POETRY AS PROPHECY -- SLOUCHING TOWARD NOVEMBER

"Who says poets can't be prophets? He had the whole 20th century figured out in advance. Wow."

So wrote my law school roommate on Facebook three days ago.

The "he" was William Butler Yeats.

The prophecy was The Second Coming.

So I re-read the poem.

And wrote back to my roommate . . .

"Maybe he had this one figured out too."

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre," wrote Yeats in 1919, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer".

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned

By the time he wrote these words, Yeats himself was an accomplished Irish poet and playwright. In the years thereafter, he also became a politician, serving in the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1928. In that capacity, he combined the Irish nationalism to which he became committed with the Protestant Ascendency in which he had been raised to warn his newly created Free State brethren that "If you show that this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the north . . . You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation." He was right about this but the Free State did not listen.

In 1919, Yeats obviously could not know that Nazis would overrun middle Europe twenty years later or that Stalin and Mao would, along with Hitler, kill millions in the service of either a false historic materialism (Stalin and Mao) or a xenophobic racism (Hitler). He did, however, understand that for any civilization to survive, the "centre" had to hold.  This was true for his Ireland and for Russia in the first two decades of the 20th century, just as it would be true for Germany in the 1930s and '40s and for China thereafter. 

Yeats also recognized the sign that presages any collapse of the centre:

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

For Yeats, a mystic and lover of Irish mythology, the centre had a spiritual element to it.  In holding, it keeps things together. But it isn't glue. It is more like gravity. Though it does not bind the surrounding parts forever to each other, it at least creates a field in which they tend to stick together. In politics, it makes pluralism possible because it creates space for negotiation and compromise.  Like gravity, however, it can be disrupted.  And also like gravity, when it is disrupted the consequences can be cataclysmic.

The rest of the poem is a meditation on the nature of that cataclysm.

It could be the promised "Second Coming".

Or, more likely, the "blank and pitiless" sphinx.

A little more than a month before the Presidential election on November 5, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator JD Vance engaged in a ninety-minute Vice Presidential Debate last night sponsored by CBS News.  Because neither one of them is Donald Trump, the debate had all the trappings of a normal pre-Trump political contest. No one screamed or yelled. No insults were levelled. The back and forth was polite. Both candidates answered (or didn't) the questions put to them and confined their responses to the agreed upon time limits. 

To the experts, the pundits, the commentators and the sundry and various who make their living fly specking these things, there weren't a lot of surprises.  A CNN instant poll had Vance narrowly exceeding expectations, unsurprising in view of how bad his roll out has been since the GOP convention in July. And because he in particular is not Trump, a number of his jaw dropping inventions -- that Trump "salvaged Obamacare" (he tried to kill it) or that Vance himself did not support a national abortion ban (he did, and more than once) or that illegal firearms are coming into the US from Mexico (they aren't) or that the Haitian immigrants in Ohio are not there legally (they are) -- could have been easily lost on anyone who does not make a living paying attention.

The most jaw-dropping moment came at the end when the debate turned to the issue of democracy, Trump's election denialism and the violence of January 6.  

One after another, Vance either soft peddled Trump's lies, invented new ones of his own, or just refused to answer.

Asked point blank whether he would "seek to challenge this year's election results" even if -- as was the case in 2020 -- "every Governor certifies the results", Vance falsely claimed that "all" he and Trump have "said is there were problems in 2020" and  "we should debate those issues peacefully". Accused point blank of "deny[ing] what happened on January 6" when his running mate became "the first . . . President [who] tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power", he resorted to phony outrage. "Yeah, well, look Tim," he complained, "it's really rich for Democratic leaders to say Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January 20th, as we have done for 250 years".

Finally there was this:

"Walz: Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?

Vance: Tim, I'm focused on the future . . .

Walz:  That is a damning non-answer." 

For me in those final moments, all of Vance's polished prose evaporated. Instead, he stood on America's stage exposed as no better than the fraud at the top of the GOP ticket and maybe even worse.  

