TATIANA, RENEE, ZOHRAN . . . AND DYLAN

On December 30, 35-year-old Tatiana Schlossberg passed away.  

The daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, and the granddaughter of Jackie Onassis and President Kennedy, Schlossberg was a young but accomplished journalist who succumbed to a rare form of leukemia.

A month before her passing, on the anniversary of her grandfather's assassination, Schlossberg disclosed her illness and impending death in a piece in The New Yorker entitled "A Battle With My Blood".

Anyone who read it was in tears by the end.

Her leukemia was discovered over a year ago immediately after she gave birth to her second child.

Literally.

Three hours after giving birth, she was told she had leukemia and moved to another floor in the hospital as her parents, husband and son all said goodbye.  

What followed was a year and a half of chemotherapy; two stem cell transplants that did not work; a clinical trial of Car-T-cell therapy; months-long hospitalizations at Columbia-Presbyterian and then Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK); constant outpatient treatments at MSK; and too much time to think.

But think she did.

About the daughter and son who will not (or will hardly) remember her.

About the"handsome genius [she] managed to find", her  "perfect" husband "who did everything for [her] he possibly could" and with whom she won't "get to keep living this wonderful life".

About her mom, the Kennedy for whom tragedy never skips a generation, the mother she always tried to "protect" but who now must cope with a "new tragedy" she could do "nothing  . . . to stop".

And, finally, about her cousin . . .

The one who "during the Car-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, . . . was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services".

The one, she wrote, who was "an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family"  and who, "in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed . . . despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government".

The one who "cut nearly half a billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institute of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings."

"Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials," she wrote, "were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission."

"Early in my illness," she continued, "when I had [a] postpartum hemorrhage, I was given a dose of misoprostol to help stop the bleeding. The drug is part of medication abortion, which at Bobby's urging, is currently 'under review' by the Food and Drug Administration."

"I freeze," she concluded, " when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives or to get the care they deserve."

In the end, it was a tale of two cousins.

The older forgot Bob Dylan's best advice.

The younger -- in her life and certainly in her last act -- actually lived it.

    May God bless and keep you always

    May your wishes all come true

    May you always do for others

    And let others do for you

    May you build a ladder to the stars

    And climb on every rung

    May you stay forever young

On Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, a federal ICE agent killed  37-year-old Renee Good.

She was a single mom of three, one of whom -- her six year old son -- is now an orphan.

She was driving her car away from the agent when he shot her through the windshield of her car.

She was not trying to run the agent over with her car, which was moving away from him.

After the shooting, her car careened to the left side of the street and was stopped as it struck the back of a parked vehicle.

A bystander asked another federal agent if he could go help her.

That officer said no.

The bystander told the agent he was a physician.

The officer said "I don't care."

A couple of hours after the shooting, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the victim was "wealponiz[ing] her vehicle" and "attempting to run a law enforcement officer over."

This assertion was refuted by the video evidence of the entire encounter.

That afternoon, President Trump said the victim "behaved horribly. And then she ran [the federal agent] over.  She didn't try to run him over. She ran him over." 

This assertion was also refuted by the video evidence.

Trump's so-called "border czar”, Tom Homan, declined to weigh in.  Instead, he said "Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation.

On Thursday, however, Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) Superintendent Drew Evans said BCA was "reluctantly" withdrawing from that investigation because the federal government  "had reversed course" and would not give BCA "access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews."  Instead, the investigation will now be done by the FBI, which is headed by Trump-loyalist Kash Patel.

Also on Thursday, Vice President Vance called Good's shooting "a tragedy of her own making."

That too was refuted by the video evidence.

Good was apparently part of a group of neighbors watching masked ICE agents and whistling their presence as a warning to those the masked agents might seize. If she violated any law, and this is unclear, she did so either in diagonally stopping her car so that those behind her had to go left to get around her or in refusing to exit her car when a federal agent ordered her to "Get out of the fucking car".  

Though unmarked ICE agents were behind her, it is not clear she was trying to impede them. At  least one report had her car so configured on account of the snow and ice in the road. Others reported she was actually asking those behind to go around her. Though she did not exit her car, she did attempt to drive away from the agents and was not running anyone over when she was shot.

Trump's enablers -- Noem and Vance -- immediately trotted out the false story that she was attacking the agents and was a "domestic terrorist" radicalized by "the left". 

In a presidency that regularly substitutes false sound bites for fact-based analysis, this is almost certainly false. 

According to Associated Press, Good described herself as a "poet and writer and wife and mom" and  her ex-husband said "she was no activist and . . . had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind. He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger."

Whether she was monitoring and/or warning of ICE's presence (which appears to be the case); obstructing the agents (much less likely given her effort in asking those behind to go around her); or refusing to follow ICE's profanity-laced demand that she "Get out of the fucking car" (both of which -- her refusal and ICE's cursing -- are true), the shooting was plainly illegal.  

No federal agents were in danger nor was anyone else. 

And under the law, cops don't get to shoot in that situation.

At Old Dominion University, where she completed  her degree while raising children, this poet, writer, wife and mom won the American Academy of American Poets prize.

Her felt-need to oppose ICE-masked tyranny was sincere.

The Dylan in her was real. 

