I too missed the joy and excitement of campaigning candidates who were optimistic we could improve the planet. It is also exciting to see a teacher and coach on the stage. This is the America I grew up believing in. When we fight, we win! That’s a slogan that will carry Kamala and Coach to victory.
I agree with Joe. Lets first get rid of the fat orange felon/rapist/liar and then return to the political/policy debates that the country ought to have and needs to have. I don’t think Tim’Walz’is anything close to a socialist and most of his policies in Minnesota are ones I approve of. But I do suspect that I’ll disagree with a lot of the Harris/Walz policies. But the orange guy will be gone. And after a delicious round of explaining how they never actually liked him anyway it is possible that reasonable Rs may emerge. Right now the priority is to win
I can understand why people who are so gullible to continue to believe the lies of the lamestream media would hate President Trump. I’ve never met a Trump hater who could explain why with regurgitating the lies of democrats and the media. It’s time for the truth. For example, concerning Trump’s truth social Truth:
• Beijing Biden is the most corrupt POTUS in history
• While Barrack Hussein Obama may be the love child for the left and the media, he is a liar, a Marxist, a racist, he hates America and is the most divisive POTUS in history
• Pelosi is a power hungry leach who has made a couple hundred million dollars by leveraging insider knowledge of government real estate plans
• Adam Schiff is a pathological liar from Russiagate to the scam Jan. 6 committee
• The democrat party did execute a coup to replace Biden with Harris and in doing so disenfranchised 14 million democrat primary voters
Furthermore:
• Cackling Kamala is an idiot and Tampon Tim is a communist authoritarian
• Joe, if your withdrawal from Iraq was so good then why didn’t you do as Trump said and “take the oil”? What about the worst US military embarrassment in history Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal?
• President Trump never called the military “suckers” and “losers”. Kelly lied and no other staff member present substantiated his lie. Cassidy Hutchinson, former Whitehouse staff, also lied to the scam Jan.6 committee that President Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle on Jan. 6, which the Secret Service driver disputed and the scam Jan. 6 dog and Pelosi committee would not interview him.
• Policy wonks have demonstrated that they are incompetent “losers” who have dragged the US into endless foreign wars and staged coups to overthrow democratically elected regimes (can you say Victoria Nuland and Ukraine). Conflicts that have no strategic American interest at the cost of American blood and treasure for the sole purpose of extorting taxpayers money to the military industrial complex
• The so called “bipartisan” immigration deal was to codify the democrats open border program, not to increase border security
• “the intricacies of running a democracy…the finely-balanced system of checks and balances and data collection” my azz. One thing President Trump has exposed is that the US government industrial complex is the largest crime syndicate in the world, even larger than the CCP, whose sole mission is to extort as much personal wealth from US taxpayers for their personal benefit and it’s staffed with incompetents. Trump also exposed that the corrupt corporate media are their propaganda arm
President Trump brought peace and prosperity and was the best POTUS in our lifetime and will be again. I find all of the “orange man bad - mean tweets” feet stomping petulant children to be willfully ignorant and incapable of critical thinking. I’ve come to find Trump’s boorish personality to be a feature rather than a bug because he pizzes off all the people I want to be pizzed off from the crooks in DC to the lying media to the low-IQ, low information voters who believe them both. Prepare for MAGA 2.0!
I was going to read your comment and respond...until the first sentence, when you called my former colleagues, members of the "lame stream" media. I have had friends who were journalists who died in combat, who were seriously injured in riots, who were jailed in places like Iran, trying to bring the truth to people like you. There was nothing lame about them. Indeed, they are among the hardest working and, at times, courageous people on earth. The fact that you assume the opposite means that you've been manipulated by unpatriotic liars. So I decided not to read your comment. Giving you the time of day would have sullied the memory of my lost friends. The very thought of angry, silly people like you ruins a beautiful summer Sunday evening.
Oh Joe, who do you think you can fool? You’re lying again, of course you read what I wrote. I pointed out many of the lies you made in your article and you can’t justify them. You are an example of why the modern corporate media aren’t journalists, you are group think propagandists. Don’t you recognize why the media approval rating is in the low 20%, lower than that of congress? Your jealousy of people like me who can’t be manipulated by unpatriotic liars like you entertains me on this beautiful summer Sunday evening.
