Cromwell

David French is hoping–probably praying, in fact–that the Florida abortion referendum fails. Should he?

No, because French usually supports the Patrick Option, not the Franco Option, and the opposition to the amendment is rooted in the latter. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have no interest in creating a culture of life in Florida, as evidenced by their refusal to expand Medicaid; they are far more interested in imposing a culture of pain on their opponents. DeSantis is illegally using state resources to fight the amendment; he has even gone so far as to threaten TV stations with criminal sanctions if they run commercials supporting the amendment. And, of course, if the amendment passes, state government will do its best to ignore the results, because that’s what it always does. Expect lots of new regulations harassing abortion clinics that will be upheld by the DeSantis-controlled Supreme Court, because it is a purely political animal at this point.

Is that what French really wants? I certainly hope not.

With the exception of some commercials attacking trans people, the focus of the Trump campaign has been on the supposedly evil effects of illegal immigration, not wokeness. For her part, Harris has gone out of her way to let her identity speak for itself. As a result, it hasn’t been necessary for her to have a Sister Souljah moment on trans activists, affirmative action, or reparations, to name just a few.

Of course, if Trump wins, fighting wokeness will become one of the themes of his administration, and the left will respond accordingly. The issue may be in hibernation, but it hasn’t gone away by any means.

Several prominent Never Trumper commentators have argued that Harris needs to reach out to the moderate right in order to win the election. If Trump is the threat to liberal democracy that she (correctly) insists that he is, the circumstances demand no less, according to them. Is she doing it?

Yes, and offering to put a Republican in the cabinet is the least of it. As The Economist has pointed out, her position on immigration is now fairly consistent with Trump’s in 2016 (but not today). She talks tough on crime, notes that she owns a gun, and makes no effort to focus on identity politics, instead letting her status as a black/Asian female speak for itself. Her stance on Ukraine and Gaza is broadly consistent with that of the moderate right. Her positions on tax increases for the wealthy are more restrained than Biden’s. She says very little about climate change. On the whole, there is very little here for PBPs to criticize.

The one exception is abortion, where she knows her position has strong public support. It would be foolhardy for her to accept some sort of compromise proposal on that issue.

Will the united front depress progressives and cause them to stay home? Thus far, the answer appears to be no; the candidacy of a vibrant young minority female has been enough to inspire the base without many concessions on policy. Let’s hope we see the fruits of their optimism on Election Day.

Americans are clearly better off now than they were in November of 2020, when the pandemic was raging and the unemployment rate was six percent. Harris appears to have conceded that Americans were better off during the Trump years than today, however. She is making no effort to remind the voters about Trump’s chaotic response to the pandemic, which, based on the outcome of the House and Senate races, almost certainly was the reason he lost the election. Why?

I wish I knew. I can only guess that Harris has accepted that there is no way to puncture America’s collective amnesia about the impacts of the virus, possibly because it would bring back unpleasant memories of conflicts over masks and vaccines during the Biden years. But by conceding the point, she is making it easy for Trump to argue that swing voters should support him because his economy was better, which is, for them, the only good reason to vote for him.

Imagine that you are Bibi Netanyahu (it’s hard, I know). You are still evaluating your retaliation options. What do you do?

The first logical choice is to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. The problem here is that you can’t do it without American help, and even then, you might not succeed. In addition, the dynamics of the situation are different than they were in the Trump era; the Iranian nuclear program is far more advanced, and Iran is now effectively an ally of Russia. What you destroy, Putin might replace. This is not a viable option.

The second possibility is to bomb Iran’s oil production facilities. This will cause major economic pain, but the pain won’t be limited to Iran; it will be felt by everyone in the world except the Russians. The international community will be outraged. This probably isn’t a good idea, either.

Your ultimate goal should be regime change. If you attack Revolutionary Guard personnel and facilities and prove to the Iranian people that the repression machine can be defeated, it might move the populace to revolution, either now or in the future, when the Supreme Leader is gone. Why not try it?

As I’ve noted before, there are three wildly different revolutionary visions behind the Trump candidacy: the Godly Society; a techno-aristocracy; and the New Confederacy. Which of these has Trump’s support?

Based on the campaign to date, all of them! He put J.D. Vance, one of the most conspicuous advocates of the Godly Society, on the ticket; Elon Musk is one of his biggest supporters, and he is now advocating for crypto; and his states’ rights position on abortion is consistent with the New Confederacy. He also wants to bring back the names of Confederate loser generals for our military bases.

Trump is obviously trying to maintain party unity by nodding to all of the three groups. Can he successfully juggle their demands if he wins? Probably not.