    May you grow up to be righteous

    May you grow up to be true

    May you always know the truth 

    And the lights surrounding you

    May you always be courageous

    Stand upright and be strong

    May you stay forever young

Yesterday, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NY Governor Kathy Hochul met to discuss Mamdani's plans to bring universal child care to NYC.  

Doing so would almost certainly require some kind of tax increase, and because New York City does not have the independent power to tax, any such increase would have to be approved by the state. 

In the past, Hochul has called Mamdani's proposed tax increases dead on arrival, and inasmuch as this (for her) is an election year, the betting was that Zohran's "socialism" would thus die in Albany.

Yesterday, however, the Governor appeared to be saying "Not so fast."

With Mamdani at her side, she announced plans to ask the state legislature to spend $4.5 billion on child care in the upcoming fiscal year.  Some of the money would come from existing funds, some from tax increases; the relative shares were not reported and apparently are not set. 

According to The New York Times, the proposal would allow the state "to vastly expand free and low cost child care throughout the state over the next several years, and put New York City on track to become the first city in the United States to provide free universal child care." 

Rising economic inequality has made affordability a front and center issue for the middle class in today's America, and for his part, Mamdani has rejected the notion that "big government" has no role in curing it.  

In his Inaugural Address on New Years Day, he was adamant: "To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this -- no longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives."

The question, of course, is how to do this.

As a matter of American history, it has been done in the past in only two ways.  

The first was in the form of the American west.  

So long as farming was America's principal venture, and the frontier remained open, (most) anyone with two feet could improve their lot by walking west, seizing available open land and getting to work.  

Millions accepted that invitation.

In 1862,  Abe Lincoln even formalized it.

Signing the Homestead Act, his administration granted 160 acres of federal land to anyone willing to farm it.

The second came in the form of FDR's New Deal

Once industrialism arrived and the frontier closed, Lincoln's remedy no longer worked.  

America's first Gilded Age produced enormous wealth gaps, regular recessions and, ultimately, two Depressions, the first from 1873 to 1896 and the second in 1929. 

Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932, and his successor Truman, who became president in 1945, created and then continued the New Deal to combat inequality and end depressions.

They did so with the big government.

First, they radically reduced inequality with a series of laws that effectively redistributed national income from the top to the middle and the bottom. Social Security provided old age insurance; the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) empowered unions to negotiate wage and benefit increases for their members; an alphabet soup of agencies (like the NRA and the CCC) provided emergency employment; and the later  GI Bill paid veterans to get college degrees (and thus higher paying jobs) in the post-World War II world.

Second, they regulated the financial markets to end the schemes that had either caused or facilitated depressions. The Securities Exchange Act made illegal the financial frauds that had actually led to the 1929 Depression. The Banking Act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insured customer deposits and stopped bank runs. The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial and investment banking. This made it illegal for securities firms and investment banks to take deposits. It also made it illegal for Federal Reserve member banks to deal in non-government securities, invest in non-investment grade securities for themselves, underwrite or distribute non-government securities or affiliate with those doing so. Collectively, these new laws protected depositors, curtailed the reach of speculators and ended outright fraud.

In his Inaugural Address, Mayor Mamdani remembered that past.

"Here," he said, "where the the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home." In his version of a (limited) 21st century New Deal for NYC, the cost of child care does not stop "young adults from starting a family", a rent freeze ends "the dread of the latest rent hike", and the buses (at a savings of  $6 per round trip) will be "fast and free". 

"For too long," he argued, "we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public." 

For him, those days need to be over.

And . . .

Unless the free marketeers and ostensible centrists who decry him as a socialist can come up with some better ideas -- for the last thirty years they haven't -- maybe those days need to be over for the rest of us too.

In discussing her apparent embrace of the new Mayor, Governor Hochul said "I enjoy him immensely." 

As The Times put it in capturing the moment, she was "singling out the mayor's positivity. She noted that her own children are close to the mayor's age, and that she enjoys working with younger people, because, she said, 'it's just more fun.'"

Score it as one for Mamdani . . .

And one more for Dylan.

    May your hands always be busy

    May your feet always be swift

    May you have a strong foundation

    When the winds of changes shift

    May your heart always be joyful

    May your song always be sung

    May you stay forever young

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)

SEASONS WARNINGS

In this interregnum between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there has been a lot of news.

Most of it has been bad.

In case you're still noticing.

And in those three sentences, I believe I have summarized the core problems facing America today:

(1) The flood of information at rates and in amounts impossible for any of us to process; 

(2) The fact that much of this onslaught is bad; and 

(3) The fact that not noticing it has become a means of survival for many of its victims and a source of power for its proponents.

On Saturday afternoon, there was another mass shooting. This one killed two and injured nine on the campus of Brown University in a classroom where students were taking a final exam days before their Christmas break.  

On Sunday, two shooters killed fifteen people in an antisemitic attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Australia. That same day in Los Angeles, Rob and Michelle Reiner were murdered in their Los Angeles home, apparently by their troubled son Nick. 

On Monday, Donald Trump claimed Reiner, a long-standing Trump critic, had been killed "due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME." (The all caps, of course, are his.)   Later that day, in the face of almost universal condemnation, Trump doubled down on this comment.

In the world in which we now live, and in particular in the country in which we now live, none of this was surprising and none of it shows any sign of stopping anytime soon.

