stuck in their own racist rhetoric and they cannot get out! BTW Puerto Ricans are American citizens!

Echo report by Dave Goldiner published in the New York Daily News:

Outrage was spreading Monday over racist gibes aimed at Puerto Ricans, Blacks and others by speakers at former guy President DonOLD Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.

About Description On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker. Date: February 20, 1939  Arrests: 13.

A parade of Democratic leaders and A-list celebrities denounced the Trump campaign and comic Tony Hinchcliffe for calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at the packed Sunday rally, which included crude attacks on Latinos and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“There was nothing that’s an accident about what was said. … It was an authentic depiction of what Donald Trump thinks about Puerto Rico,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx, Queens) said Monday. “This is what these people believe, and it’s not a joke.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) trashed Republicans for “[inviting] this filth into our community.” Gov. Hochul said the hatefest amounted to an “ugly, divisive, and racist” closing message by the Trump campaign.

“To the Daily News, is it a racist rally if a Black man from Florida who’s originally from New York speaks at that rally?” Donalds said. “I don’t think so.”

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, an endangered first-term Long Island Republican, said his mother is Puerto Rican and urged GOP voters to “stay on message.”

“The only thing that’s ‘garbage’ was a bad comedy set,” tweeted D’Esposito, who is locked in a tough reelection battle in his Democratic-leaning district.

Even the Trump campaign, which rarely gives any ground to criticism, took the highly unusual step of walking back the “island of garbage” remarks, though critics noted that the gibes appeared on a teleprompter and were approved by the Trump campaign.

“This joke does not reflect the views of former President Trump or the campaign.” said Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokeswoman.

New city Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who is Puerto Rican, said in a statement that “the hateful language we heard this weekend has no place in our city or our schools. Every community targeted this weekend has worked too hard for too long to create their place in the American Dream to be disrespected and degraded with such language. … Our tiny but mighty island has produced scholars, scientists and artists who have made great contributions to both the American and global communities. When you live in New York City, your neighbors are the entire world. We are a great city because of our diversity.”

TV host Geraldo Rivera, a former friend and political ally of Trump, urged Latino men to vote against the former president.

“A vote for Trump is a vote against self-respect,” Rivera tweeted.

It remains to be seen whether the remarks will cost Trump at the ballot box.  But with polls showing a dead-heat race, Democrats hope they could persuade some undecided Latino voters not to vote for him.

Latinos are a key constituency in several battleground states and make up 4% of registered voters in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical of the seven battleground states

About half of those Latinos are of Puerto Rican descent. They normally vote strongly Democratic, but some polls have shown Trump winning a greater share of support this year compared with the 2020 and 2016 races.

Georgia, which Trump lost by just 11,000 votes in 2020, also has a large Puerto Rican community.

Even before the ugly MSG rally, Trump had made controversial moves that alienated Puerto Ricans, especially his paper towel-tossing stunt in 2017 as the island battled devastation from Hurricane Maria.

As president, he also mused about selling Puerto Rico, whose residents are U.S. citizens, or trading it for mineral-rich Greenland.

Ironically, the speech at the Garden took place hours after Vice-President Harris campaigned at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and outlined her program for the island, which does not get a vote in presidential elections.

“Trump is the same old, tired playbook: Divide and demean,” Ian Sams, a Harris campaign aide, said Monday. “It’s a stark reminder of who he is.”

DonOLD Trump Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden shows people leaving in videos

Whatever happened to Lindsey Graham❓ . He said "whaaaaa❓"  Lindsey Graham urges voters to "reject" generals' critical views of Trump

Madison Square Garden in 1939

Ahead of Donald Trump's campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York one GOP strategist Doug Heye critiqued the former president for holding one in a state where he trails Vice President Kamala Harris by double digits, calling it "wasted time." (Published in Newsweek by Natalie Venegas) 

As Election Day quickly approaches, the race between Trump, the GOP nominee, and Harris, the Democratic nominee, remains extremely tight, with the outcome largely depending on swing states, as both candidates continue campaigning across the country.

