On Liberty Watch

Next time you hear about threats tp democracy, remember this video.

JFB

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I write this not as a partisan. Actually I have no use for either ticket, or for that matter, any of the players that constitute said tickets. I suppose that makes me a quadruple hater in that I can’t stand either ticket or any of the players on them. But because I have retained my sense of humor, I simply laugh at the truly awful arguments the candidates make for their respective “positions”. 

However I am a student of the game. And so I have studied the various (rather pathetic) machinations of the candidates as they scramble for the few remaining voters that remain to be convinced. So here is my analysis. 

Each candidate has weaknesses that would ordinarily be fatal to a candidacy. But we are not talking about A-list candidates, which is partly why no one has scored a knockout punch.  More importantly, neither candidate has a coherent, much less plausible theory of the race. As a result, each one continues to struggle gamely toward the finish line hoping against hope to somehow garner the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.   

So what exactly is the Trump theory of the race? It is that Biden is bad. That, mingled with all Trump’s grievances, is what the race is all about from the Trumpian perspective.  Not to mention that Biden committed the ultimate sin of beating him in 2020, turning Trump into what he fears the most: being publicly (and correctly) tagged as a loser. 

And so, naturally enough, he continues to deny that he lost in 2020. He might even believe it.

So let’s turn to Harris. What exactly is the Harris theory of the race? It is that Trump is bad. Combine that with the insight (which is to say none) of a San Francisco progressive in a one party state and you have the Harris campaign. 

This should not be taken as a criticism of the campaign managers. Trump for instance, has real professionals advising him. He just ignores them. I mean how hard can it be to focus on the issues the voters care about in survey after survey? Immigration, the state of the economy, crime.   Last I checked, Haitian immigrants eating pets was not at the top of the list. Neither was crowd size at rallies. 

Well let’s take a look at the Harris campaign. She too has pretty smart advisors. Her problem is that she listened to them, probably out of necessity. And so she is running a repeat of the Biden basement campaign. The underlying idea is that if she can keep away from a turned-on microphone or camera where she has to say something substantive, she may be able to hold on until election day, counting on Trump to deliver a generic Democratic victory.  

And therein lies the rub. Harris is utterly incapable of saying anything even remotely sensible unless it is already on a teleprompter in a controlled environment. Even when she is being questioned by friendlies in one of her infrequent interviews every answer quickly turns into a meaningless word salad. And the public is beginning to notice. (Not that Trump is coherent, but he is speaking to a different audience.)

So where does that leave us? According to the conventional wisdom, 7 battleground states will determine the winner. In the west we have Arizona and Nevada; In the South are  Georgia and North Carolina, and in the “Blue Wall” Midwest we have Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

Election analysts and pollsters are busy trying to guess which states will wind up in which column after all the votes are counted. But maybe they are asking the wrong question. The right question to ask may not be about individual states. The right question may be: to what extent are the votes in those battleground states likely to be correlated? To the extent that the battleground states have voters whose preferences are highly correlated, the ultimate winner may win anywhere from 5 to 7 of the contested states. That would make the contest much less of a nail biter come election day.     

So what would be the factor that would account for the potential correlation of the voters, especially from different sections of the country? The underlying issue is whose judgement do the voters trust, or better yet, whose judgement do they distrust the least? 

Kamala Harris faces several difficulties here. First, she is the sitting Vice President. The last time a sitting Vice-President won the White House was  in 1988 when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis. Before Bush, the last sitting VP to be elected President was Martin Van Buren back in 1836. Also take note: Bush served as VP under Ronald Reagan, who was very popular. Unlike Joe Biden. 

The second difficulty Harris faces is that in order to win she has to hold together a fractious coalition whose members face each other with daggers drawn. Democratic elites are becoming progressively less enamored with Israel’s conduct of its war against Iran and its acolytes.  This is especially dangerous for Harris because it will make it extremely difficult for her to carry both Pennsylvania and Michigan, which are Blue Wall states, and vital to her chances. (Dearborn Michigan has the largest  Muslim population in the U.S., and that population, normally Democratic, has vociferously attacked the Biden Administration over its handing of the Israeli — Gaza war.)