On mass shootings, we have decided that psychology and surveillance are the only solutions and that any form of gun control is either unconstitutional or counter-productive. It does not matter that the assault weapons ban in the '90s actually reduced shootings or that the actual words of the Second Amendment have been ignored in an effort to make common sense regulation illegal. 

At Brown, where the actual shooter is still on the run, critics are upbraiding the university for not having enough cameras in the precise area where the assault occurred and into and out of which the shooter had to travel.

Cameras?

Really?

Last I checked, they never stopped a bullet.

On antisemitism, the debate over Palestinian rights has become a cover for well-organized and well-financed hatred of Jews throughout the world. 

I have a Jewish friend in New York City who is neither a disciple of Netanyahu nor a supporter of illegal West Bank settlements but who is now literally afraid he may be attacked on his own streets because he wears a yarmulke. The same fears were expressed for months by Jewish Australians before Sunday's attacks.

Some people do have more to fear than fear itself.

On Trump, of course, his condemned post was just another act in what has become an endless example of moral degeneracy and mental imbalance.  

Whenever you think he cannot go lower . . .

He exceeds expectations.

I do not have ready-made solutions to any of these problems.

But I do know enabling cannot be one of them.

Following Trump's ugly rant on the Reiner tragedy, The New York Times  ran an article on Tuesday previewing a Vanity Fair piece interviewing Susie Wiles, Trump's current Chief of Staff. She holds the same job in Trump's second term that Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows held in Trump's first term. 

In the interviews, she claimed that Trump had "an alcoholic personality". Though the president does not drink, Wiles explained that, with "high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink", and that the analogy with Trump is that, like the alcoholic, he behaves as if "there's nothing he can't do."

So, said Wiles . . . 

"Score settling" prosecutions of his enemies, lies about his opponents (she admitted there is nothing in the Epstein files that implicates Bill Clinton, Trump's claim to the contrary notwithstanding), "mistakes" on immigration (like deporting American citizens), or blowing up boats in the Caribbean "until Maduro cries uncle" just come with the turf that is that personality.

This, however, is all a bunch of hooey.

Which Wiles more or less admitted in her interviews.

To function, alcoholics require enablers.

Trump has made sure he is surrounded by them.

And Wiles, in her interviews with Vanity Fair, confirmed she is one.  

According to the Times, she "does not view her role as constraining Trump.  Instead, she makes clear that her mission is to facilitate his desires even if she sometimes thinks he is going too far."  The President, of course, is fine with this. Most alcoholics, especially "functioning" ones, would be.  In fact, Trump doesn't even dispute her analogy. In reacting to her interview, Trump conceded his "possessive" or "addictive personality". 

Other fellow enablers in the White House have joined her Amen chorus.  

JD Vance, who Wiles calls "a conspiracy theorist" in the Vanity Fair interview, confirmed her claim with "I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true." He thinks one of them is that Trump won the 2020 election. Russell Vought, the budget director Wiles calls "a right-wing absolute zealot", has no problems with her. "In my portfolio," he said, "she is always an ally . . . And this hit piece will not slow us down." Pam Bondi, the Attorney General who Wiles claims "completely whiffed" on the Epstein files, echoed Vought. She called Wiles a "dear friend" and then said "any attempt to divide this administration will fail."

In the '80s, Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, removed the emperor's clothes by admitting that supply-side economics was a "Trojan horse" that would ultimately benefit the rich and that tax cuts would not generate the growth and therefore revenue needed to close the budget deficit, all of which were the central economic claims Reagan had made in his successful bid for the White House. 

In his own famous words ,Stockman was then promptly "taken to the woodshed".

Things, however, have changed.

Wiles is not being sent to the woodshed.

She's being sent to the head of the class.

As . . .

Enabler-in-Chief.

Memo to Susie:

It never works.

The reality here is that, given his job, Trump is not at all functional.  For all intents and purposes, he has turned the job into half days at the office punctuated by a social media/tv addiction that lasts for some or all of the hours outside the office in which he does not sleep. He does not leave the Oval with a briefcase of binders he later studies.  Either there are no binders or he dispenses with the notion of any study. 

Whatever policy exists is a function of either his own prejudices (for, example, favoring Putin on Ukraine, for reasons unknown but highly suspect, and tariffs on the economy, probably because they were the way the government raised revenue before the Sixteenth Amendment made income taxes, which he hates, legal) or the prejudices of those he leaves alone (for example, Russell Vought on budget cuts and RFK Jr. on the destruction of America's hitherto unequalled public health infrastructure) so long as they are willing to praise him (and in Kennedy's unfortunate case, destroy a legacy).

Meanwhile . . .

The problems mount.

Mass violence.

Affordability.

Antisemitism.

Even on issues where it appears on board, his dysfunctional presidency does not get it right.

Antisemitism is the best example.

The administration stood behind Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also backed Israel's attack (and launched its own) on Iran's nuclear facilities. In this environment, one would think it wants to confront the current worldwide wave of antisemitism and come up with effective means to remove it.  

But it doesn't. 

And hasn't.

From all I can tell, Trump thinks antisemitism in America resides exclusively in the precincts of Ivy League universities. Since he is certain that liberalism and the so-called deep state that opposes him also reside in those precincts, his attack on Harvard and Brown and Columbia has the advantage in his mind of eliminating two problems. 