While New York is a reliably blue state, and Democratic candidates typically win statewide easily because of massive margins in New York City, Trump has continued to campaign there as he has held several other campaign events including rallies in the Bronx and Nassau County on Long Island.

"Whether you're talking about Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, I'd say time spent out of the seven key states that are the swing states that could turn this election by and large is wasted time. 

Your time is better spent in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada, Arizona et cetera than it is in Texas or in Washington, D.C. or in New York," Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), said on Sunday in an interview with CNN's Rahel Solomon.

Heye explained that while the rally will likely get coverage, it may fall short of reaching young male voters, a group Trump has recently aimed to reach.

"But with this Trump event yes, it's gonna get a lot of coverage––although a lot of people, especially young males, who Trump wants to win with big margins, will probably be watching football 🏉...Every political campaign that you're on, there's always some event that makes staff sort of scratch their heads 😖and say 'Why are we doing this in this way❓" and the answer is always to scratch that itch that a candidate has."

Billionaire cowards- Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shoing do not have the courage of Cassidy Hutchinson

Echo guest opinion published in The New York Times:

Two Billionaires, Two Newspapers, Two Acts of Self-Sabotage

By Nancy Gibbs

Ms. Gibbs runs Harvard University’s media and public policy center and is a former editor in chief of Time magazine.

Cassidy Hutchinson is 27 years old with more courage to stand up to the political monster DonOLDTrump than Jeff Bezos owner of the Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong who owns the Times.

I can think of some compelling reasons that leading independent newspapers should not be in the business of endorsing candidates for president.

Unfortunately, the acts of self-sabotage by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times do not reflect any of them. And so one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.

The owners of both papers took as long as possible to reveal what they had already concluded: For the first time in years — since 2004 for The Los Angeles Times and 1988 for The Post — each would refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate. This inspired Donald Trump’s campaign to whoop that even Vice President Kamala Harris’s “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.” The Times’s editorial editor, Mariel Garza, resigned and said the decision made the organization look “craven and hypocritical.” Others followed.

The Post’s endorsement of Ms. Harris had reportedly already been drafted, only to be shelved on the orders of its owner, Amazon’s founder, Mr. Bezos. But it fell to the paper’s publisher, William Lewis, to announce the decision, saying, “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” 

Its editorial editor, David Shipley, in the face of his mutinous editorial board, said he owned the outcome, which he called a way of creating “independent space” for voters to make up their own minds.

I’m not worried that Post and Los Angeles Times readers will have trouble deciding how to vote. I’m worried they’ll have trouble deciding whom to trust.

Both papers are owned by billionaires — Patrick Soon-Shiong at The Times and Mr. Bezos at The Post — and it is this grim similarity that raises alarms, especially in the case of The Post, whose “Democracy dies in darkness” motto now moans like an epitaph. Rightly or wrongly, readers will reasonably conclude The Post backed off an endorsement of Ms. Harris to protect the owner’s business interests. Those interests are vast, spread across commerce, the military and, increasingly, the frothing frontiers of artificial intelligence. How now can readers trust The Post’s often excellent news coverage of those topics, which are core to its mission? It did not help the paper’s credibility when, on the day the nonendorsement was announced, Trump was spotted greeting executives of Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin space company in Austin, Texas.

The Post’s gutsy former editor Marty Baron was unsparing: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” he posted on X. “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

Forswearing the ritual of presidential endorsements might be defensible, even admirable, if the decision had unfolded differently and about three years earlier. Newspaper endorsements are seldom influential and are frequently confusing. They are traditionally the prerogative of the publisher or owner and are concocted by an editorial board that typically exists in an independent, parallel universe from the newsroom. Few outside the industry know this, and most readers naturally take endorsements as an expression of partisan support from the whole institution, not merely an antiseptically isolated outpost. (The New York Times stopped making endorsements in local races but continues to do so for the presidential contest.)

Democracies need citizens to trust in their institutions, (👍yes❗) and the press is chief among them. 