The third difficulty Harris faces is that the votes of the Blue Wall states may be highly correlated—and correlated with other battleground states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are 75% – 80% white. They are slightly older than the nation as a whole. Most importantly, whites without college degrees cast about ⅗ of the votes in Wisconsin and about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And whites without a college degree are a core constituency of the modern Trumpified GOP. Especially men without a college degree.

Finally, Harris has to make the argument that she represents change. And to do that she must create a sense of trust with the voters. This, she has conspicuously failed to do. In fact, it may be the fatal flaw of the Basement Campaign strategy.  How do you develop a bond of trust with the voters when you are hiding from them? In the end the voters are liable to decide to go with “the devil you know”. They know Trump; they don’t know Harris. So when the late deciders begin to break, which should be about now, my guess is that they will go with Trump. And send him to the White House. Again.

Just for the record. I am not rooting for either one of them. I have already voted for Nikki Haley. 

JFB

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The Battle of the Idiots continues. In it, Kamala Harris has her second sit down interview with a reporter since she secured the Democratic nomination. It is, on Kamala Harris’s part, a cliché fest. A truly cringeworthy event. See below.

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Hands down, in Philadelphia’s presidential debate sponsored by ABC News, former President Donald Trump emerged as the clear loser. Serves him right. As usual he lied throughout the event, fell into the numerous traps Harris laid out for him, failed to challenge Harris’s share of whoppers and didn’t press her on her remarkably convenient set of implied policy changes. 

He didn’t ask why the sudden change of heart on fracking.   Nor did he point out that in 2019 she opposed allowing citizens to purchase private health insurance. He didn’t call her out on her support for using taxpayer dollars to fund trans surgeries for migrant inmates. He also allowed her to dodge the question of whether she would support any restrictions on abortion. And not to put too fine a point on Trump’s strategic incompetence, he actually allowed Harris to put him on the defensive over our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.   

The list of missed opportunities is almost endless. Instead of things that matter, Trump wallowed in his personal grievances, and produced the usual lies and wild exaggerations. And speaking of wild hyperbole, we learned that Trump is concerned that (illegal?) immigrants in Ohio are eating citizens’ pets. And that crime everywhere is the world is down except here in the United States where it continues to rise, presumably because other countries send their criminals to America to ply their trade. 

A time-series chart produced by the data firm Statista shows what nonsense this is. (See below). The U.S. does have a much higher murder rate than Europe, for instance. But it has been much higher than Europe’s rate for at least 20 years. And—wait for it—when did the US rate explode to the upside? That would be around 2019—well before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and when none other than Donald Trump was president. Hmm. 

But let’s not go down a rabbit hole while trying to illustrate the obvious, namely that Donald Trump is a serial liar. Strategically speaking the important question to ask is this: was Trump just making up stuff as he went along or was he actually trying to accomplish something?   Well, if his goal was to remind educated voters what they don’t like about him (actually why they detest him) he can claim the night was a stunning success. 

But does it matter? Will it have any impact on the election results? That is really hard to say. I am reminded of the time in the early 1970s that Henry Kissinger asked Chinese premiere Zhou Enlai whether he thought the French Revolution was a success. “Too early to say” Zhou reportedly replied. And so it is with the schoolyard brawl we call a debate. 

By all accounts the number of people who have not made up their minds about either of the two major party candidates is vanishingly small. The majority opinion among the electorate seems to be disgust, which is a testament to the good sense of the voting public. It is unlikely that partisans of either side will be persuaded to change their opinions. The vote of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is not in doubt. 

What really matters is the impact on what we charitably call low information voters. Trump appears to have an edge in these voters. They tend to show up in presidential election years, but not off years. So the question is: in what numbers do they show up to vote? And where do they show up? If they turnout in large numbers in rural areas, they would advantage Trump. If, on the other hand, Trump succeeded in losing more suburban women (a real possibility) or if Kamala Harris’s demeanor was reassuring to the remaining small contingent of undecided voters, then it would be advantage Harris. 

The Trump campaign is (predictably and with some justification) already whining about how the moderators treated their man. But when you complain about the ref, it means you are losing the game and you know it. 