You claim that people like Joe and I are “jealous” of people like you. Frankly, your rant, like so much of MAGA rhetoric, comes off as a desperate cry for attention. Your candidate is (finally) beginning to drown in the absurdity of his lies and the sheer weight of his vitriol; it seems he has taken you with him.
Your fact free emotional comment proves my point. It is you who is ranting being unable to dispute any of the facts I presented, aren’t you?
You can believe your own lies or the lies of the media that President Trump whose popularity continues to rise to new record highs is “beginning to drown”. Denial is a sign of intellectual immaturity.
And while Trump exaggerates like the salesman that he is, he doesn’t deceptively lie about anything substantive. So to what “lies” do you refer?
Now Obama lies, like telling us that Obamacare would be cheaper for those of us who have to pay for it. Biden lies like telling us that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success and inflation is transitory and under control and that the border is secure. I recall that the media was all over President Trump a couple of years ago when he tweeted that Obama wiretapped his campaign. And it turned out to be true (can you say FBI operation crossfire hurricane?). So where is the reporting by the media on that inconvenient truth?
1) The Affordable Care Act has been a magnificent success, saving my family hundreds of thousands of dollars as they have battled life threatening afflictions. Ask the people of Kentucky, who have it and love it, and who thank their lucky stars they do not live in Tennessee, who have it barely at all.
2) I was disappointed in the Afghanistan withdrawal myself but that Biden carrying through a promise he made, for which I find it hard to fault him - and he is at least standing up to the Russians as opposed to the MAGA movement wants to hand over brave Ukraine to their fellow authoritarians in Moscow.
3) it was entirely justified to investigate the possibility that Trump was a Russian puppet given the extent to which he acted like one. And it is still hard to tell whether Trump is a Putin stooge or simply so love with authoriantarianism that it makes his lack of a moral center irrelevant. Your patriotism is phony, your campaign is joyless and your candidate is losing his race with dementia.
So Curtis you still can’t answer any of my questions; for example what are Trump’s lies? But I’ll still respond to your uninformed rant:
1) Obamacare was a lie. It was supposed to be the affordable care act, not a tax on working people in the form of increased premiums to subsidize health insurance for those who don't work hard enough to pay for their own. Half of the people on Obamacare are subsidized by the other half and as such the Obamacare disaster is the most regressive tax we have.
Being forced by the worthless federal gubernment to buy insurance I don't want, from a provider I don't like, for services I don't need at higher prices that subsidize those who don't work hard enough to pay for their own is essentially a tax.
As Bill Clinton said: “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world,”
And now the failed democrat party offers Obamacare to illegal aliens.
So Curtis get a job or start a business and pay for your own damn health insurance!.
2) Curtis, try to pay attention; the Biden administration’s disastrous embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine. However their incompetence can be compared to their Chinese spy balloon embarrassment. You have to be an idiot, a moron, a mental retard to think that Biden’s inauthenticity was “hard to fault”. The incompetent Biden administration abandoned 13 US Marines and an undocumented number of allies to the persecution and certain torture and certain death at the hands of the Taliban, the $1billion embassy and the Bagram Air Force Base which was the US only air base within a four hour air strike of China and Russia. You have to be a mental retard to think that this wasn’t the dumbest and most disastrous move in US military history all because Beijing Biden, the worst POTUS in history wanted to make a political statement on the history of 9/11.
3) While Putin is a thug, he is the bogyman that the corrupt DC swamp uses to propagandize the low IQ, uninformed voter base. The fact is that the CIA has murdered more people than Putin.