The problem here is that Vance knows better.  He knows Trump lost the 2020 election.  He knows there was no significant fraud. He knows Trump can't pretend to have advocated peaceful protest on January 6 when for hours he refused to stop the violence.  He knows Vice President Pence did the right thing when he refused to deny the certified vote count or pretend that fake electors were legitimate. And he knows that, in saying he would have done what Pence refused to do, he is enabling Trump's continuing lie and undermining the sine qua non of American democracy.

This last flaw is his saddest.

Vance is the child of a recovering addict.  As the child of a recovered alcoholic myself, I empathize with him. Because the one trait we share, other than having graduated from Yale Law School, is that we were both enablers. It doesn't work.  It makes any addictive dysfunction worse, not better. Trump is addicted to himself.  Like all drunks and druggies, he is in denial. Helping him stay there is not good for him.  And making him President (again) will be worse for us.

Whether any of this will change the minds of those who say they will vote for Trump is anyone's guess.  

Sadly, however, probably not is more likely than maybe so. 

Because . . .

Vance is not alone in his "passionate intensity".

The Republican Party that embraces Trump and excommunicates any critics; the Supreme Court that left him on the ballot and then clothed him with immunity; the Senate that refused to convict him; the right- wing media that supports him; even the establishment media that "sanewashes" him or sacrifices truth for some false notion of objectivity . . .

All helped orchestrate the centre's collapse.

What comes next?

In 1919, Yeats did not know.

But he did not think it would be pretty.

    The darkness drops again, but now I know

    That twenty centuries of stony sleep

    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

    What rough beast, its hour come round at last

    Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Neither should we.

CATS AND DOGS

So . . .

The most important thing that happened at last night's presidential debate . . .

Wasn't the debate.

More about that later.

In the meantime, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took to the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia last night for their first debate. By the time it was over, Harris had clearly wiped the floor with him.  

As importantly, sixty million Americans saw her do it.

Harris's objective was to persuade the sliver of undecided voters that she can be President and that her policies will help them.  Trump's objective (at least as disclosed by his campaign managers) was to focus on issues the polls put him ahead on (the economy and immigration) and otherwise not go off the rails.

When it was over . . .

It was clear the rails had won.

Over the course of the six-week period in which Harris has been running for president, both the GOP and many in the pundit class have had a field day pretending she is not a particularly skilled debater.  This was largely based on her aborted campaign for the presidency in 2020, which ended before a single vote had been cast and is remembered, if at all, only for her "I was that little girl" debate line on school busing that was designed to but never knocked Joe Biden off the pedestal Rep. Clymer fashioned and then launched him to the Democratic Party nomination on following what by then had been Biden's own floundering campaign. 

Harris's failure in 2020, however,  said nothing about her ability to go mano a mano against Trump or anyone else.  

Indeed, in search of tea leaves, Harris's opponents haven't been looking in the right place.

She is a former prosecutor.  

And not just California's Attorney General or Alameda County's District Attorney. 

She served for years as an Assistant District Attorney.  

She tied cases. 

She convinced juries.

I've done that too.  

And the thing about a jury trial is there is no real filter between you and the twelve people who will decide your case.  

If you are a phony . . . or pretentious . . . or even remotely dishonest, they figure that out.  And then you lose.  

And while critics often assume prosecutors have the decks loaded in their favor (unlimited investigative resources and the power of the state behind them), the truth is usually different in cases that actually go to trial.  

In those situations, there is always something the other side can exploit.  

As a young prosecutor, I had a case where the police had mistaken the date on which our only witness  had the defendant committing the crime. The witness told the cop it was done on Thursday and without probing he assumed she meant the last one.  Unfortunately for us, the defendant was in jail on that Thursday; the actual crime was witnessed a week earlier and the cop had just made a mistake in failing to pin down the date. 

In preparing for trial, convincing him to admit that mistake took some doing. Failing to do so, however, would have been fatal.

On a larger stage last night, Kamala Harris the trial lawyer made her case to the jury that is America's voters.  