In truth, however, it eliminates neither. 

Not the first (because the problem is a lot larger than a cadre of students at elite colleges). 

Nor the second (because the deep state he has conjured actually includes all the experts Elon Musk and RFK Jr. have sidelined and Russell Vought no longer wants to pay).

At this point, the solution to antisemitism is remembering, revising and recommitting.

The world has to remember what happened in the 1940s and beforehand. 

Jews have been vilified, hated and slaughtered for centuries. There is no history in which the peace held or the protection of others worked. Their survival has been entirely a function of their own courage, their own perseverance, their own unity. 

Many non-Jews think the powers-that-be gave them Israel is 1947.  This is false. Nothing was given. Israel had to fight even to exist. It had to fight to actually create one of the two states (its own) authorized by the 1947 United Nations Resolution dividing Mandatory Palestine.

Next, the world has to revise and correct its misunderstandings about those two states. 

The 1947 division could have worked. It failed not because Jews were illegitimate occupiers of a land they never knew or one that was not their own; they have been there for as long as history in any form has been recorded. Instead, it failed because the other side would not allow them to be there in the only form  -- as a nation, beholden to no one, dependent only on themselves -- that could ever make sense to anyone who is Jewish. 

For Jews, the existing and historic alternatives -- pluralism, assimilation, the legal protection of minority rights -- had failed them. 

Repeatedly. 

And often catastrophically.

Finally, after the remembering and the revising, there has to be a recommitment. 

Not to a two-state solution that today cannot exist. 

Rather, to the two-state solution that showed signs of being born in the 1990s. 

When the two state solution is discussed today, those who oppose it say it is impossible either because they do not want Israel to exist (the position of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian government and many Palestinians and other Arabs throughout the middle east) or because they think Palestinian society and culture is inherently antisemitic (the position of those who cite the antisemitic content of Palestinian Authority school curricula and those who think Israel should just seize the entire West Bank).  

So long as either form of opposition exists, two states are impossible.  

The notion, however, that this was always the case is not accurate. 

As recently as the 1990s, the West Bank was not overrun with settlements that are illegal as a matter of international law, and there were significant numbers of Palestinians willing to accept Israel, peacefully coexist, and create a Palestinian state. Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher, former president of Al-Quds University and Palestinian moderate whose own family's roots in Jerusalem extend back more than a millennium, was one of them.

Remembering, revising and recommitting is complex, requires constructive leadership and enormous patience, and will take time.

It requires an all of society approach.

It cannot be done on the fly . . .

In social media posts . . .

Or by an executive whose attention span is at best limited.

It also cannot be done by real estate investors pretending to be (part-time) diplomats . . .

Or by businessmen seeking to line their own pockets.

And it cannot be done in  an environment in which a president flooding the zone with accepted or trivialized outrage, dishonesty and incompetence creates an overwhelming need in the rest of us to shut down just to survive.  

Anyone who does not support Trump, and right now that is about 60% of the country, could literally spend their entire day cataloguing his latest attack on his enemies or on reality and fashioning an appropriate warning and response.  

Because none of us have the time to do this, we turn him off. 

Like alcoholics, he depends on this.

In twelve step programs that provide tools for alcoholics to obtain and retain sobriety, two of the steps ask alcoholics to list all the people they have harmed and then attempt to make amends with those individuals. After overcoming denial, these are two of the more difficult steps to fulfill. Mostly because the list is long and the harm is deep. 

Many enablers -- those who excused, justified, ignored or denied the alcoholism -- are on that list.

In the case of Trump, most of his turn out to be.

And we who turn him off are among them.

The hard to take advice is to not do this.

Don't excuse, justify, deny or ignore.

It is advice especially hard to take this time of year.

Because this is the season to be jolly.

And confronting him is anything but.

As if on cue, last night Trump seized the airwaves to give a loud 18-minute speech repeating some of his standard lies. Gasoline prices are not $2.50/gallon. He did not inherit the “ worst” inflation “in 48 years". He has not cut drug prices by 600 %. 

After the speech, a doctor on CNN called it “manic” and the President “unwell”, and today Robert Hubbell called it “an awful speech delivered in a style of your MAGA loving drunk uncle trying to win a family argument at Thanksgiving by being the loudest person in the room.” 

But Trump had an excuse.

As he told reporters once he had finished . . .

“Susie . . . told him he had . . . to”.

THANKSGIVING 2025 -- HOW EMPATHY AND INTELLIGENCE CONQUERS EGO AND INSULT

For as long as I can recall, birthdays in my family were the only day of the year when it was perfectly acceptable (indeed, required) to focus solely on the one person for whom that day was historic.  

They got to pick their birthday dinner, their birthday cake and their birthday present.

And whoa unto anyone who violated that rule.  

One year on my sister's birthday, my father and I were sent out to buy her birthday cake.  He decided that she would like a lemon cake.  I kept telling him that was not what she wanted.  But I was very young (single digits) and he liked lemon cakes.

So . . . 

Lemon cake it was.

You would not have wanted to be him when we returned home with that cake.

My wife Debbie was born on November 27, 1965. 

Some years her birthday actually falls on Thanksgiving itself.  

In fact, this has happened eight times in her life. 

And will happen for the ninth time tomorrow. 

When the calendar is particularly cruel, it happens on milestone birthdays. 

