Yes, I Still Squawk About American Politics

My fellow Dems should be hoping and praying that Trump runs again in 2024 (with Ivanka for V.P., you heard it here first).

The young-ish fascist Hawleys and Rubios and Cottons and Cruz's will talk a big game about how Trump is still the head of the party, but when the rubber hits the road in 2023 these authoritarian egomaniacs will wake up and realize that every nomination they don't win puts them four years further away from ever getting the brass ring.

To put it another way, if four years of Biden / Harris isn't enough to convince enough Americans to vote for the Dem over The Disaster in 2024, our party deserves to go die in a dumpster fire anyways.

It Was An Inside Job

I've had a sinking suspicion that there was some form of collusion between the MAGA terrorists who stormed the capitol and law enforcement.  While that remains a definite possibility, it now turns out:

"But after laying out her many reasons for seeking Trump's removal, she [Rep. Mikie Sherrill] moved on to those of her congressional colleagues who, she said, 'abetted' his attempt to overturn the results of the election and undermine democracy through a violent mob.

'I'm going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don't serve in Congress,' she said, speaking sedately, but severely.

Other countries execute people for much less than giving intel to hostile parties.

Good People On Both Sides

Not content to just disrupt the certification of Joe Biden, the white terrorists took the time to spread handfuls of their own shit on the floors of the Capitol:

"Offices were ransacked, glass was broken, litter was left throughout the building, and wooden furniture was destroyed. Some pro-Trump rioters smeared feces on the walls."

It's genuinely surprising more of these people weren't killed.  I wouldn't shed a single tear for any of them if that had been the case, of course.

Sometimes The Good Guys Win, Twice

Ray Charles and Willie Nelson, "Georgia" live

I went into last November's presidential election as cautiously optimistic.  While the Congressional side of things wasn't great for us Dems, let's not forget that Joe Biden knocked off an incumbent president for the first time in nearly three decades.

So this afternoon in my office in lurvely Daegu, with few expectations, imagine my joy at seeing the Dems take de facto 50-50 control of the Senate.  (And let's be frank -- if a Jew and a Black Dude winning in formerly deep crimson Georgia and kicking Mitch McConnell to the curb doesn't put a smile on your face, you ain't got no soul.)

This is a golden opportunity for so much positive change being served up for Joe Biden.  He damn well better not sacrifice it on the altar of "moderation" or, Spaghetti Moster forbid, "bipartisanship."

Meanwhile, let's mentally prepare ourselves for Donald / Ivanka 2024.  (Kidding, but not kidding.)

Yes I Am Already Thinking About 2024

Between COVID ravaging the world and the utter betrayal of America by the GOP, there aren't many silver linings out there right now.  But regarding Trump, it seems to me he's bound to do a lot more damage to his party -- literally his party -- than many people seem to think.

Who knows that sort of legal trouble he'll land in once he loses the shield of the presidency, but no doubt he is going to at least try and run in 2024, which means he'll begin campaigning in earnest in 2022 at the latest.

There are ton of young-ish GOP "moderates" (LOL) who really want to be president -- Rubio, Hawley, and Cotton just for starters.  And their (highly) relative difference from Trump's obvious derangement will be lapped up by the DC media -- "the serious, thoughtful Republican Party is back!"  (The only difference being that when it comes to fucking over poor and non-white folks Trump is willing to say what these other guys think out loud.)

The larger point is that, barring jail or death, the 2024 Republican primary will be an utter shit-show.  It could mean that Trump winds up running as a third-party candidate and actually out-performing the actual GOP candidate.  It could mean Trump, still bigly popular with his base, i.e., actual Republican voters, gets to play some sort of a power-broker role, where Rubio is forced to pick Ivanka or Don Jr. (the less dumb, more evil son) as his running mate.

Obvious death-of-American-Democracy implications aside, it could be fucking hilarious above all else.

I mean, nobody knows.  Biden's health is going to be an issue as well, but I have a lot of faith in Kamala Harris.  At the very least, she doesn't take shit from anybody, and that terrifies many Republicans.

All of this is to say, your Rubio-Hawley-Cottons of the world are obviously much smarter and more polished than Cheeto Hitler.  (Yes, I am damning with faint praise.)  And that could be their downfall, because while any one of them will make David Brooks' heart flutter, they lack the sheer animal cunning and cruelty of Trump.  They lack the ability to channel the vicious, hateful spirit that a solid one-third of Americans, white Americans, harbor for the rest of their country.