When you ask people why they have been losing trust in the media, they frequently refer to the bias and agendas they see in the coverage, and it’s easy to see how endorsements make this problem worse. In our age of media saturation, there is no shortage of commentary about candidates — adversarial, analytical, scholarly and scrappy, including from the varsity columnists at these news outlets — so voters will hardly be marooned if faceless editorial boards don’t also weigh in. When I was the editor at Time magazine, we did not have an independent editorial board; our readers got enough peppery punditry from our opinion writers. It’s possible that fewer institutional endorsements would be a valuable step toward restoring trust in the fairness and public purpose of our
leading news organizations.

That’s not what we are watching here. Neither paper has developed a sudden allergy to endorsements; The Post backed the Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks weeks ago, as The Los Angeles Times did for the California Democrat Adam Schiff. And the arguments against endorsing have been circulating for years. Announcing a sudden change in policy so close to the election suggests cowardice more than conviction, however much airbrushing the apologists do.

I have immense respect and sympathy for journalists at news organizations, which are increasingly embattled just when we need them most. The business model is dissolving, social media platforms are piranhas, the competition for attention is relentless, and the stakes could not be higher. Billionaires like Mr. Bezos have pumped millions of dollars into newsrooms so that reporters can do the essential work of telling us what’s happening. This is no time to abandon them. They deserve better than this, and so do the rest of us.

Vote Harris/Walz: DonOLD Trump positioning his failed campaign to ignite another 2024 election coup

Is Our System Strong Enough to Block Another Trump Coup Attempt? By Ed Kilgore, political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015 (In New York Magazine).

January 6th Shaman Jacob Chansley

In this 2024, close and very intense presidential contest, there are two possible outcomes we can count on absolutely: Either Donald Trump will win, or Donald Trump will falsely claim he’s won. We won’t necessarily know for sure which of these realities prevails right away. Based on what happened in 2020 and the likely pattern of election returns this time around, we’ll probably get the Trump victory claim on Election Night (it occurred at around three in the morning in 2020) or the morning after, while confirmation of the actual winner by media consensus may not occur until a few days later (it was on Saturday, November 7, in 2020, when the Associated Press and every other major media outlet called the race for Joe Biden) once late-counted mail ballots are in. What does not seem to be on the table is any gracious concession of defeat by the 45th president, who has repeatedly and redundantly precondemned the election as “rigged” against him. If he does win, the MAGA party line suggests, that means he should have won by a vast, historic landslide without all the “election interference” engaged in by his enemies.

But while election denial from Team Trump is a near certainty should he lose or the result be in doubt, there are encouraging signs that the system Trump stress-tested in 2020 is now stronger. Indeed, this week, we are hearing from two unlikely sources some highly reassuring words about the resiliency of the institutional barriers to a second attempted postelection coup.

Probably no one galvanized preelection fears about a 2020 Trump coup more than journalist Barton Gellman. While many of us writers warned for months about the implications of Trump’s near-daily attacks on voting by mail, Gellman laid out a fully developed scenario in September that eerily anticipated what Team Trump would do, up to and including a challenge to the confirmation of Biden’s win by Congress on January 6, that would depend on Mike Pence refusing to “count” Biden electors.

So it’s worth noting that Gellman is feeling much better about 2024, despite Trump’s very bad intent, as he explains at Time:

The threat remains acute. Trump, backed this time by Republicans who have adopted his pre-emptive election denial, will try again to defy the voters if they choose Harris. …

But the arc of the evidence, based on interviews with state, local, and federal election officials, intelligence analysts, and expert observers, bends toward confidence. Since 2020, the nation’s electoral apparatus has upgraded its equipment, tightened its procedures, improved its audits, and hardened its defenses against subversion by bad actors, foreign or domestic. Ballot tabulators are air-gapped from the Internet and voter-verified paper records are the norm. Bipartisan reforms enacted in 2022 make it much harder to interfere with the appointment of electors who represent a state’s popular vote, and harder to block certification in Congress of the genuine electoral count. Courts continue to deny evidence-free claims of meddling. The final word on vote-certification in key swing states rests with governors from both parties who have defied election denialism at every turn.

The system, according to everyone I asked, will hold up against Trump’s efforts to break it.