She was prepared and precise.  

Anyone looking for policy specificity found it in child and business start-up tax credits, down payment assistance for first-time home-buyers, an anti-gouging law to combat unjust price hikes, and the restoration of Roe v. Wade as national policy. She did not duck her change on fracking and on immigration, she preached the specificity of a bipartisan bill that Republicans in the House and Senate had supported but Trump killed because, as she put it, he "preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing" it. 

On the divisions Trump foments as a matter of course, the democracy he tried to destroy on January 6, and the dictators he wants to emulate in the White House, she invoked the generals who have deemed him "a disgrace", the scores of Republicans who have endorsed her, and the allies who joined us in restoring NATO.  

She also allowed Trump to destroy himself.

He refused to say he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Putin's Russia but claimed he would somehow end it before he was inaugurated. He wouldn't or couldn't say how.  And in truth, the only way that happens is by giving Putin a lot of what he wants (and allowing him to go back for more later, after he rests, re-arms and re-mans his army). 

Which is a long way of saying what Harris said in five words:

Putin "would eat you for lunch."

On the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has claimed for eight years he wants to replace but has yet to offer any plan for doing so, he said he now has "concepts".  

If that means anything, he didn't share it.

She told us he would lie.

And he did.

About winning the 2020 election.

He lost.

As Harris put it, 81 million voters decided to fire him.

About crime being "through the roof".

It's actually down.  

About his proposed tariffs being paid by foreigners.

They will be paid by American consumers.

About babies being killed after they are born in pro-choice states.

It doesn't happen in any state.

And about immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

It never happened.

By the time he got to this last lie, he was more than off the rails.  As Joy Reid noted in her own post-debate analysis, "the cheese" was no longer "firmly affixed to the cracker."

When the debate ended, Trump had performed so badly that he had to replace his seconds in the spin zone to pretend his act was other than a flop.  While there, the media reported what was perhaps the biggest development of the night -- Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris.

Alone among today's crop of entertainers, Taylor is a world-renowned icon.  She is the most famous "Childless Cat Lady" on the planet. She has 283 million followers.  Within a half hour of posting her endorsement on Instagram, 2.3 million people had liked it. By around noon today, that number had risen to 9 million.

The endorsement itself was substantive.  It wasn't a shout out and it was a far cry from the celebrity kitsch that often accompanies Trump (think Hulk Hogan's "shirt tearing" at the RNC). 

She began by asking her fans to "do" their "research on the issues . . . and stances" Harris and Trump "take on the topics that matter  . . . the most" to them. She explained that part of her reason for endorsing now was an "AI of ['her'] falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential run . . . posted to his site." She explained that "It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," and that she "need[ed] to be very transparent about [her] actual plans for this election as a voter."

"The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth."

"I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election," she said. "I am voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them . . . [S]he is a steady-handed, gifted leader." Calling out Trump, she continued that she "believe[s] we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos." Calling out JD Vance, she explained that she "was . . . heartened and impressed by [the] selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman's right to her own body for decades."

She finished by saying "I've done my research and I've made my choice." 

But she did not end there.

Instead, she concluded with: "Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make."

She then signed off . . . 

"With hope and love,

Taylor Swift

Childless Cat Lady"

In many ways, her last lines were  the most important.

She was rightly alarmed by a Trumper's  AI attempt to hijack her voice and create a false endorsement. She knows, however, that there are lots of ways to hijack a voice.  

Misinformation is one of them. 

Ignorance is another.

So too viciousness.

More than two hundred years ago, the founders warned that these flaws could kill our experiment in republican democracy.  As Pennsylvania's Benjamin Rush put it : "If the common people are ignorant and vicious, a republican nation can never long be free."

Yesterday, Taylor told her Swifties much the same thing. 

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

The song was written in 1930.

By Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.

There is a debate over whether the song is about the state or a woman. Hoagey, who wrote the music, said it was about the state.  Gorrell, who wrote the lyrics, claimed it was about a woman.

Hoagy's sister to be precise.