Remember that in the last Republican primary, Trump didn't just win, he annihilated his opponents ("little Marco," Ted Cruz's ugly wife, etc.)

No amount of polish will give a pretender that unique Trumpian showman's ability to bring out the hateful id of American white nationalism, and to harness its dark energies into electoral success.

So this isn't a prediction as much as a reminder that Trump will never go quietly into that good night.  No small number of his former "friends" are going to die in jail because of him.

Who's to say the Republican Party can survive him either?

Not a Pyrrhic Victory So Much As a Sad and Underwhelming One

Obviously, it's not over but then again it's kind of over barring Complete and Total Ratfucking.  This election was much closer than it should have been, and yet not so close that John Roberts would show his hand just yet.  With the Senate out of reach for Dems he has two solid years of pretty much rewriting the post-1945 legal status quo for America.  Why blow it so early when Biden will most likely not be able to enlarge the court?  Or even get rid of the filibuster?

Goodbye Roe for starters.

So it sucks.  I stand by my opinion that large turnout is a generally good thing, even if it means there must have been a ton of first-time Trump voters out there.

It's looking like Biden bombed with Hispanic voters.  Another reason to take the incredibly smart and motivated AOC more seriously?

Silver linings?

The Senate map for 2022 is looking good for Democrats, but again Biden has to think big and strategically.  If he goes back to Washington thinking he'll just charm the pants off of McConnell to get the Democratic agenda through we really are screwed.

And fuck the Electoral College.

In a few hours I have to walk into my adult night class and explain a lot of this shit to them.

Good times.

How You Feeling, Teacher James?

I'm very confident that Biden is going to win the U.S. popular vote in record-breaking numbers -- both his overall tally and in seeing the largest voter turnout (Democratic and Republican) ever.  The early voting alone shows that people on both sides are motivated, and in particular younger folks who will guarantee a Biden popular victory.

But of course, it's 2020.  2000 (Gore vs. Bush) and 2016 demonstrated that Electoral College shit-sandwiches are only for Democrats, and never Republicans.  The Supreme Court is now packed with folks who literally worked for Bush in 2000 so he could rat-fuck his way to a contested election.  The same goes for the state-level.

So once again, for the fourth time (!) since I moved to Korea, I'm waiting until tomorrow morning my time to find out what happens.  If all goes well, we should know by nine or ten p.m. U.S. time, which will put me in my office at 11 a.m. or noon Wednesday.  (I'll be teaching an adult conversation course, actually).

I really doubt I'll get any decent sleep tonight.  (Not like I've been getting more than three or fours at best lately.)  My adult students continue to be flummoxed at how such a strong and rich nation like America can have such an unnecessarily complicated (and racist!) system like the Electoral College.

That said, as with early voting mentioned above, there are some real Biden advantages baked in already.  I think the number of Trump 2016 voters who either sit this one out or actually pull the lever for Biden will not be insignificant.

So there's my optimism.

Here's my pessimism -- a defeated Trump will still Tweet at us.  A solid 30-35% of America will remain deplorable at best, and violent at worst.  The Republican Party has abdicated any pretense about maintaining a functioning democracy.  Indeed, the sooner we collapse into a Putin-style kleptocracy, all the better for them.

Oh, and the economy is fucked due to COVID, which is only going to get worse.  There's no guarantee it won't last until 2022 or worse.

From day one Biden needs to think and act big.  I'm not sure he's up to it.  Obviously better than the fascist alternative, but still -- does even a big win tomorrow just delay the inevitable Tom Cotton "Use Tanks Against Peaceful Protesters" 2024 campaign?

Dostoevsky Works Both Ways

Not long after Trump got elected I wrote "everything is now permitted."  Referring to an attempted murder by a Q-Anon supporter, I meant it in a very general sense, that of accepted norms and standards being destroyed.  I meant in in a scary-sad way, a "we're well and truly fucked" way.

With Supreme Court justice Amy Coney-Barrett taking less than a day between swearing in and then filming a literal Trump campaign video, I am -- surprisingly -- a little more sanguine and a little more focused on what could be positives moving into 2021.