The net of it is that in terms of style Harris won the debate, walking away.  In terms of substance—there wasn’t any to speak of. No surprise there. But keep in mind that polling indicates an extraordinarily tight race. A few thousand votes could matter in swing states. Will the debate change enough votes, or increase turnout on the margin where it matters? As Zhou Enlai said, It’s too early to tell. 

JFB

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It has been over a month since Vice-President Kamala Harris became the presumptive and then the actual Democratic nominee for President. During all that time she has not had a single press conference or  sit-down interview with a bona fide journalist. Just recently, her campaign announced that she has (finally) scheduled an interview for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, with CNN. The interview will be aired this Thursday evening.  The questioner will be the network’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash. 

Herewith are some questions Ms Bash could profitably ask the Vice-President and her running mate. 

1. Up until the moment that President Joe Biden was effectively forced off the ticket, you defended him against the charge that his mental acuity was rapidly declining. Do you now regret doing so? If not, why not? Do you maintain that Mr Biden still has what it takes to do the job for another 4 years? If he is incapacitated, should Mr Biden resign now?
2. Your running mate Governor Walz has said just recently that the First amendment does not protect either “hate speech” or “misinformation”. Do you agree with him? If you agree, what steps would you take to restrict speech with which you disagree? If you restrict speech, how would you respond to the legal challenges that are sure to come?
3. Before you dropped out of the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination you said you wanted to ban fracking. Recently a campaign spokesman said you were no longer in favor of such a ban. Which is it? Are you in favor of a ban or not? If you are no longer in favor of a ban, what prompted you to change your mind?
4. Just recently, in the face of near universal disparagement by economists across the ideological spectrum, you suggested that your administration would impose price controls on groceries if prices were deemed “excessive”. What makes you think that a government agency is capable of determining the “correct” price for groceries, or anything else for that matter? How would you avoid creating shortages of basic commodities? Can you name a single country in the world where price controls have actually worked?  What makes you think that they would work this time, after such a record of failure?   
5. Turning to foreign policy: it is now reliably reported that Al Qaede, the terrorist organization,  is operating in Afghanistan. In light of that, would you still call the Biden administration’s decision to abandon our military presence there a success? The Taliban has imposed strict Sharia law in Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world where girls are forbidden to attend school after the primary grades. The U.S. is the largest donor of aid to Afghanistan, with the UN shipping about $2.6 billion from the US since the collapse of the government after the US withdrawal. Would a Harris Administration continue with this funding? If so, why?
6. It has been about 2.5 years since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine. The US has resisted the Russian invasion by being the largest supplier of armaments to Kiev. But the US has never explained its strategy or its goals to the American people. Since you are Vice President my question is: Why not? What goal would the Harris Administration seek and what strategy would the Harris Administration implement to achieve the goal? How would the Harris Administration define success in achieving the goal? 
7. Turning to the Middle East: On October 7, Hamas launched a savage surprise attack on Israel. According to polling, something like 70% of Gazan residents are sympathetic with Hamas. Would you continue the Biden Administration’s policies with respect to Israel and Gaza? If not how would a Harris Administration differ from the Biden Administration? 
8. Turning toward Asia: China has become increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea and beyond, going so far as to have the Chinese military violate Japanese air space with fighter jets; China has also attacked Philippine fishing vessels with water canons. China, along with North Korea and Iran have continued to supply Russia with war materiel, in support of Russia’s war against Ukraine. What defense policy approach would a Harris Administration adopt vis-a-vis China? Would it be materially different from the Biden Administration’s approach? 
9. Iran, Russia, North Korea and China all appear to be cooperating to act against Western interests. Are they? If so what, if anything, does a Harris Administration intend to do about it? In 2020 then Senator Harris said “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need.” In light of all the threats the US and its western allies face, do you still want to reduce the defense budget?
10. (10)Depending on how you measure it, the US has accumulated about $35 trillion in debt obligations through bond sales, or about 100% of GDP.  The largest drivers of the debt are Social Security and Medicare. Left alone the Social Security Trust fund will run out in the mid 2030s necessitating a drastic reduction in benefits. How would a Harris Administration address this problem?
11. JFB

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Well, well. The Harris campaign, all aglow in the rapture the press has bestowed on it, has apparently decided that saving democracy isn’t such a great theme after all. And to be fair, it’s more than a little awkward to go on and on about the wonders of democracy just after completing the hard work of deposing the President without having won a single convention delegate. 