Gellman puts a lot of stock in the pre-2024, training of nonpartisan election officials who have assessed what happened in 2020, and have contingency plans for both legal and political attacks on their work. He also points out that even though Trump has a more compliant Republican Party that in 2020, he does not control the federal government. And like others, he reminds us that in the end, Joe Biden was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2021, despite all the Trump-engineered chaos. He also takes a long look at the possibility that precisely because they’ve been denied many legal avenues for challenging the results, MAGA folk may resort to overt violence at the state or local levels to impede the vote count:

Neither violence nor the threat of it is likely to have any meaningful impact on the vote count. Since 2020, state and county officials have taken extensive steps to build in layers of security. In Maricopa County, the tabulation center is now surrounded by a sturdy wall, guarded by law-enforcement teams, and surveilled by drones. In Durham County, North Carolina, says elections director Derek L. Bowens, “we also activate our emergency-response center on Election Day and we have patrols of polling locations.” Staff members in every precinct will wear an “alert badge” that summons help at the press of a button. Police officers in all 50 states will be carrying pocket guides to election law, and law-enforcement groups like the National Sheriffs Association are teaming up with election officials for contingency planning.

Gellman isn’t the only prominent writer who is simultaneously sure Trump will try to pull off a coup, but confident he won’t succeed.

Anti-Trump conservative columnist David French of the New York Times concluded that everything the former president tried in 2020, has now been foreclosed by a combination of legislative reforms and court rulings. He adds to Gellman’s arguments the insight that massive legal penalties meted out to 2020’s most notorious election deniers could have a chilling effect on similar mass lying in 2024:

It is … no mystery as to why right-wing media was notably restrained after the 2022 midterm elections. In spite of MAGA’s losses — and in spite of the fact that MAGA politicians were calling the outcome rigged — right-wing media largely ignored (or debunked) their fantastical claims. The liability risk was simply too great to amplify Republican lies.

French also hedges his predictions by worrying that the strengthening of the election system could simply lead MAGA folk into more openly seditious behavior:

Given the hysterical rhetoric around this election, including the common right-wing (evil👿❗) refrain that Kamala Harris is a “Marxist” who has “destroyed” America and may even put Christians in “gulags,” I’d be surprised if the post-election period is entirely peaceful.

We might even see an attempted repeat of Januar 6, but this time with protesters actually using firearms and attempting a longer occupation of the Capitol. 

I’d fully expect to hear revived talk of secession, this time even more serious than it was after Biden won in 2020.

(Secession❓ 😟Maine Writer note: So, whatever happened to "I pledge allegience to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation......"

But as both Gellman and French illustrate, it’s not easy to get from mere chaos to DonOLD Trump taking the oath of office next January 20. If enough people around the former president come to realize that chaos isn’t a strategy, perhaps we can avoid another attempted coup.

Houston Chronicle endorsement: Vice-President Kamala Harris (Trump leads by exploiting people!)

We endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States | Editorial By The Editorial Board, Opinions from the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board:

Clawing out of the mud-caked aftermath of a deadly hurricane should be a solemn moment, even in this divided America. Scenes from Helene’s wrath in North Carolina — sedans flung like toy cars, living room couches marinated in floodwaters, towns reduced to war zone rubble — touch a nerve with Houstonians who lived through Harvey and other devastating storms.

These disasters take so much from us, but the aftermath brings hope. 

On a trip to North Carolina and Georgia, Vice President Kamala
Harris worked a hot meal line and remarked at another point: “I think that in these moments of hardship, one of the beauties about who we are as a country is — is people really rally together and show the best of who they are in moments of crisis.”

In Houston, too, neighbors we’ve never met pull up with chainsaws and muck-and-gut gear, Cajun Navy volunteers deploy boats for rooftop rescues. Government makes itself useful, too, and leaders prioritize concern, clear communication and aid to those in need, above everything — including political stumping and tribalism.

Nearly all political leaders — regardless of party, geography or faith tradition — honor this ritual.

Not Donald Trump.

His visit to Helene-devastated areas was a vehicle to spread lies, inflame and divide.