After four years of this unending avalanche of Republican-enabled hatefulness and stupidity, of dire incompetence, I mean "Everything is now permitted" in a much more Congress-specific sense: fuck the filibuster, fuck the sacred norm of only nine justices, fuck the banal congeniality of the U.S. Senate, fuck the fakey bullshit hypocrisy of a "neutral and apolitical" Supreme Court forever.

You don't need to read Dostoevsky (you should, but you don't need to) to understand this attitude cuts both ways.  It honestly hurt for the past four years.  But now it's time to redirect the pain onto those who actually deserve it.

Biden's first act as president, Spaghetti-Monster willing we also win the Senate next week, is to put up Merrick Garland for the SCOTUS immediately.

And that's just for starters -- DC statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, automatic registration of all US citizens as voters, voting day as a national holiday all come next.

All of that by the end of 2021.  Then we really get down to work making the necessary structural changes to maintain our Democracy, without a damn drop more of counter-majoritarian compromise with a GOP that stands for nothing beyond tax-cuts for the rich and white identity politics.

Is Biden up to the task?  Maybe.  Harris could pull them there.  The outrageous actions of ACB could.  Pelosi certainly seems game.  But if not, he doesn't deserve a hypothetical second term.  Fuck cowardly hypothetical Biden and fuck David Brooks too.

America, Fuck No

I'm pretty certain I'll be leaving Korea and going home this February at the end of my current contract, for family reasons.

As I eyeball prices on a new car, health and car insurance, an apartment, and US-priced internet and phone, I'm kind of put off by the fact that I'm already losing money.

And I'll need to find a job in the middle of the Trump Virus.  Hell, I'll need to survive  the Trump Virus.

Good times.

Yawn

Kamala did fine.  (Notice a pattern here?)  I might have missed it, but she didn't mention Merrick Garland's name when Pence asked about court packing, which stood out for me as a missed opportunity.  Then again, maybe that's too much inside baseball for most Americans.

Mike Pence is obviously not quite as deranged at his master.  I don't see that carrying much weight in late 2020.

Biden is well within his rights to cancel the last two debates with Typhoid Cheeto.  They won't move the scale one inch either way.

Good lord, let's get this over with.

"All In" Is A Weak Move, Not A Strong One

In poker terms, Trump has gone "all in."  In moving back to the White House he'll have his bully pulpit back, and some modicum of control over a narrative that is increasingly looking good for Joe Biden after an objectively disastrous debate performance.

Of course, "all in" means you've also played your last move.

Here, it also  means further risking the lives of the White House staffers around him, the Secret Service, White House janitorial and management, and of course, literally all of their family members.

Obviously, this shocks nobody.  There has always been a Jonestown quality to Trump's support, both officially (Republicans cowed into not wearing masks) and unofficially (crowds of supporters herded into indoor arenas).

It's still two or three days before we know just how severe a case of COVID-19 Trump has picked up.  If he goes straight back onto the campaign trail, only to flee back to Walter Reed with inflamed lungs and needing oxygen, he'll look even weaker than the overweight, under-exercised, 74 year-old he actually is.  Game over, figuratively at best.

Republicans are still going to try and do everything they can to steal this election, but Trump's "outs" are growing scarcer and more dangerous by the day.  (Hour?)  Gas-lighting a pusillanimous and easily-led US media is one thing.  Playing games with a goddamn killer virus is another.

Again, this is not at all a call for complacency.  I'm just pointing out that these are the final, desperate moves of someone who knows he's in trouble (politically and physically) and more importantly, knows he has no options left.

Anybody familiar with Texas Hold'em (even rank amateurs like me) knows that moving all your chips in is usually the desperate move, not the strong one.  Nine times out of ten, it signals "please don't realize how fucked I really am," not "recognize my status as a preternatural He-Man."

Staying put at Walter Reed and milking hourly empathy points from FOX, and probably even to a lesser extent CNN would have been the confident move.  "For any American suffering from the China Virus, I know how difficult it is!"

But alas, this is a lifelong loser making what might be his final loser move.

It's only a question of how many actual human lives he manages to take with him before it's over.

Thoughts And Prayers

I say we treat a sick and / or dying President Trump with the same respect and deference he has shown to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton.

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) October 3, 2020

Well, That Happened

Biden did fine.