Her tenth birthday in 1975 was on Thanksgiving. So was her 21st in 1986. Most of us get to close bars with our friends the day we are, as they say, legal. She had more stuffing.  Another milestone, her 60th, is tomorrow.  

And since many in her family never made it that far, this is a milestone on steroids.

But . . .

On the day meant to celebrate her personal triumph . . . 

Friends and family will be forced into celebrating . . .

The Pilgrim's.

What to do?

Could I conquer this veritable lemon cake of  a problem?

A friend of mine has a different family tradition.  

With him, everyone gets a birthday . . .

And a birthday aura. 

The first is a single day.  

The second begins anytime within the birthday week and lasts for two.

According to him, there's no reason you can't celebrate on all -- or any --  of those days.

So . . .

Last Saturday, I convinced Debbie that a lawyer from Los Angeles wanted to have dinner with us at West Point's Thayer Hotel. 

When we arrived, the lawyer was not there. 

But thirty of her friends were.  

Debbie Reilly McCarthy, who turns 60 tomorrow, was the legislative director for a ranking member of Congress; was indispensable to Generals and CEOs as she helped raise millions for a national "do tank" known as Business Executives for National Security; helped raise millions more for non-profits as diverse as New York's Westchester County Food Bank and its Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; walked a marathon to raise money for cancer research in honor of her best friend felled in her thirties by that disease; was a mother to two step-children whose lives would have been significantly more difficult without her; and saved the life of the guy who was the last opponent her Congressman-boss defeated. 

In an era of ego and insult, she is empathy and intelligence.

On Saturday, her friends came from across the country . . . 

And across the decades . . .

To surprise and celebrate her.

It was not tomorrow but it was in the aura.

Happy Birthday, my love.

And to everyone else . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.

NO KINGS AT THE POLLS -- THE OFF-YEAR ELECTION

For much of the past year, the news has been universally bad. 

Trump was elected to a second term despite having sponsored an attempted coup at the end of his first. A Cabinet of fools, sycophants or both was appointed, ostensibly to run the executive departments of the federal government but really just to stoke the ego of our narcissist (and liar) in chief. Unethical remaindermen (or women) in the Justice Department followed orders to indict his enemies while ignoring the crimes of his friends.

Pardons were given to felons who either supported his lies or lined his family's (crypto) pockets. Prestigious law firms, media outlets and universities paid extortionate tribute. The military now routinely violates both domestic and international law on the president's say-so. ICE's masked thugs arrest anyone who looks illegal. Mindless tariffs have turned erstwhile allies into enemies. The East Wing of the White House has been bulldozed.

And the Republican Party is AWOL.

Then came Tuesday.

In New Jersey and Virginia, the Democratic candidates for governor won by double digits. Both candidates, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, were centrists with attractive personal biographies.  

Sherrill graduated from the Naval Academy in 1994, served for nine years as a helicopter pilot and then as a Russian policy officer under the Navy's European commander, got a law degree from Georgetown in 2007 and then worked for a private firm before becoming an Assistant US Attorney in New Jersey in 2015.  In 2018 she flipped a Republican House seat in New Jersey in the largest partisan swing in that cycle, and then won reelection three times.  

For her part, Spanberger graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001 and then got an MBA in a joint program run by Purdue and Germany's Gisma Business School.  By that time, she was fluent in more than a half dozen languages. While undergoing a background check she was a postal inspector and in 2006 became a CIA case officer.  She left the CIA for the private sector in 2014 and ran for Congress in 2018, narrowly flipping a northern Virginia seat held by the Republicans since 2001. She was reelected in 2020 and 2022 and decided not to run in 2024.

New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial contests were not the only items on this year's electoral menu.

In California, 64% voted for a ballot initiative (Proposition 50) that redraws California's Congressional maps in a way likely to add five Democrats to the House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-terms. The initiative was the brain-child of California Governor Gavin Newsom and a direct response to Texas's Trump-demanded mid-decade redistricting designed to add GOP seats in that state.  

In Pennsylvania, voters retained three Democratic justices on its Supreme Court, all of whom the GOP had targeted to gut that Court of justices who had upheld mail-in and early voting in the 2020 election Trump claims (falsely) was stolen.  In Georgia, two statewide utility commission seats were up for grabs and Democrats won both. In Connecticut, twenty-seven towns flipped from Republican to Democrat in races for Mayor or First Selectman. 

In Virginia, the Democrats also won races for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General and added thirteen seats to their total in the House of Delegates.  In that lower legislative chamber they now command a 64-36 majority. In New Jersey, the Democrats added three seats to their caucus and now control a super-majority. 

A survey of this century's off-year elections shows they are important where they happen and often (but not always) carry national significance.  In 2005, 2009, 2017 and 2021, the off-year contests provided signals that portended the national results a year later. In 2005, 2009 and 2017, those signals were the strongest, with New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial wins (for the Republican in the second and the Democrat in the first and third) coming in advance of red and blue waves, respectively, a year later. 

In 2001 and 2013, however, the off-year signals turned out to be noise.  In 2001, Democrats won both the New Jersey and Virginia races but the GOP actually won control of the House of Representatives, and in 2013, a split in the off year disguised what turned out to be a red wave a year later. In contrast, a split in 2021 was consistent with the mixed result (a red win but no wave) a year later.