In 1979, Georgia made it that state's official  song.  

More specifically, it made Ray Charles's 1960 bluesy cover the official state song.  That version had rocketed to the top of the Billboard magazine's Hot 100 and became the song most associated with Charles's iconic career. So much so that, in 2003, Rolling Stone  named it --  Ray Charles's cover, not Hoagy Carmichael's original -- the 44th greatest song of all time. 

If you listen to the two, it's not hard to understand why.

The song is about a memory.

Of a place or a person?

Who knows.  

The difference is that Charles, a Georgia native and black child of the segregationist south, made it about a place. And in slowing it down and bluesing it up, in singing it through the prism of his own voice and experience, he also made the memory unforgettable . . .

And real.

Or the opposite of merely ideal.

Which is how, I imagine, it became in 1979 the song of a post-segregationist state.

Other arms reach out to me

Other eyes smile tenderly

Still in peaceful dreams I see

The road leads back to you

I said Georgia

Oh Georgia, no peace I find

Just an old sweet song

Keeps Georgia on my mind

Yesterday, another memory was made unforgettable in Georgia.

Unfortunately, the road it leads back to is well-traveled . . .

Overcrowded . . .

And has to be closed.

Now.

Four people were killed by a 14-year-old at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, a small city fifty miles northeast of Atlanta and about half that west of Athens. The four victims included two freshmen and two math teachers. Like their killer, the freshmen were 14-year-old boys. One of the teachers, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall, was also the assistant football coach; the other was 53-year-old Christina Irimie.  Nine others were injured and hospitalized.  The firearm used by the killer was a semi-automatic AR-platform style rifle.

There is really no question on why we as a nation are regularly witness to mass shootings of young people and others.

It happens nowhere else with either the frequency or lethality at which it happens here.  

It's the guns, stupid.

On the issue of guns, however, we are in the place we were in on the issue of race in 1896.  

That was the year the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson constitutionalized segregation under the legal myth that a state could satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment's color-blind demand for equal protection by providing different races separate but ostensibly equal services.  

On guns, we now live in a world where the Supreme Court has constitutionalized an individual right to bear arms unmoored from the Second Amendment's original and stated need to provide for a well-ordered militia. 

The myth on race in 1896 was that separate could be equal.

It never is.

The myth on guns today is that individuals need weapons of war to protect themselves in times or places of peace.

They don't.

Apalachee High School at 9 am yesterday was as serene and calm as schools across the continent.  Nothing required anyone other than law enforcement to bring a firearm to that school.  Colt Gray, the 14- year-old now in custody and charged with murder, was not in any danger himself. And he did not need protection from anyone but himself. 

Today, Gray's aunt claimed he had been "begging for months" for mental health help and that may very well be true. A year ago, he and his father were  interviewed by a Jackson County Sheriff's officer following an FBI tip that Gray had allegedly threatened on-line to open fire in middle school. When the on-line address could not be linked to Gray, that investigation was closed.

The problem here is not mental illness or investigatory negligence. The notion that we can insure absolute safety by improving mental health services or through investigations is nonsense.  Someone will always fall through the cracks and no police department or bureau of investigation will be able to ferret out one hundred percent of those who may be planning a mass killing.

In 2024, as of September 4, there had been 385 mass shootings in the United States.

In Georgia, yesterdays was that state's sixteenth.

The only solution is getting the guns.

Ban  semi-automatic weapons

Ban assault weapons.

Ban multi-magazine clips.

Ban bump stocks.

Ban Saturday night specials.

If the Supreme Court will not alter its ludicrous construction of the Second Amendment . . .

Repeal it.

The deer hunters will not lose their sport.

And our kids will not lose their lives.

JACK'S WORLD

On August 20, 2024 at 8 pm, my grandson was born.

Jack Cornelius Shipley.

At roughly the same time, the second day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention was starting in Chicago.  

The convention's theme that night was "A Bold Vision for America's Future".

How timely.

For all of us, of course.

But especially for Jack.