Could you stand for 90 minutes feet away from Cheeto Hitler without literally smacking him across his fake-tanned face?

Also, Kamala will destroy Pence.

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) September 30, 2020

"no legitimate reason"

Bob Mould, "Next Generation"

He plays guitar harder than he ever has at the ripe old age of 59.  Anger makes you young.

We can't be complacent.  Donald Trump and the Republican Cult that supports him to the death are going to try and steal this election.

But frankly, it puts a spring in my step to realize that there's a more-than-zero chance that Cheeto Hitler and at least one or more of his horrible fail-children will go to jail in light of recent news:

"He pointed specifically to consultant fees paid by Donald Trump to Ivanka Trump. Since Ivanka Trump was already an employee of the Trump Organization, Akerman said, there was 'no legitimate reason' for those payments. 

He speculated the two could have been shifting the money around to avoid paying taxes on it.  

That, he said, could lead to an ominous development for the president should he leave office in January. 

'The only thing that’s saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president,' Akerman said. 'Once he’s no longer a sitting president, he is subject to being indicted.'”

To quote a certain highly decorated starship captain, "Make it so." 

Electioneering

 I voted.

Washington State Ballot.

Same US address I've used for over a decade now (my last residence in America before moving to South Korea).

COVID changed things a bit though.  I usually send my ballots snail-mail, no insurance, because I've got pretty good faith in Korean and US mail.

But this year, and for months now, the Korean post office has warned that letters and packages can be delayed by over a month.

So I went to Daegu FedEx, and they told me they won't ship to PO Boxes.

Went to Korean post office, asked for "EMS" (express) service, and they said the same thing.

So, being that Washington State is primarily a Democratic one that actually wants folks to vote, I've done my first ever scan-and-e-mail ballot.

This is no shade on my Washington State county whatsoever -- they've been routinely excellent at letting me vote for over a decade now.

Anyhow, just thought it was worth sharing.  This election is not a normal one by any means.

Vote the bloated orange pussy-grabber out with enough vengeance that his inevitable cry of "illegal immigrants voting!" is drowned out by the joyful noise of a country that has an outside chance -- certainly not a definite one -- of making something of a comeback from the brink of tyranny and/or mediocrity.

Tediocraty?  Myranny?

This Wednesday is the beginning of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) so I can get up and watch the first debate in the comfort of my boxer-shorts.  Lucky me.

I'm not expecting Ciceronian perfection from Biden, but I think he's got enough left in the tank and a sense of history to know that he needs to be sharp.

He can be.  He needs to be.

"the average American disagrees with Republican orthodoxy on every major issue"

David Litt is more optimistic than I am after the death of Justice Ginsbug, but is concise in stating the obvious -- Republicans have been handed every structural advantage imaginable (Senate, Electoral College) and it's still never been enough:

"For one thing, America’s political institutions are currently biased – in many cases quite aggressively – in favor of conservatives. Restrictive voting laws make casting a ballot disproportionately difficult for lower-income, non-white and young Americans. Unprecedented gerrymandering gives Republicans a built-in advantage in the race for the House, and according to FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, the Senate’s bias toward rural states makes the chamber about seven points redder than the nation as a whole. Thanks to the electoral college, two of the past five presidential elections have been won by Republicans who lost the popular vote – one reason why even before Justice Ginsburg’s death, 15 of the past 19 supreme court justices were appointed by GOP presidents.

The conservative movement, in other words, already had it pretty good. The average American disagrees with Republican orthodoxy on every major issue: healthcare, climate change, gun violence, immigration, taxes, Covid response. Yet thanks to the biases embedded in the American political process, Republicans have not just remained viable, but secured extraordinary amounts of power. We can’t know for certain who would benefit from upending the status quo that existed at the time of Justice Ginsburg’s passing – but we do know which party has the most to lose."

Biden doesn't just need to win, he needs to win big to avoid a major Constitutional crisis at best, and prolonged street violence -- cheered on by Trump -- at worst.

But as I've been saying, if we are looking at Civil War II scenarios, denying Merrick Garland a hearing was the proverbial shooting on Fort Sumter.

McConnell shot first.  Dems need to be certain to shoot last.  If Biden has to be dragged kicking and screaming to this realization, so be it.

Universal voting registration.  Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.  Pack the court.