So . . .

What is this year's off-year telling us?

I count four messages.

First, Trump was on the ballot even if he pretends he wasn't.  

For the past year, Trump has been inundating the country with his demands, threats, Truth Social posts, press availabilities, shout outs to and from the helicopter and on the plane, made-for-tv cabinet meetings and (rare) formal speeches.  Whether he is insulting an opponent or demanding the Nobel Prize, he is always . . .

There.

In our faces.

What used to be outrageous is now the norm. 

He has made it crystal clear that he does not care about norms or traditions, will skirt the law if he can, and accepts nothing less than absolute loyalty from his appointees in particular and federal employees more generally, enormous numbers of whom he has effectively fired.

Inflation has not been tamed. The cost of health insurance is about to skyrocket for millions.  Housing is scarce. 

And expensive.

Meanwhile . . .

Trump is busy either building ball rooms or throwing Great Gatsby parties that recall the obscene wealth of 1929's pre-Depression America.

Roughly two-thirds of us either can't stand this or are seriously tired of it.

So . . .

If not all of us, then for sure many more than have done so in off-year elections past, went to the polls this past Tuesday perhaps for no reason more than the desire to tell him to  . . .

Shut up.

Second, off-years can be imperfect measures of what will follow either because turn-out in them is low or a national issue overrides or is inconsistent with the local message.  

This is what made 2001 a false signal.  

Even though the Democrats won, the 2002 mid-terms were the first federal election since 9/11 and the nation's laser focus on terrorism made any of last year's local signals parochial.  Neither the election of Mark Warner in Virginia or Jim McGreevy in New Jersey mattered to the war on terror.  And unlike Trump, George W. Bush was popular and perceived to be both competent and steady. The elections of Democrats in 2001 did not undermine that popularity or those perceptions. In addition, turn-out in both New Jersey and Virginia was low that year, down seven points in New Jersey compared to 1997 (the last gubernatorial election), and sixteen compared to the high-water mark in 1993 (a year before the red wave that overtook Clinton); Virginia's was also sixteen points lower in 2001 than in 1993.

Third, in both New Jersey and Virginia this year, there was a national issue consistent with repudiating the GOP and electing Democrats.  For the reasons noted, the issue was Trump himself.

And turnout was up.

By a lot.

In New Jersey, there are 6.6 million registered voters.  A little more than 3.3 million of them cast ballots last Tuesday, a 50.1% turnout rate.  Four years ago, the turnout rate was 40.5%.  In Virginia, there are 5.9 million registered voters and 3.4 million of them showed up on Tuesday, a 57.2% turnout. This wasn't as large an increase as in New Jersey, but Virginia started in a better place (54.9% of its voters had showed up in 2021).  In both states, however, these are high turnout rates for off year elections.

Fourth, a number of trends spotted after the 2024 national election appear to have been reversed in Tuesday's contests.  In particular, Latino voters who were necessary for Trump's improved numbers in both  New Jersey  and Virginia last year broke for the Democrats by double digit margins this year.  This includes Latino men, who actually favored Trump in 2024.  

The result was particularly striking in New Jersey. In nine municipalities where 60% of the vote was Hispanic, Sherrill's margins ran from a low of 26 points in Passaic to a high of 71 points in Paterson; her average gain across all nine cities was 50 points and she ran 37 points ahead of Vice President Harris's 2024 totals in those same areas.  

Democrats also made gains this year with young (under 30) voters. In both New Jersey and Virginia, the turnout among them surged -- by nine points in Virginia and seven in New Jersey. And in both of them, the Democrat won 69% of their vote.  This was a 38-point margin in both states. In New Jersey, this improved on Vice President Harris's 2024 margin by 32 points, and in Virginia it improved on her margin by 34 points.  In both states, all of Trump's 2024 gains with this group evaporated.

Nothing is certain in politics and reading tea leaves is always difficult. Both sides get to examine this year's results and make whatever strategic or tactical moves they deem warranted. Already, the GOP, aware of Trump's unpopularity and their track record in 2017, has decided to redistrict red states for next year's midterms in the hope that changing the lines will alter the outcome. And over the course of the next year, it will no doubt attempt to brand Democrats as the party of New York City's newly elected thirty-four-year-old Mayor, a Democratic Socialist.

For their part, Democrats are not sitting on the sidelines.  This year they turned out and California's just passed (by a landslide -- 64% -- and with a turnout -- close to 50% -- unheard of where the only item on the ballot is an initiative) Prop 50 proves two can play the mid-decade redistricting game. This year, they also had a message -- affordability -- that many embraced, including many in New York City who do not care what the new Mayor calls himself . . .

Or necessarily believe what others call him.

Americans are tired.

But these days they not passive. 

Millions turned out for this year's off-year elections that went blue in buckets. 

Two and a half weeks before that, millions more participated in 2,700 "No Kings" protests spread out over all fifty states.

Next year . . .

The two could very well converge.

PATRIOTIC SONGS  -- AMERICA'S GREATEST HITS

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

                    -- Declaration of Independence, 1776

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

                    -- Constitution, 1787

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. and to petition the government for the redress of grievances."

                    -- First Amendment, 1791

"Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things . . . Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.  We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.  We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists.  If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it."

                    -- Jefferson's First Inaugural, 1801

"I had rather be right than be President."