Be that as it may, the campaign has recently begun test marketing a new theme, namely Freedom. That development would be extremely encouraging if, and here is the big if, IF the campaign (and presumably the candidates) had the slightest idea of what they were talking about. But they don’t. Not by a long shot. 

In fact the Harris definition of Freedom, actually mangles the meaning of the word. In the Harris definition Freedom refers to rights granted by government, not inherent rights possessed by individuals.  By implication, Government may rescind those rights in order to coerce individuals to behave in ways the government approves. Freedom in this context is not freedom from, it is freedom to. 

Anyone who doubts this should listen to Harris’s VP candidate, Tim Walz, expound on his understanding (or misunderstanding) of the First amendment. Just yesterday Walz announced that “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy”. 

Well actually the Constitution does protect hate speech, misinformation (real or imagined) and other stuff Walz doesn’t like very much. And anybody running for President or Vice-President ought to know it. 

The text of the First amendment says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press…” That is, or ought to be, fairly clear to anybody who has mastered reading at the 7th grade level. (Walz, the history teacher really ought to look it up).  

It doesn’t stop there though. In 2020 as governor of Minnesota, Walz set up a Covid-19 hotline for Minnesota residents to use to inform the authorities of their suspicions that their neighbors might be violating lockdown measures. Sounds like the kind of Freedom that the East German Stasi specialized in. 

Wait—there’s more. Walz and Harris argue that they want everyone to be free to join a union. Except that everyone already is free to do just that. What they really advocate is that unions (who contribute to them) should be free to coerce non-union members into joining a union, or be coerced into paying union dues. 

But here Harris & Walz are again in the wrong side of the First amendment. They are either ignorant of, or have chosen to ignore Supreme Court rulings. In a 2018 landmark case–Janus v. AFSCME–the Supreme Court ruled that union fees charged to non-members in the public sector violate First amendment speech rights. That seems not to bother the Harris team in the slightest.

Similarly, Harris et. al. argue for “freedom to be safe from gun violence.” This of course, is simply a lightly disguised plea for gun control. Why not a call for freedom from knife violence? Or bank robbery, which, when I last checked, was not guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, unlike the right to bear arms, which is. And why not a call for the aggressive prosecution of violators of gun laws? Hmm. Enforcing existing laws might prove to be a tad inconvenient.

Or how about the freedom to read the books you want to read. Well of course you actually have that right and it is well protected by that First amendment the Harris team likes to ignore. You can buy any book you want at Amazon. And the courts (the ones Harris wants to “reform”) will protect that right. What Harris et. al.  really mean is that librarians (and teachers unions) should be able to stock public school libraries with the books they please without regard to parental oversight. You know those pesky voters, speaking of Democracy.

In a similar vein,  Walz as governor, signed a bill in 2023 making Minnesota a sanctuary state for child sex-changes. According to National Review online, the law grants legal protection to children who travel to Minnesota for “gender-affirming care” that “includes puberty blockers, reconstructive genital surgery and hormone therapy.”  Among other tings,  the law prohibits Minnesota officials from complying with subpoenas, extraditions or arrests related to  sex-change procedures received in Minnesota, even if they are crimes in another states. 

Let’s put this in perspective. In Minnesota it is illegal to sell or furnish tobacco and tobacco related products to anyone under the age of 21. There’s Freedom for you. 

I could go on, but you get the point. When Harris and Walz talk about Freedom, they are not talking about Freedom at all. It is code for establishing more governmental coercion. And unfortunately, probably because of unrelenting attacks by political extremists on both sides of the aisle, they have the wind at their backs. 

A recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE)  published by Reason, a libertarian magazine, found that more than half of Americans think that the First Amendment provides too many rights. That is worth thinking about before pulling the lever for either of the clowns, and I use the term advisedly, who are the major party candidates for President. 

JFB

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Casey Stengel asked the famous question in frustration when talking to the 1962 Mets after they racked up a record breaking 162 losses in their inaugural season. 