"This is about power."

I don't like the expression "Democrats going nuclear."  We didn't start the fire, broseph.  If Biden wins and we can take back the Senate this November there should be hell to pay.  (Likely perhaps, but not certain.)  Mitch McConnell has been wiping his ass with Senatorial norms for his entire career.  He's the one who pushed Dems into a corner.  If a moderate Merrick Garland was on the Supreme Court now, Republicans would still be in the enviable position of getting a fifth extremist right-winger onto the court.

Long story short, David Corn gets it -- "To Honor Ginsburg, Democrats Have One Choice: Go Nuclear":

"It will be bare-knuckles politics from the right. Do or die. By any means necessary. To replace Ginsburg with a young right-wing extremist. And for the Democrats to have a chance of thwarting them, they must realize that this fight is not only a matter of persuasion. They will not win by writing well-reasoned op-eds. Cable host tirades will be of little use. Panel discussions will be irrelevant. Clever ads highlighting GOP hypocrisy won’t do the trick. Angry editorials in the New York Times won’t help. Not even a freckin’ David Brooks column ('conservatives should realize they have an interest in preserving democratic norms!') will do them any good. Passionate speeches on the floor of the US Senate? Fuggedabout it.

This is about power."

Obama's greatest fault was believing that Republican politicians would ever deal with a black president in good faith.  Observing norms served him well as a rising politician, but they failed him as a president in a post-factual, post-policy era of Fox News.

Biden might well make the same mistake.  If things break right this November, it's our job to hold his feet to the fire and remind him that post-Trump nothing is sacred, and everything (for better or worse) is now possible.

And as I read recently on Twitter but can't find a cite for, Jon Stewart should apologize to a generation of middle-age liberals for convincing us that posting video clips highlighting the egregious hypocrisy and outright lies of Republicans was somehow a "win" for liberals, let alone anybody else in this damaged, teetering experiment in human freedom known as The United States.

What Me Worry?

When the aliens finally land and take over they'll be most interested in figuring out how America, a nation based mostly on white supremacy and a whiny, burning sense of entitlement, ever got as far as it did:

"At least seven people have died in connection to a coronavirus outbreak that continues to sicken people in Maine following a wedding reception held over the summer that violated state virus guidelines, public health authorities said.

The August wedding reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket is linked to more than 175 confirmed cases of the virus, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

Maine authorities have identified overlaps between the wedding reception and outbreaks elsewhere in the state. An employee of the York County Jail attended the wedding, Maine CDC officials have said. Maine health officials have also said an outbreak at a Madison rehabilitation center, which is the site of six of the seven deaths, is connected to the wedding because an employee of the facility lives in the same household as a person who attended."

You get to a point where even Darwin would blush. 

American Exceptionalism Part 2,836

White people literally drowning to death in their expensive boats to support Trump is peak 2020.

Peak white people, really.

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) September 7, 2020

"I wouldn't trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'"

I feel the way about Dave Grohl that I do about Sting -- why listen to his later stuff when you can pump Nirvana (or The Police) straight into your ear-holes?

My music snobbery aside, this piece on (not) opening up schools this fall is excellent and even a pretty wonderful love letter to his mom, a public school teacher:

"Every teacher has a 'plan.' Don’t they deserve one too? My mother had to come up with three separate lesson plans every single day (public speaking, AP English, and English 10), because that’s what teachers do: They provide you with the necessary tools to survive. Who is providing them with a set of their own? America’s teachers are caught in a trap, set by indecisive and conflicting sectors of failed leadership that have never been in their position and can’t possibly relate to the unique challenges they face. I wouldn’t trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' if they had never sat behind a drum set, so why should any teacher trust Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to tell them how to teach, without her ever having sat at the head of a class? (Maybe she should switch to the drums.) Until you have spent countless days in a classroom devoting your time and energy to becoming that lifelong mentor to generations of otherwise disengaged students, you must listen to those who have. Teachers want to teach, not die, and we should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are. For without them, where would we be?

May we show these tireless altruists a little altruism in return. I would for my favorite teacher. Wouldn’t you?"

Amen.  If anything, Grohl is pulling his punches.  We have no plan for opening schools this fall beyond "try not to get sick and die."  It's pure Trumpism.  And it's going to get children and adults killed.