If there are a group of people who, in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, "don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow", they are the Jacks of the world. 

For him on August 20, there were no yesterdays to remember, just unknown decades of tomorrows to experience. 

And so, for him, and for all the millions of newborns like him, any of today's  politics of the past will and can have no real meaning.   

By the time he is eligible to vote in 2042, many of today's leaders will be gone.  

If they have done their job, they will receive Jack's blessing.

If not, they will deserve his contempt.

So, for all you politicians out there, and especially for all my friends in the Democratic Party, many of whom are now in Chicago ready to send Kamala Harris and Tim Walz into battle, here's today's question:

WDJW

What does Jack want?

I held him yesterday as his mom and dad ate their dinner. 

Here's what he told me:

I want a world where the people I rely on know what they are doing. 

So far, so good.

For the last day (well, for three quarters of it as I am not yet a day old), I have been with people who love me and a whole village (she was right about that, you know) ready to raise me. 

I have been poked and prodded, monitored and swaddled.

I have been pronounced cute (repeatedly by my mother), strong (repeatedly by my father) and healthy (repeatedly by the village). 

I want that to continue. 

I am ready to be me.  

I made that clear to my grandfather as he held me. 

Whenever I could free myself from the swaddle, I made a number of points. 

With my hands (part of me, on my mother's side, is Italian, so I know they were points).

I want to continue to make points.

My own.

I haven't figured out what they will be yet. 

But they tell me my little brain will grow by leaps and bounds in the years ahead if . . .

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are edible; 

The air and water is breathable and potable; 

Vaccines are available; 

Teachers are employable; 

And the villages are peaceful.

That's all on you.

If you do your job, I will get to have them.

Thoughts, that is.

My own.

Some may even change the world.

In the brief time I have been around, I've noticed I have company.

And I like that.

A lot.

I like touching people.

And being touched.

So I want others.

Mom and Dad and the Grandmas, and Chief and Poppa, and the aunts and uncles and cousins, of course.

But also . . .

The others I hear crying down the hall.

The others like me.

So I want them to be taken care of too.

That's on you too.

Maybe some of them don't have what I have.

Parents who love them.

Food to feed them.

Schools to teach them.

Hospitals to treat them.

Make sure they do.

My grandfather is leaving now. 

I told him to write all this down.

So you won't forget.

I'm counting on you.

Don't screw up.

Love,

Jack

THE VALEDICTORY

It was a perfect exit.

He walked off the stage with a four-year-old.

After a forty-eight minute barnburner cum blessing.

And after reciting verses from his favorite song:

All we've been given
By those who came before
The dreams of a nation
Where freedom would endure
The work and prayers of centuries
Have brought us to this day

What shall be our legacy?
What will our children say?
I was one who believed
In sharing the blessings
I received

Let me know in my heart
When my days are through
America, America
I gave my best to you

Don't worry Joe.

We know it.

And you should too.

THIS SUMMER OF SURPRISE

A month ago, Joe Biden, less than a week removed from what -- charitably speaking -- was a bad debate, was intent on running for re-election.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee.

If someone tells you they saw this coming . . .

They are lying.

At multiple levels.

In contemporary American politics, there are a number of truths that until recently you could take to the bank.  

One is that presidents who have won all their party's primaries and secured all the delegates needed to be their party's nominee will run for reelection. Another is that no one can secure the nomination of either party absent a years long slog through the snow, sun and rust belts, umpteen debates with a cadre of competitors, and tens of millions of dollars raised to finance the effort.  Yet a third is that, if the Democratic Party can figure out a way to divide its way to defeat, or at the very least create enough process to render that outcome unnervingly possible, it will do so.

Each of those truths, if not forever discarded, has been rendered -- for now at least -- inoperative.

All of them, however, became truths as a matter of cold historic fact.  

No president running for reelection with the nomination sewn up has decided not to run at the eleventh hour. 

And since 1968, no Democrat has secured his party's nomination without winning primaries and amassing the required number of delegates. 