                    -- Henry Clay, 1838, who, in attempting to thread

                        the needle between abolition and slavery,turned out

                        to be neither.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

                        -- Whitman, in Song of Myself, 1855

"If there is no struggle there is no progress.  Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground . . . This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

                        -- Frederick Douglass, 1857

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-filed of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live . . . But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract . . . It is for us the living, rather, to . . . here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from earth."

                        -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

"My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

        Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

            But I with mournful tread,

                Walk the deck my Captain lies,

                    Fallen cold and dead."

                        -- Whitman, O Captain! My Captain, 1865

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

                        -- Thirteenth Amendment, 1865

"All Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

                        -- Fourteenth Amendment, 1868

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

                        -- Fifteenth Amendment, 1870

"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience . . . The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

                        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1881

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

                        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1904

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

                        -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

                        -- Nineteenth Amendment, 1920

"This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to turn retreat into advance."

                        -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

"We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of  'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

                        -- Earl Warren, 1954

"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

                        -- John F. Kennedy, 1961

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

                        -- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and  this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

                        -- John F. Kennedy, 1963

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

                        -- Ronald Reagan, 1987

"I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!"

                        -- George W. Bush, 2001

"I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible."

                       -- Barack Obama, 2004

"A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation to Booker T. Washington to visit -- to dine at the White House -- was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States . . . Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day -- though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise."

                        -- John McCain, 2008

"This is America's day. This is democracy's day. A day of history and hope. Of renewal and resolve.  Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded."

                        -- Joseph R. Biden, 2021.

"For there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it.
If only we are brave enough to be it."

                        -- Amanda Gordon, 2021

THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

The federal government shut down on October 1.

It is now October 9.

The government is still shutdown.

No one knows when it will re-open. 

Or if that really matters.

The Republican Party controls the federal government.  It has majorities in the House and the Senate and Trump in the White House. Six of the nine Justices on the Supreme Court are Republican.  Three of them (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett) were appointed by Trump. Two (Roberts and Alito) were appointed by Bush the Younger and one (Clarence Thomas) by Bush the Elder.

The Republican Party these days has two, and only two, functions.

The first is to agree with and then echo whatever rants the president spits out at his incoherent rallies, press availabilities or made-for-TV cabinet meetings.  This obligation also applies to any posts he puts up on Truth Social, the social media platform Trump owns and controls and created after he was de-platformed in January 2021 for sponsoring an attempted (and violent) coup.

The second is to either absolutely shutter or gradually defund the government to the point where economic oligarchy, mass deportation and some version of national defense remains but everything else (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, the Department of Education, an apolitical Justice Department, FEMA, independent colleges and universities, the CDC, public media, civil rights, soft-power foreign aid in the form of USAID or Voice of America, and any federally funded programs or policies in so-called blue states) either ends or gradually evaporates.

The marriage of these two functions has turned the GOP into an authoritarian and anti-democratic bulwark.

In both the literal and figurative sense of that term.

Literally . . .

The GOP is now set up as a rampart against any institution or individual that might oppose Trump in any way whatsoever.

And figuratively . . . 

It supports and enacts policies that either gratify Trump's ego or empower its own historic goal of reducing government to what it was before Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Earl Warren's Supreme Court, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

So long as that literal rampart and figurative gratification is preserved, Trump is more than willing to allow the reduction to proceed apace.  

He is also willing to do this regardless of the historic consequences to either the country or himself, both of which will be long term. In fact, the length of the term is probably the basis for his ennui. 

He is a creature of the immediate.  

His attention span is limited.  

So is his vocabulary. 

Addicted to TV and twitter, he does not read.  Addicted to insult, he does not argue. Addicted to lies, he does not perceive. Addicted to himself, he is disengaged from the real world. So long as his Cabinet and his media praise him, the former of which has been expressly designed to do so, the latter of which (like the GOP itself) has come to that condition gradually, he will not notice or not care about any decline, either to the country or himself. Indeed, it is how he lives with his abysmal approval numbers.

Into this world has now been parachuted  a government shut down.

The function of the government is to create law and to enforce it.  Shutdowns impede these activities but do not entirely stop them. Thousands of federal employees are furloughed but those deemed "essential" must work without pay. This includes the military and federal prosecutors. Congress cannot shutdown (and its Representatives and Senators are paid) but some staff are furloughed and others are deemed essential. Permanently funded entitlements (e.g., for Social Security, Medicare, VA benefits) are paid but some ancillary services (e.g., benefit verification requests, earnings records corrections) can be delayed.

Trump's response to all of this has been . . .

A bit of a yawn.

His OMB Director, Russell Vought (of Project 2025 fame), threatened mass lay-offs before the shutdown took effect. These, however, had more to do with the administration's claim that it was entitled to do so than any additional basis that would exist on account of a shutdown. Vought issued a memo telling agencies to "consider Reduction in Force notices" to federal employees for whom funding would not exist on October 1 and whose work "is not consistent with the President's priorities."  Ordinarily, the absence of funding would lead to furlough (and a return to work with back pay once the shutdown ended) and "the President's priorities" would be irrelevant. As of now, no Reduction in Force notices have been sent.