Concerning Ukraine the corrupt Washington DC swamp is making a fortune using the Ukraine war as an off shore money laundering scheme down to the life of the last Ukrainian. The arithmetic is just too big; $120 billion is just too much money, its three times the total defense budget of Russia and more than the GDP of Ukraine. The corrupt Biden administration refuses to give an accounting of where the money is going. The media ignores several significant matters:
A. Ukraine has one of the most corrupt Oligarchs in Europe, most of whom are descendants of the Nazi Germany SS
B. It was the CIA who ran a coop to overthrow the duly elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
C. Eastern Ukraine, specifically Donbas and Crimea, was part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, to appease his wife, made it part of Ukraine. The inhabitants speak Russian and practice a Russian culture.
D. The government in Kiev tried to force residents of eastern Ukraine to abolish their Russian heritage and language against their will
E. The eastern Ukrainians voted in a ballot referendum to keep their language and culture and it was ignored
F. The western Ukrainians actually began to bomb eastern Ukrainians
G. There were two Minsk agreements to end the Donbas fighting between Eastern Ukrainians and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The eastern Ukrainians ignored them
H. Sevastopol, in Crimea is Russia’s only winter port and is so strategic they are not going to give it up
I. Russia’s objective to start the war was to establish a land bridge to Crimea
J. They accomplished that objective in two weeks and Putin offered to negotiate a peace agreement, which Boris Johnson and Joe Biden refused
L. Putin would negotiate an agreement today but Biden has specifically told Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep fighting
M. There are reports that 80% of the military aid sent to Ukraine is being sold on the black market.
In closing, your jealousy of people who are far more intelligent and knowledgeable than you keeps percolating to the top.
Joe—-Great column, as usual. When I saw the headline, and read the piece, I couldn’t help but think of our late, great friend (as I do virtually every day), Greg Schneiders, wouldn’t he be enjoying all this immensely? Another point about Tim Walz—his liberalism is that of the Democratic/Farmer/Labor tradition of Humphrey and Mondale and others. Hardly radical. Finally, to underscore your point and Bo Cutter’s: The ONLY thing that matters this year is beating Trump. The ONLY thing.
It is always rewarding to read Mr. Klein's thoughts. Almost brought tears. Thank you. If we are soldiers together in the fight against Trump, I am very proud to have Joe Klein in my unit.
Joe, do you believe that the toxic partisanship dividing the United States will be relieved if The Democrats win? Do you think they will make the bold structural moves needed to make politics representative, honest, accessible to all and fun again?
I believe Trump is a one-off. I think the power of his venom is unique. But I don't think the Dems are capable of transcending their caucus-identity-politics. Things will be better without Trump...but this is an old, rutted democracy that needs some new ideas.
Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure I share your confidence that Republicans will move back towards the center let alone sanity. My fear is that they will double down, as will the progressive DNC, creating even more polarization. Sometimes systems need to be subjected to Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. Sometime The Republic is going to have take heed of Washington’s and Hamilton’s warning about the danger of party politics and vote for Independents. RFK Jnr is no weirder than Trump and not much weirder than Harris, would build a more balanced Administration and take on campaign finance and electoral reform. If not now when? PS. If the reason is you believe Trump will destroy The Republic then we have a more existential problem….that The Republic isn’t fit for purpose in today’s world. Personally I have faith that The Judiciary, States, Legislature and Armed Forces are more than a match for even the most deranged POTUS.
Here’s to the joy again of being a Democrat and the hopes that now go with it. Biden’s place in history is secured, and should she win, electoral gods permitting, Biden will be regarded forever for rising up in 2020 and stepping down in 2024 as the heroic savior of our country.
On another note, it’s easy, now, for those of us thoroughly vaxxed and boosted, to forget what it was like in the dark early days of the pandemic. Nobody, from the CDC on down, really knew what we were up against, how bad it could be. In this neighborhood of a major eastern city the rescue sirens sounded all day and into the night for weeks (or was it months?) on end. But there were 2 things urban teachers (in particular) knew all too well: one, running classrooms in that fear permeated, locked down atmosphere, in those buildings, (masks, children?) would be barely doable, if at all, and two, the teacher would get sick in those close quarters and potentially die. Nobody knew then if the time out of school would be detrimental, or that much of Zoom instruction was ridiculous. In those months before the vaccine especially, to err on the side of caution was perhaps the best option.