In fact, 1968 was a watershed year for Democratic Party politics in America.

The Democrats disarray at their convention in Chicago that year -- along with the nomination of a candidate who had not participated in any primaries and then lost the general election -- led to the wholesale revision of the party's rules for selecting candidates. Under changes advanced by the party's McGovern-Fraser commission, the power of state committees peopled and run largely by insiders was curtailed and primaries became the only road to the White House. 

Every open contest since then has been a robust multi-candidate (and multi-year) affair.  

And if the polls showed you were a weak incumbent . . .

As they did in 1980 . . .

Even a sitting president could face a robust challenge.

So what happened this year?

Biden has been behind (or at best even) in the polls for the entire year.  He was widely perceived as being too old to do the job through the end of any second term.  And his approval rating nationally was dipping below 40%.  

None of this, however, attracted any significant opposition. 

And the opposition it did attract -- from Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips -- was anemic.  

A write-in campaign for Biden beat Phillips in New Hampshire and Biden won by overwhelming margins in all their handful of head-to-head contests thereafter.

Until Biden announced he was leaving the race, therefore, there was no expectation that he was prepared to do so.

Nor was there any widespread belief that the search for a new nominee would be anything less than chaotic and divisive even if Biden belied those expectations and stepped aside. To the contrary, Vice President Harris was almost as unpopular as the President himself and a half dozen sitting governors and/or members of the cabinet -- Shapiro, Cooper, Whitmer, Pritzker, Newsome, Buttigieg -- were considered more than likely to enter any open field.

So . . .

Again . . .

What happened?

Why did Biden decide to get out?

Why was Kamala Harris able to secure the nomination without a fight?

Why, again contrary to expectations, has she been able to turn the race into an actual contest, one in which she appears to be resurrecting the Democrats winning 2020 coalition -- suburban women, minorities, the young and those with college degrees --  and along with it their chances of retaining the White House and Senate and winning the House?

Here's my take.

If there is one person uniquely surrounded these days by what is unexpected, that person is Donald Trump. Whether he is winning an election in 2016 that everyone (including Trump himself) thought he'd lose, spinning out lies at a rate and in an amount that creates a whole new genre of journalism called fact-checking, orchestrating an attempted coup based on the lie that he won an election he lost, being impeached twice or surviving assassination by mere centimeters, the man is a one-off.  There has never been anyone in American politics like him, at least not one like him who actually became president.

So, if you want to understand why Joe Biden decided to opt out of running for re-election, the best place to begin (and probably end) is . . .

Donald Trump.

Biden believes, quite correctly, that Trump represents an existential threat to American democracy.  There is no way in his mind  to sugar-coat that threat.  Trump has produced a handful of profiles in courage over the past eight years, chief among them Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, the nine other Republican House members who voted to impeach him in 2021 and the six other Republican senators who voted to convict him.  

Biden must now be added to that list.

He left the race for two reasons.

First, because he knew he could lose.

And second, because he feared the country could not survive a second Trump term.

All the other explanations are, to my mind, fanciful, false or both.

I've met conservatives who think the departure is just the culmination of elite gaslighting that kept the country in the dark about the president's cognitive disabilities. There is no medical evidence to support this claim and Biden himself regularly refutes it.  He even did so in the process of getting out, assiduously managing the diplomatic tour de force that released Americans Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, Alsu Kurmasheva and thirteen other political prisoners from Russian and Belarusian jails, and actually calling Slovenia's leader to cement its needed cooperation even as he was finishing the letter announcing his departure from the race.

The same can be said of those who credit Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the members of Congress who advocated withdrawal or . . .

George Clooney.

Biden had the votes. 

If he wanted the nomination, there was no way to stop him from getting it.  

He could have told everyone to pound sand.  

Almost any other politician, including those now being credited as backstage authors of his exit, would have.

But he didn't.

Because he knows the risk of another Trump term is too great to accept, let alone make possible.

It is important that America understand that risk as well. 