(Maine Writer note 📜: A message sent to my high school alumni from a victim of Helene. He is a reitred army officer living with his wife, who is our classmate, in Bakersfield, North Carolina. "“Federal and State disaster response has been phenomenal. Republican claims otherwise is BS. National Guard and FEMA everywhere. Even with all of the help, the damage is so great that it will take months to see recovery”)

Trump's lies claimed that the Biden administration isn’t helping victims because they’re Republican or that FEMA has run out of money — “It’s all gone. They’ve spent it on illegal migrants.” — are baseless. They’ve been refuted by Republican officials and yet, they’re still stirring fear, anger and distrust that have led to threats against FEMA workers and confusion among vulnerable people about whether help is available and whether it can be trusted.

This is how Trump leads. He doesn’t. Even in a desperate hour of need, 😡 he exploits. Even from people who have lost everything, he takes.

It’s just one in a sea (or an ocean🌊❗) of examples showing why we believe Trump is unfit for a second term in the White House, and why this Houston Chronicle editorial board endorses Kamala Harris to be the president of the United States.

Many who are firmly in Trump’s camp (aka "cult") won’t be swayed, we know. Some are fatigued by dire warnings about his threat to democracy. They’re less concerned in this election with abstract notions of patriotism than with how to pay the rent in a vulturous housing market or how to feed the kids when inflation has eaten the grocery budget. 

Moreover, we understand Trump’s star power, the kernel of truth in some of his outrageous diatribes and the sense of community he's built among Americans who feel their grievances have never been adequately addressed.

But we ask those with a shred of doubt to open your minds to inconvenient truths. We ask you to resist the temptation to dismiss the former president as some kind of redeemable shock jock — erratic, entertaining but not really dangerous.

And understand this: A man who will exploit a deadly hurricane will exploit you. A man with six bankruptcies and millions owed that he may not have the cash to pay is trying to win the White House in part to stay out of the poor house. He will not do any better with our economy. The inflation you’re feeling wasn’t invented by Joe Biden. It’s an aftershock of the global pandemic, it hurt wallets all over the world, and it’s finally easing off. As for Trump’s economy as president, rose-colored glasses are doing a number on us. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts didn’t grow the economy like he promised. He added twice as many trillions to the deficit as Biden, not even counting pandemic spending, and added half as many jobs.

Of course, other folks don’t need another reason to vote against Trump.

For them, January 6th is enough, from the lying beforehand to attempting to overthrow a free and fair election to inciting a riotous insurrection at the Capitol. Protest “peacefully,” he said with one breath, and with the other: “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

For others, it was the two House impeachments. Or cozying up with dictators. Or nominating Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Or the 34 felony convictions stemming from hush-money payments to a porn star. Or the $540 million in legal judgments largely for fraud and defamation, including a finding that he’s liable for committing sexual assault.

For still others, it’s the threats about what he’ll do with a second term, especially after he lost the trust of many decent people who were willing to serve in his Cabinet the first time. Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, refuses to endorse his former boss after Trump branded him a traitor and turned loose an angry mob that hunted him during the Capitol riot so they could hang him. The distinguished military men Trump called “my generals” — including John Kelly, homeland security secretary before becoming Trump’s chief of staff; James Mattis, defense secretary; and Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — are warning voters against his dictatorial tendencies. Milley, whom Trump named the highest-ranking military officer in the nation, told Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”

But don’t take his word for it. Trump himself said the mythical fraud he alleged in the 2020, election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Those wondering whether he'll really act on threats to retaliate against political rivals don't have to wonder: he already did in his first term, as The New York Times has reported. 

From Hillary Clinton to former FBI director James Comey, to Trump's own former national security adviser John Bolton, those who crossed Trump found themselves facing costly, grueling IRS audits, Justice Department investigations and in Bolton's case, a criminal probe and lawsuit when he tried to publish a book critical of Trump.

So yes, Harris’ best asset is that she’s not Trump. Beyond her basic qualifications of human decency, self-control and mature leadership skills, her career path from law enforcement to the U.S. Senate to the vice president’s office illustrates independence, drive and a steely spine. And perhaps as important, a propensity to give more than take. Prosecuting child molesters and rapists required patience and compassion to earn the trust of frightened children. Later, prosecuting transnational cartel members required guts.

