Enough Already

How To Spend the Last Weekend

Sanity Son: I voted and I don’t want to hear another word about it. It’s just too aggravating. So don’t talk about it anymore.

Sanity Clause Proprietor: That’s an eminently sane reaction.

Indeed, I’ve had it, too. Almost. There isn’t a single poll worth considering—Nate Silver actually thinks they’re fixed—or a speculation or an analysis worth reading in these last days. No one knows what’s gonna happen. No one. I’ll have some last words before Tuesday, especially from members of the Sanity Patrol whom I respect, but there is a more immediate question: How do we make it through the weekend? I’ll have some suggestions below. But first, defying Sanity Son, I do have a couple of political thoughts:

The Wall Street Journal “Decides”

Well, not really. The Journal has conformed to a long tradition of not endorsing a presidential candidate. Sort of. Here are their final evaluations of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Hmmm…do you sense a sort of non-endorsement endorsement there? At the very least, there’s a moral equivalence that doesn’t exist in the real world. Let’s assume—although I don’t—that Harris is an unreconstructed cultural lefty, secretly in favor of DEI and transgender nonsense and racialist identity politics. I’d be very disappointed, and write early and often to prevent her from pursuing that agenda. (Though I’d also remember that ever since Reagan, the Democrats have been more fiscally responsible than Republicans.) But: Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government! He also adheres to a nativist, isolationist, protectionist form of populism that the WSJ’s editorial page has disdained…forever. And yet, here’s where the WSJ’s Trump evaluation ends up:

A second Trump term poses risks, but the question as ever is compared to what? Voters can gamble on the tumult of Trump, or the continued ascendancy of the Democratic left. We wish it was a better choice, but that’s democracy.

Nonsense. The “continued ascendancy of the Democratic left” has been stopped in its tracks. Two members of the left-wing Congressional “Squad” were defeated by moderates in primaries this year. Wokery has embarrassed itself with the corruption of Black Lives Matters and Ibram X. Kendi, and the intellectual flummery of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book.

Let’s take the best case Trump scenario: He isn’t really serious about the extreme craziness he’s been spouting. Deporting millions of illegal immigrants turns out to be deporting a couple hundred Venezuelan gang-bangers. His Putinesco lap-doggery turns out to be harmless bro-mides. He doesn’t unretire Mark Milley and court martial him. Liz Cheney faces no firing squad. Poor, damaged and deluded Bobby Kennedy Jr. isn’t put in charge of your childrens’ health. That still leaves a candidate who is nativist, isolationist and protectionist. Positions that have an ignominious track record in recent history. Positions that will lead to the last thing WSJ readers want—a deep recession—as surely as those same positions in the 1920s led to the economic disaster of the 1930s.

“We wish it was a better choice…” There is no way of gilding this gilt lily: Donald Trump is the worst major party candidate in American history. The WSJ should be grateful that we have a choice not to vote for him.

Wrong Track

I suspect that polling has met its Waterloo. It may get this election right, but that will be a matter of luck. Only about 6 in 100 citizens respond to pollsters’ phone calls, if that. I would suspect that they represent the mouthiest segment of our population. And the questions the pollsters ask! Is the country on the right track or the wrong track? Nearly seven in ten Americans think it’s on the wrong track, which is usually assumed to be an indictment of the Biden Administration. No doubt it is, in some small sense. But think about it for a minute. This is pure speculation on my part, but: Let’s say Trump has the support of 47% of the public. Let’s say 10% are knee-jerk Republicans whose lives aren’t so bad. That leaves 37% GOP wrong-trackers. Let’s stipulate that 10% of the remainder are hopeless lefties who think America is an Evil Empite. Let’s stipulate that half of the remaining 45% believe that any country where Donald Trump might be a plausible candidate must be on the wrong track. Add it up: 37 plus 10 plus 22 equals 69%. Does this tell us anything we don’t already know? Does it convey an even vaguely plausible measure of whether the country is actually on the wrong track? What it does is buoy the pessimist party. We’re not as bad as all that.

Good Line

Frank Luntz: “Donald Trump reminds women of their first husband’s divorce lawyer.”

And Now, What to do This Weekend…

If you’re not into extreme sports or, in the case of Sanity Goddess (and yes, her spouse), you’re not into exercise at all, how do you get your mind off Trump? My friend and former editor Pamela Paul wrote this week the going to the movies was her escape. But that seems both expensive and, well, exertional when you have a flat screen television and streaming services, or a reading lamp and a pile of books. So let me recommend some off-the-beaten path possibilities for couch potatoes…

Television

SG and I are massive British mystery fans. How massive? Well, I just bought a red and black Toyota Camry Hybrid so that I can have a car that looks a little like Inspector Morse’s far classier Jag. If you haven’t watched the entire Morse series, you should. There’s also Endeavor (which we call Pre-Morse) and Inspector Lewis (ReMorse). Two brilliant Brit mysteries from the 1990s are Cracker starring the amazing Robbie Coltrane and Life on Mars with John Simm and Philip Glenister. And then there’s granddaddy of them all, if you really want deep escapery, Silent Witness—which Sanity Goddess and I consider comfort food. There are merely 27 seasons of it. We’re on 25 now. It’s about a team of forensic scientists who solve crimes. The mysteries are usually pretty good; in recent years, the science has been amazing. Emilia Fox—of the acting Foxes—has been on board throughout as Dr. Nikki Alexander, smart and decent and prone to “Oh no! Mr. Bill!” moments, but always shining through.

Books

Well, I usually save these for my quarterly My Book Pages posts, but I’ve been reading some great stuff about geniuses lately…and I’ll mention them here and return to them later. One hasn’t been published yet, David Denby’s Eminent Jews—splendid portraits of Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein. (If I had a music section here, and I probably should, I’d recommend listening to Lenny conducting anything, especially Mahler).

Michael Lewis once came to dinner at our house and wrote something snotty about New York dinner parties, but he’s a fabulous writer and I’m now reading Going Infinite, his biography of Sam Bankman-Fried. Another Jew.

And there’s Benjamin Labatut’s novel about yet another obnoxious Jewish genius, the physicist Johann Von Neumann, called The Maniac. Labatut’s last book, When the World Ceases to Have Meaning, was as good as anything I’ve read in the 21st century.

So few Semites, so much impact. As an antidote, I’ve just started Alan Bennet’s delightful The Uncommon Reader, about Queen Elizabeth and books.

Sports

As a lifelong Mets, Jets and Knicks fan, I hesitate to even mention it. But I came to re-love baseball this year, in part because of the earnest and thrilling way the Mets played the game. It’s over now—summer, as always, gone too soon—but the memories are pleasant and it’s only 3&1/2 months till Spring Training. That leaves the Jets. Oy Gevalt! Podcast partner John Ellis said, “You actually watch the Jets?” Sadly, I confess. Even when they win, which isn’t so often, they do things that are unforgivably terrible. Like last night, a Jets player spiked the ball just before he reached the end zone. It was ruled a fumble, the Houston Texans were given possession. Can I hear you say, Oy? Luckily there are the Knicks, who are playing splendid old-fashioned basketball—they’ve been known to pass the rock—under the guidance of Tom Thibodeau, who looks more like a homeless person than a basketball coach. They probably won’t win the championship but I watched them for two hours the other night and didn’t think once about Donald Trump. Truly a blessing.