Over the course of the last year, a sort of somnambulant amnesia has settled over the country about Trump in general and the risk he portends specifically. Apologists have turned his lying into exaggeration, his narcissism into toughness and January 6 into a mere protest whose tried, convicted and  jailed participants are now considered victims.  Labelling Trump a fascist is dismissed as over-the -top rhetoric even though erstwhile Republicans like Robert Kagan, who served in Ronald Reagan's State Department, have admitted "it is hard to find a better word for Trump the leader and his devoted following. Fascism is the malady to which modern democracies are particularly susceptible."

Kagan's latest book, Rebellion: How Anti-Liberalism Is Tearing America Apart Again, was published just this year.  In it, he notes that "It took Hitler nine years, from his failed putsch in 1923 to his electoral triumph in 1932, to complete the destruction of German democracy. In that period, his following grew from thousands to tens of millions. Trump's assault on American democracy arguably began in 2020, when he refused to accept his defeat at the polls. His rolling coup attempt has continued and grown since, and along with it the determination of millions of his followers to see him returned to power by whatever means necessary."

In January 2021, Kagan continues, "fully 71 percent of Republicans polled believed Joe Biden was not 'legitimate.' Little wonder that, at Trump's command, thousands of his supporters tried to do something about it . . . The majority were middle class and middle aged [and as] one fifty-six year old Michigan woman explained: 'We weren't there to steal things. We weren't there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.'"  As Kagan explains, "Hitler" too "came to power in Germany first by winning democratic elections, by inspiring middle class Germans, by offering an alternative to the messy, often gridlocked democracy of Weimar Germany.  Only then did he cement his position in power by doing away with democratic norms."

"This," Kagan concludes, "is the Republican Party. Trump and his supporters have taken over the party and now seek to take over the country by any means necessary and put an end to the American experiment in liberalism."

If Trump explains Biden's decision to depart, he also explains the Democratic Party's decision to immediately coalesce around and support Kamala Harris. 

Biden himself led the charge, endorsing her within a half hour of bowing out. Just as quickly, her would-be opponents did the same.  All the talk about a mini-campaign or an open convention with days of yore drama evaporated.  Instead, the Democratic base woke up and in mere weeks, Harris raised $300 million, chose a Minnesota everyman as her running mate, hosted Obama-sized rallies, closed the national polling gap and is now leading in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

I am suspicious of polls.

And months out, I do not think they are all that predictive.

The current change in public perception, however, has been abrupt and immediate.  

In two of the three midwestern swing states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump has lost between seven and eight points, and in Michigan he has lost a little more than five. In June he was leading in all three states. Today, he is not. The largest documented change, however, was on the question of  satisfaction among Democrats. In May, only 60% of the Democrats polled were satisfied with the choice of candidates in this year's presidential election. Now, 87% of them are.

Why the shift?

It isn't about policy.  On that. Harris and Biden are more or less identical. I also doubt it's just about demographics.  While Harris has regained some of the minority voters Biden was losing and gained appreciably with women, she has retained the same numbers of older voters Biden attracts and she might have been expected to lose. The increased satisfaction and enthusiasm is, I believe, based on the view that Harris can win.

That perception is a sail behind which there is a lot of wind.

Correctly or not, the voters as a whole were dissatisfied with having to choose between an actual and a near octogenarian.  Biden was more or less running within the margin of error but still behind Trump until the June 27 debate. Afterwards, he was losing nationally by a larger margin and losing outside the margin of error in the swing states. Once Biden removed himself from the mix, all that changed. Trump is now the candidate with an age problem. Harris is  now (ironically) the candidate of change and Trump is shackled by his own prior incumbency.

One of the lesser noticed tells in the Times/Siena poll is that voters are also giving Harris better marks on the economy than they were giving Biden. On the merits this makes no sense at all. Her economic policies and his are the same. What voters are probably doing is moving from dissatisfaction to engagement and in the process taking a second look at the conventional nonsense that has favored Trump on this issue.  