From prosecutor to district attorney to the state attorney general of California, it wasn’t an obvious trajectory for the daughter of freedom-fighter academics, her Indian-born mother a scientist, her Jamaican-born father an economist. Harris says her mother modeled civic leadership, exposed her to history and the American principles of freedom and equity and took her protests where she had a “stroller’s-eye view” of the civil right’s movement.

In her book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris said she wanted to fight for justice from the inside, where she hoped to dispel the false choice between being tough on crime and smart on crime: “You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force,” she wrote. “…You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration.” She cites a reentry program for low-level offenders as a success and yet, she’s expressed regret for the unintended consequences of a truancy crackdown that landed some parents in jail.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris prioritized health care and criminal justice, even working with Kentucky Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul on bail reform that would prioritize the risk someone poses to society over their ability to pay. Assertive and clever enough in her prosecutorial style, she turned heads in Senate hearings when she stumped then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with probing questions.

She’s no flame-thrower. She’s no Marxist. Nor is she a superstar able to ace press conference improv or deliver spell-binding speeches that break free of stale scripts. She’s changed her stances on a few things, such as whether to ban fracking; now she says no. But that’s OK.

Magnetism, private jets, four-hour rallies and a lack of self reflection have never been strong predictors of a successful American presidency. She’s fearless and quick on her feet and apparently a quick study, having transformed from a bench warmer VP to a respectable presidential contender in three months. She's a champion of federal protections for abortion rights, desperately needed in Texas where an extreme ban doesn't include exceptions for rape or incest or enough protections for women with severe pregnancy complications.

With little time, she’s come up with some workable policy ideas that would help Americans afford their first homes and provide expanded child tax credits to the parents of newborn babies. On immigration, she's backed a tough bipartisan border bill that Trump undermined for political gain.

And there must be something genuine, and maybe a little magical, about a person who has obtained elite status in one of modern society’s toughest survivor challenges: She seems to be a truly beloved step-parent.

We don’t expect this endorsement to change many minds. We can’t inspire voter participation like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. We won’t buy it like Elon Musk.

We just ask you to consider one question before you cast perhaps the most consequential vote of your lifetime:

If the brown floodwaters were rising around your house and the Cajun Navy could only send a small boat, who would you trust to pick you up: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

We know who we'd trust.💙

When Trump talks like a Nazi - Believe him! Trumpziism is Nazism

Letters to the Editor: ‘The enemy within’ -- Trump is straight up talking like a Nazi echo opinion letters published in the Los Angeles Times:

To the editor: Former President Trump’s use of the phrase “the enemy within” channels the propaganda that flourished in Germany after World War I. (“Trump is escalating his anti-democratic rhetoric. It’s time to listen,” column, October 15th)

The (false❗) idea explained to Germans about why they were defeated 🤥😔after World War One (The Great War to "End All Wars"). 

After all, it had to be an inside job, because the vaunted German military’s defeat could not be explained by failure on the battlefield. Instead, it had to have come from enemies from within. “They” were the ones who crept up to deliver the “dolchstoss,” or the stab in the back, to Germany.

And who do you think the propagandists mean by the enemy within? How about Jews ✡️, Democrats, disloyal Republicans and the usual subjects that Trump is threatening to round up?

Someone in the Trump camp who knows this propaganda has Trump’s ear. It’s time to wake up, because the danger is real.

From Richard Leslie Brock, in Indio, California

To the editor: There is a cultural conversation that is infecting the planet. The speech of hate, bigotry and division is being normalized all over the world.

It reminds me of what my grandparents must have gone through in the 1930s in Germany. They were decent, hard-working farmers in the Rhine Valley. I imagine Germany was a country filled with people just like them, similar to folks all over America today.

A narcissist and convicted felon rose to power in the 1930s, by using the speech of hate and fear. He pandered to the very worst of human emotions. The conversations in social clubs, taverns and across fences in Germany focused on how evil the Jews were.

It was all made up. The collective speech normalized hate and resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews.