The same question might be asked of both the Trump and Harris campaigns. Both look like they are doing their level best to lose the upcoming face-off this November. Unfortunately, only one of them can lose. And that is very, very unfortunate. 

When Donald J Trump selected J.D. Vance to be his running mate it was apparent to roughly everybody that there was a very good chance that President Joe Biden was going to be forced out of the race. However, the Trump campaign simply assumed that (1) Biden would be the opponent, and that (2) Trump would easily win, perhaps in a landslide.  

As a result, Trump’s VP selection was drenched in hubris. He made no effort to broaden the pool of potential voters he could appeal to. Nor did the campaign do any serious research into potentially damaging revelations about Vance, or come up with responses to those revelations.  Not surprisingly, the roll-out did not go well. 

And then after successfully pushing Biden out the door, along comes Kamala Harris to the rescue. Except that in the VP selection process, she, like Trump, decided to double down, this time, ideologically. She eventually settled on Tim Walz, currently the governor of deep blue Minnesota, who distinguished himself by fiddling in 2020 while Minneapolis burned. In so doing, she selected as her running mate a hard-left progressive like herself.

Harris did not attempt to broaden her appeal by selecting Josh Shapiro, an outspoken defender of Israel and a relatively moderate Democratic governor of a must-win swing state.  Instead Harris apparently decided to placate the progressive wing of her party which had lobbied furiously against Shapiro. 

This even as “Squad” member Cori Bush (D-Mo)  was in the process of suffering the same ignominious fate as fellow Squad member Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who was similarly ousted in his primary. The defeats of these two has been largely (and probably correctly) attributed to their outspoken sympathy for Hamas. 

Which also raises the question of how a Harris Administration would treat foreign policy, specifically with respect to Iran / Gaza and Israel; Ukraine and Russia, and potentially China and Taiwan.  It just won’t do to simply assert that Trump is clueless. Of course he is. But that doesn’t grant the opposition a get-out-of-jail-free card. We should hear what the candidate has to say. Something other than I’m not the other guy.

But there is a problem here. Actually two problems. The first is that Harris was part and parcel of the cover-up of Biden’s mental deterioration. Right up until the infamous debate Harris was still insisting, as she had previously on many occasions, that Biden was sharp as a tack. Since she is such an obvious liar, the question is: why would anybody believe a word she says?

There is second problem that is not unrelated to the first. While she is busy jettisoning her past positions at the speed of light, she apparently thinks people will take her seriously. For instance,  all of a sudden she is “tough on the border”. That Green New Deal she signed on to, well that was then. And that bit about defunding the police? She doesn’t buy into that anymore. 

Harris once wanted to ban fracking. And she wanted to ban offshore drilling on federal lands. Before she was against it she was in favor  of Medicare for All, not to mention that she once wanted to eliminate private health care insurance.  And she wanted to start a program of “mandatory buy backs” of “assault weapons”. 

In short, she endorsed the whole laundry list of progressive goals. And now she is trying to walk away from them. In that effort she is getting an assist from the clerks in the press  who call them selves journalists. But she chose a running mate that, from a policy standpoint, is even more extreme than she is. 

Not only is he on board with all her past positions, when he was Governor of Minnesota he issued executive orders giving minors access to irreversible chemical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria. Under his tenure Minnesota had some of the most draconian Covid-era restrictions, which unsurprisingly had little or no positive effects. His administration also attempted to ration social benefits by race. And let’s not forget the mayhem in Minnesota on Walz’s watch that overwhelmed law enforcement during the “mostly peaceful” protests that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder. 

The net of all this is that the two main contenders are acting like amateurs who don’t know the rules of the game.  In his VP selection,  Trump has doubled down on abrasiveness. But not on policy; it isn’t clear he even has what could be reasonably described as a coherent policy outlook. 

Harris, on the other hand, has not had a single press conference since Biden dropped out. Thus far she has been busy trying to disguise her extreme ideology by running a Biden style basement campaign. But her choice of Tim Walz as VP nominee gives the game away. She has assembled a team of hard core lefty extremists. And she can not be trusted. 

A pox on both their houses. 

JFB

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