Trump's COVID economy was an absolute disaster and his pre-COVID economy inherited.  The sticking point has been inflation, which rose sharply after COVID crippled supply chains. Though the rate is now dramatically down, absolute prices are higher than they were in 2019. Trump and the GOP blame this all on Biden's spending. That, however, cannot be right inasmuch as the rate came down as COVID ended and the Fed raised interest rates.  The likelier culprit is corporate greed. Since 2019, experts attribute 4.5% of the cumulative 17% increase in prices to the rise in corporate profit margins at rates much higher than the growth in labor and non-labor costs. In fact, those margins are the highest (16%) they've been since the 1960s.  

As has always been the case, the only party willing to battle corporate greed in America are the Democrats. Toward that end, the Biden administration has resurrected antitrust law, lowered prescription drug prices, attacked junk fees, fought shrink-flation, increased the minimum wage and called for an increase in corporate taxes. At the same time, real wage growth has outpaced inflation so the gains have not vanished.  And going forward, building the economy from the middle out and the bottom-up has new (and younger) spokes-people in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

In opposition, when he is not otherwise losing it about (his and her) crowd sizes or recounting non-existent helicopter rides with Willie Brown, Trump preaches a politics of revenge and recrimination. He is a convicted felon and an indicted defendant; the only thing that may keep him out of jail is a Supreme Court that has written a blank immunity check against prosecuting presidents for the crimes they commit while on duty.  He will pardon convicted J6 defendants and any others who do his bidding while violating the law. His new running mate is becoming a punch line; his last one won't vote for him.

On policy, such (and thin) as it is, he pretends to oppose inflation but can never say how he will do so. It is the same with Ukraine or the middle east or hostages.  He always claims to have done better even when he hasn't and pretends to have a plan even when he doesn't. 

Joe Biden agreed to a bi-partisan immigration bill created and widely supported by the GOP; Trump killed it.

Joe Biden passed the bi-partisan infrastructure bill; Trump couldn't. 

Joe Biden restored NATO; Trump trashes it and praises Vladimir Putin. 

When he accepted Kamala Harris's invitation to join her on the Democratic ticket, Governor Walz thanked her for bringing back the politics of joy.

It was an apt characterization.

She has done so.

With her laugh, ready smile and funny (but spot on) memes.

But also with her readiness and steely resolve to continue the job begun in 2021.

America's voters don't settle.

They bitch and moan and groan and complain. 

They know elections are about them.

Those running better know it too.

They want it all.

A thriving economy.

Equal opportunity.

Fundamental rights.

And democracy.

Opposing fascism is not enough.

But welcoming it would be a disaster.

I saw a sign recently that captured all of this.

In two words.

It said . . .

"Kamala, obviously!"

HEANEY'S CHOICE . . . AND OURS

We have been here before. 

Many times.

We were here in 1776, 1787 and 1860. 

In 1929, 1941 and 1968.

In January 2021.

And we are here again.

Here is not a place . . . 

Or a space . . . 

Or even a time.

It is a choice.

In the final analysis, the choice is always clear. 

But not at the time. 

So the actual choice . . . 

At the time of choosing . . .

Is . . .

Difficult.

Impossible for some.

Painful for many.

So painful that it can be . . . 

Denied.

Even after it is made.

Because acceptance would be the death of something unwilling to die.

Maybe . . .

Anger.

Or ignorance.

Maybe something smaller.

But less abstract

Like a block.

Or a team.

Or larger.

But also less abstract.

Like a friendship.

Or a family.

Or a marriage.

The President has made his choice.

It surprised us.

It should not have. 

He has always been a man . . .

Of choices.

Big ones. 

Some sought.

Many not.

None . . .

Avoided.

All . . .

Clouded in uncertainty . . .

At . . .

The time of choosing.

And now . . .

We too must choose.

Seamus Heaney tells us:

"Human beings suffer . . .

They torture one another,

No poem or play or song can fully right a wrong inflicted and endured.

History says, don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up,

And hope and history can rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge.

Believe that further shore is reachable from here".

And . . .

Choose.

Wisely.

There will be no do-overs.