But as with hate, kindness can be normalized. The goal must be to normalize kindness as an antidote to the pandemic of hate. Experience the joy available as you make a difference in someone’s life by being kind.

From Sid Fey, in Warrenville, Illinois

Republicans have lost their way and the future for the once Grand Old Party is doomed

Echo essay opinion published in The Boston Globe by Thomas E. Patterson:

Republicans were in office and were widely blamed when the Great Depression struck in 1929. The Grand Old Party lost the next three presidential elections by wide margins. 

But, it was a related development during the period that ruined the GOP‘s long-term prospects. 

First-time voters backed the Democratic Party by nearly 2 to 1 and stayed loyal to it. Election after election until the late 1960s, their votes carried the Democrats to victory.

In only one period since then have young voters sided heavily with one party in a series of elections. Voters under 30 have backed the Democratic presidential nominee by a 3-to-2 margin over the past four contests. And as they’ve aged, these voters have leaned more heavily Democratic while also turning out to vote in higher numbers. They now include everyone between the ages of 21 and 45 — more than 40 percent of the nation’s adults.

Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb of their own making, and it could send them into a tailspin. Although the politics of division that Republicans have pursued since Richard Nixon launched his “Southern strategy” in the late 1960s — a blueprint to shore up the vote of white Southerners by appealing to racial bias — has brought new groups into their ranks, including conservative Southerners, evangelical Christians, and working-class whites, it has antagonized other groups.

Republicans are paying a stiff price for defaming immigrants. If they hadn’t, they could have made inroads with the Latinx population. Although most Latinx have conservative views on issues like abortion and national security, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic. A 2019 poll found that 51 percent of Latinx believe that the GOP is “hostile” toward them, with an additional 29 percent believing that the GOP “doesn’t care” about them.

Asian-Americans have also turned away from the GOP. They are America’s fastest-growing ethnic group and have the profile of a Republican bloc. They have the nation’s highest average family income and are twice as likely as other Americans to own a small business. As late as the 1992, presidential campaign, they voted 2 to 1 Republican. Today, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic.

Asian-Americans have also turned away from the GOP. They are America’s fastest-growing ethnic group and have the profile of a Republican bloc. They have the nation’s highest average family income and are twice as likely as other Americans to own a small business. As late as the 1992, presidential campaign, they voted 2 to 1 Republican. Today, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic.

Without the vote of white evangelical Protestants, the GOP would already be a second-rate party. Eliminate the evangelical vote in the 2016 election and the GOP would have received barely more than 40 percent of the popular vote. Even the GOP’s reputation as a “white” party owes to evangelicals. Non-evangelical whites voted Democratic by a 53-47 percent margin in 2016. Moreover, white evangelicals’ ability to prop up the GOP is declining. America’s fifth wave of religious revival began to wane two decades ago. White evangelicals now constitute a sixth of the population, down from a fourth in the 1990s.

There was no gender gap until the GOP adopted evangelicals’ version of family values, including opposition to abortion. Women are now the Democrats’ largest voting bloc, and their loyalty has increased, reaching record highs in the 2016 and 2018 elections. And Republicans’ embrace of evangelicals’ position on gay rights has alienated the LGBTQ community. They are now second only to Black Americans in their Democratic loyalty. The GOP’s rigid stance on social issues has also eroded its standing with college-educated voters. Once heavily Republican, most of them now side with the Democratic Party.

To assess the threat of demographic change to the GOP, I projected the outcome of future elections based on the US Census Bureau’s population change estimates. The Republican Party faces a dim future, as the groups supporting it shrink in size while those opposing it grow in number. By 2032, Democrats would have a 59-to-41 percent edge based solely on population change.

A maxim of two-party politics is that a party needs to be inclusive — a big tent — to be competitive. Whatever the short-term advantage of the GOP’s politics of division, it is now facing the fallout. Millions of younger adults, women, Blacks, Latinx, Asian Americans, LGBTQ, and the college-educated will be pulling the Democratic lever for years to come.

Author: Thomas E. Patterson is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. This series is adapted from his book “Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?”