The NYT published a lengthy interview with J.D. yesterday. Here are my thoughts:

1. The interviewer expended a lot of energy trying to get J.D. to justify sending wildly different messages to the base and to more establishment institutions. He shouldn’t have bothered; virtually all politicians do some form of this in order to get votes. What makes Trump and J.D. different from the rest is the vast distance between the messages, not the fact that one exists.
2. The headline news about the interview pertained to J.D.’s refusal to admit that Biden won the election. Since Vance would be excommunicated by the base and by Trump if he had done otherwise, this should come as a surprise to exactly nobody.
3. The interviewer was shrewd enough to ask Vance questions about what happens to the economy if millions of essential workers are driven out of the country. Vance insists that there is a huge pool of discouraged workers who will re-enter the labor force to work in construction (or, I suppose, packing plants or agricultural fields) if the illegal immigrants leave. The numbers and common sense clearly don’t back him up, so he is either deluded or simply doesn’t care–probably the latter.
4. The interviewer should have asked him where the money is going to come for the deportation scheme, and whether the government will obey court orders blocking it. He didn’t, unfortunately.
5. Vance sort of makes it sound like his ideas about abortion have evolved naturally to become identical to Trump’s. That clearly isn’t true. He is swallowing his principles in favor of his ambitions.

It’s been warm here the last few days, but that’s over. The wind is howling, and the temperature is plummeting. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow night. Winter is almost here.

So is the election. It makes you feel great, doesn’t it?

The Lebanese government is basically a joke. The Lebanese military is little better. The international peacekeeping force has never done anything meaningful to separate Hezbollah from the Israelis. As a result, you can certainly understand why the Israeli government has shown minimal interest in an international solution to the Hezbollah problem.

But what are the better alternatives? Israel’s attempt to create a proxy force in the border areas was a failure and would be no more successful today. That leaves two options: an indefinite occupation at a time when the country’s resources are already being stretched in Gaza; or a withdrawal after a short period of time that results in Hezbollah, weakened but not destroyed, returning to the border area with thousands of rockets and the will to use them.

In short, if the objective of the Hezbollah campaign is to provide permanent security for the residents of Israel, it will almost certainly fail. The Israelis are much better at tactics than they are at strategy.

Within weeks of taking office, Trump had implemented several of his key policy objectives through executive action. Relying on existing (if dubious) statutory authority, he imposed a large universal tariff on all imported goods and a massive one on Chinese products; he cut off all aid to Ukraine; and he diverted a significant part of the defense budget to his new deportation scheme, which included the construction of vast migrant camps in Texas. The base rejoiced, but moderate voters who had supported him in the belief that he would just bring back the 2019 economy were appalled. Deliberate acts of cruelty, the illegal use of funds, large price increases, and deference to dictators wasn’t what they voted for! Trump’s favorability ratings, never high, plummeted.

A federal court in the Ninth Circuit issued an injunction prohibiting the most extreme deportation measures. In addition, there were mass demonstrations in major urban areas all over the country. Trump responded to the national expressions of disapproval by threatening to use all of the resources of the federal government to punish his most vocal critics. He ignored the injunction and continued with the deportation plan. He also promised to use the Insurrection Act to shoot demonstrators.

The march to fascism had begun. It was going to be a long four years.

Harris hasn’t done much to put distance between herself and Biden on the Gaza issue. As a result, I’m reading plenty about how the disgruntled Arab-Americans in Michigan will refuse to vote for her. What is going on here?

I think the Harris campaign has decided that the votes of Liz Cheney Republicans are more important to her campaign on a national basis than the “uncommitted” votes in Michigan. She is gambling that the latter group will ultimately come around purely as a result of Trump’s awfulness. Let’s hope she’s right.

Unlike Biden in the final stages of the 2020 campaign, Kamala Harris has no great vision to improve the country. She has no plans to dramatically expand the safety net or to replace the dollar store economy with something more equitable. Even if she did, it wouldn’t happen; the lack of a majority in the Senate, the filibuster, and the Supreme Court would be insurmountable obstacles. A vote for Harris, therefore, is effectively a vote for the status quo.

Trump will similarly be frustrated by the lack of a real working majority in either the House or the Senate. For him, however, the inability to legislate–except on tax issues, on which he will undoubtedly defer to PBPs in Congress–is not really a problem. His tariffs and his deportation regime–his two significant policy initiatives– will be based, however unlawfully, on existing statutes, not any new ones.

In the end, therefore, Biden’s theory of the case was correct. This election is really about whether Trump can seize control of what he calls the “deep state” and use it to punish his political, cultural, and intellectual enemies in violation of constitutional norms. Nothing more or less is at stake here.

One of the mixed blessings I get from having a variety of TV sports subscriptions is the ability to watch political ads from all over the country. You might be surprised by how similar they are: Mr. Democrat voted for transgender rights and to defund the police; Mr. Republican is an extremist on abortion rights. The candidates are fungible; the song remains the same.

The most memorable commercial I’ve seen was a Gallego ad from Arizona. In the ad, a guy talking about Kari Lake says, “She’s not conservative–she’s nuts!”

Exactly. If only the Harris ads were that punchy.

On the Russian dictator named Putin.

For his dear old friend Don he was rootin’.

And why would he not?

Trump would help him a lot.

On that point, there can be no disputin’.

This was hardly our first hurricane: we lived through Charley and Wilma; we evacuated during Irma but struggled through its aftermath; and we had to reconstruct our home after Ian. In one respect, however, this was the worst one; we had no information about anything that was going on in the world except what we could see for ourselves and what we heard from neighbors. That has never happened in Florida.

At least it is mostly over for us, because we live closer to the top of the mountain than the bottom. If you own property near a river, your ordeal is just beginning.

A note to my readers: Helene delayed but did not cancel a proposed vacation. Regular posts will resume around 10/12.