Joe, thank you for writing this. I have been back and forth every day, Trump or Harris. Many of the progressive policies are so vile to me but I think the country can survive 4 years of Harris/Walz and have a reset in 2028. I’m not so sure we will be able to have a fair election in 2028 if MAGA takes power. I realize that may sound hyperbolic but it seems like the safer path is to vote for Harris.
Joe, good column, with a few exceptions. I think many of the positive values of socialism are infrequently held by those claim to govern as "socialists", making the use of the label perjotative. In the same way, many of the positive values of capitalism are overcome by its actual practice in an anarchical way here in the United States. As we have seen over the last several decades, claims to be either can sanctify opppression. Any attempt to dimimish, to disrespect a style, process or state of being by using a one-word term to describe it - a word which, by itself is empty without an accompanying list of the values being questioned - should be ignored. As an example, the term "liberal" is used as a slur, but the term "liberal democracies" is positive, and used to describe how we exited the middle ages. Sound bites do not contribute to productive dialogues or illumination of any topic, never have, never will. Plus, there's context for every utterance. Talking about "defunding the police" meant to stop letting the police kill black men and women, to replace brutality with humane treatment, not to get rid of the police, as we heard when the discussion had more than two words. And we all know it's a stupid idea to begin with. Honestly, too many people, especially the media, react to outlandish claims and threats like the mob in Blazing Saddles, when the black sheriff holds a gun to his own head and tells everyone to "back off or I'll shoot this n*****r in the head" and they say "Stop, I think he really means it!" (or words to that effect). When do facts and common sense join the discussion? When are things too stupid to repeat? Wht does the press ask Harris about what T***p has said about her instead of asking about policy issues that are so important to the position of the Presidency? When will we grow up about life? Jeez!
I too missed the joy and excitement of campaigning candidates who were optimistic we could improve the planet. It is also exciting to see a teacher and coach on the stage. This is the America I grew up believing in. When we fight, we win! That’s a slogan that will carry Kamala and Coach to victory.
I agree with Joe. Lets first get rid of the fat orange felon/rapist/liar and then return to the political/policy debates that the country ought to have and needs to have. I don’t think Tim’Walz’is anything close to a socialist and most of his policies in Minnesota are ones I approve of. But I do suspect that I’ll disagree with a lot of the Harris/Walz policies. But the orange guy will be gone. And after a delicious round of explaining how they never actually liked him anyway it is possible that reasonable Rs may emerge. Right now the priority is to win
I can understand why people who are so gullible to continue to believe the lies of the lamestream media would hate President Trump. I’ve never met a Trump hater who could explain why with regurgitating the lies of democrats and the media. It’s time for the truth. For example, concerning Trump’s truth social Truth:
• Beijing Biden is the most corrupt POTUS in history
• While Barrack Hussein Obama may be the love child for the left and the media, he is a liar, a Marxist, a racist, he hates America and is the most divisive POTUS in history
• Pelosi is a power hungry leach who has made a couple hundred million dollars by leveraging insider knowledge of government real estate plans
• Adam Schiff is a pathological liar from Russiagate to the scam Jan. 6 committee
• The democrat party did execute a coup to replace Biden with Harris and in doing so disenfranchised 14 million democrat primary voters
Furthermore:
• Cackling Kamala is an idiot and Tampon Tim is a communist authoritarian
• Joe, if your withdrawal from Iraq was so good then why didn’t you do as Trump said and “take the oil”? What about the worst US military embarrassment in history Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal?
• President Trump never called the military “suckers” and “losers”. Kelly lied and no other staff member present substantiated his lie. Cassidy Hutchinson, former Whitehouse staff, also lied to the scam Jan.6 committee that President Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle on Jan. 6, which the Secret Service driver disputed and the scam Jan. 6 dog and Pelosi committee would not interview him.