Beyond this threat, Trump's only other reaction to the shutdown has been to promise the military it will receive back pay and threaten non-military furloughed employees with the prospect they will not.  Since the promise is statutorily mandated and the threat requires new legislation before it can ever be implemented, both amount to idle chatter.  In the meantime, Trump's assault on the rule of law continues via the Comey prosecution, the Letitia James/Adam Schiff/John Bolton "investigations", the FBI's apparent acceptance of the bribe paid to ICE's Tom Homan, the militarized attacks on Democratic cities, and Pam Bondi's performative insults and deflections in the face of Senate inquiry about any of the above.

Which, of course, is why the shutdown is irrelevant to Trump.

For him, his Apprentice-like presidency is about creating non-existent realities, attacking enemies, and insulting opponents.

The shutdown stops none of this.

For the Democrats, however, a whole different set of objectives exist.

They actually believe in government.

And because they do, they are generally opposed to shutting it down.

This time around, however, things are different.

For two reasons.  

First, Trump's just signed Big Beautiful Bill ends, as of January 1, 2026, the Obamacare premium tax credits passed during the Biden Administration.  As a consequence, premiums for plans available under the Affordable Care Act are predicted to rise by as much as 75% in 2026.   And for those who actually receive the subsidies, their premiums will more than double.  As of now, four states have actually sent out notice increases and all are expected to follow.

The Democrats are united in believing the shutdown provides them with the leverage needed to force Congress and Trump to restore those credits.  In response, the GOP claims it will negotiate on all health care issues in the ordinary course but that, in the meantime, the continuing resolution already passed by the House should be accepted and the government should re-open.  

The Democrats are refusing this deal.

Because . . .

And this is the second reason this shutdown is different . . .

The Democrats do not believe Trump or the GOP will honor any promise to negotiate.

Trump's Big Beautiful Bill was passed by the House and Senate without a single Democratic vote.  There was no negotiation, not even the hint of it. In the House, where the majority controls what can be brought to the floor, the only difficulty the GOP encountered was from a handful of far-right members who thought the bill did not cut enough but who, as has now become the case on any close vote, ultimately bowed to Trump's insistence that it pass (and his threatened blowback if it didn't).  And in the Senate, the bill passed by a 51-50 vote (with Vance breaking the tie after three Republicans opposed it) because it was brought up under budget reconciliation procedures that are not subject to the filibuster rule. 

The only thing that could break this impasse is an issue the GOP thinks might imperil its hold on Congress in the 2026 mid-terms.

The Democrats think health care is that issue.

They also think they are on pretty solid ground in believing that neither Trump nor the Republicans in Congress will negotiate to restore premium tax credit support for Obamacare.

And so far . . .

The polls support them.

Sort of.

Brad Bannon is a Democratic consultant (full disclosure: he is a friend and was the pollster I hired in my runs for Congress in 1992 and 1994).  In an October 8 article in The Hill he wrote "A new national survey of adult Americans by CBS News and YouGov.com indicates that congressional Democrats have an edge in the showdown over the federal government shutdown . . . Four out of every ten  . . . people blame President Trump for the closure and three in ten adults fault Democrats . . . [O]ne out of every three spread the blame widely."

"Jobs and inflation," he continues, "are the major concerns on the public worry-list, and the mischief executive dropped the ball. Most Americans believe Trump's policies have hurt them financially. Nine months into Trump's second term, medical costs are still rising and Democrats have wisely framed this contest as an opportunity to keep these costs from growing even higher.  The Democrats have put Trump and his MAGA acolytes on the spot over a year before the midterms."

"The CBS survey illustrates," says Bannon, "each party's soft spots.  The public is most likely to fault Democrats for being weak and Republicans for being extreme. If the Democrats stand firm, they will prove to the public that they do have the strength of purpose to run the nation."  On the other hand, he notes, "The Republican insistence on tax breaks at all costs demonstrates . . . rigid attachment to a radical economic ideology which fattens the rich and starves middle class and poor Americans."

"The shutdown," he concludes, "is now in extra innings.  Democrats must stand up and be counted to win affordable care for all Americans.  Republicans have fought tooth and nail from the birth of the programs to kill off Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.  If Trump wins this budget battle, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are down for the count and the two other vital programs will be next on the MAGA hit list."

Elections are won in the middle.

Trump is more distrusted and more under-water than any other modern president. He also has a stronger base of diehards supporting him than any other modern president. Bannon's essential argument is that those in the middle, those who decide elections, are the key to the 2026 mid-terms.  

Bannon thinks those folks are worried about "jobs and inflation" but believe Democrats are "weak".

If he's right, shutdown was really the only available choice for Democrats.

As the party in the minority faced with an opposition that will not negotiate and does not compromise, and a president who, in addition to doing neither, is hell bent on preserving his authoritarian power play, the Democrats have limited options.  The courts are one of them and at the lower levels have been successful in temporarily stopping Trump's militarized attacks on Democratic cities, unilateral funding rescissions, and scattershot liquidation of the federal work force; the Supreme Court, however, has turned back many of those efforts and delayed others. In this environment, there is not much any opponent can do to demonstrate strength.

But there is one thing the Democrats can do

They can stop pretending the system is working.

The shutdown is a way, probably the only way at this point, to do so.

For Democrats, it is unnatural.

For decades they have been the party of "Yes, we can!"

Now they must be the party of . . .

"No, we won't!"