• Policy wonks have demonstrated that they are incompetent “losers” who have dragged the US into endless foreign wars and staged coups to overthrow democratically elected regimes (can you say Victoria Nuland and Ukraine). Conflicts that have no strategic American interest at the cost of American blood and treasure for the sole purpose of extorting taxpayers money to the military industrial complex
• The so called “bipartisan” immigration deal was to codify the democrats open border program, not to increase border security
• “the intricacies of running a democracy…the finely-balanced system of checks and balances and data collection” my azz. One thing President Trump has exposed is that the US government industrial complex is the largest crime syndicate in the world, even larger than the CCP, whose sole mission is to extort as much personal wealth from US taxpayers for their personal benefit and it’s staffed with incompetents. Trump also exposed that the corrupt corporate media are their propaganda arm
President Trump brought peace and prosperity and was the best POTUS in our lifetime and will be again. I find all of the “orange man bad - mean tweets” feet stomping petulant children to be willfully ignorant and incapable of critical thinking. I’ve come to find Trump’s boorish personality to be a feature rather than a bug because he pizzes off all the people I want to be pizzed off from the crooks in DC to the lying media to the low-IQ, low information voters who believe them both. Prepare for MAGA 2.0!
I was going to read your comment and respond...until the first sentence, when you called my former colleagues, members of the "lame stream" media. I have had friends who were journalists who died in combat, who were seriously injured in riots, who were jailed in places like Iran, trying to bring the truth to people like you. There was nothing lame about them. Indeed, they are among the hardest working and, at times, courageous people on earth. The fact that you assume the opposite means that you've been manipulated by unpatriotic liars. So I decided not to read your comment. Giving you the time of day would have sullied the memory of my lost friends. The very thought of angry, silly people like you ruins a beautiful summer Sunday evening.
Oh Joe, who do you think you can fool? You’re lying again, of course you read what I wrote. I pointed out many of the lies you made in your article and you can’t justify them. You are an example of why the modern corporate media aren’t journalists, you are group think propagandists. Don’t you recognize why the media approval rating is in the low 20%, lower than that of congress? Your jealousy of people like me who can’t be manipulated by unpatriotic liars like you entertains me on this beautiful summer Sunday evening.
You claim that people like Joe and I are “jealous” of people like you. Frankly, your rant, like so much of MAGA rhetoric, comes off as a desperate cry for attention. Your candidate is (finally) beginning to drown in the absurdity of his lies and the sheer weight of his vitriol; it seems he has taken you with him.
Your fact free emotional comment proves my point. It is you who is ranting being unable to dispute any of the facts I presented, aren’t you?
You can believe your own lies or the lies of the media that President Trump whose popularity continues to rise to new record highs is “beginning to drown”. Denial is a sign of intellectual immaturity.
And while Trump exaggerates like the salesman that he is, he doesn’t deceptively lie about anything substantive. So to what “lies” do you refer?
Now Obama lies, like telling us that Obamacare would be cheaper for those of us who have to pay for it. Biden lies like telling us that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success and inflation is transitory and under control and that the border is secure. I recall that the media was all over President Trump a couple of years ago when he tweeted that Obama wiretapped his campaign. And it turned out to be true (can you say FBI operation crossfire hurricane?). So where is the reporting by the media on that inconvenient truth?
(takes deep breath and rubs hands with dirt)
1) The Affordable Care Act has been a magnificent success, saving my family hundreds of thousands of dollars as they have battled life threatening afflictions. Ask the people of Kentucky, who have it and love it, and who thank their lucky stars they do not live in Tennessee, who have it barely at all.
2) I was disappointed in the Afghanistan withdrawal myself but that Biden carrying through a promise he made, for which I find it hard to fault him - and he is at least standing up to the Russians as opposed to the MAGA movement wants to hand over brave Ukraine to their fellow authoritarians in Moscow.
3) it was entirely justified to investigate the possibility that Trump was a Russian puppet given the extent to which he acted like one. And it is still hard to tell whether Trump is a Putin stooge or simply so love with authoriantarianism that it makes his lack of a moral center irrelevant. Your patriotism is phony, your campaign is joyless and your candidate is losing his race with dementia.
So Curtis you still can’t answer any of my questions; for example what are Trump’s lies? But I’ll still respond to your uninformed rant:
1) Obamacare was a lie. It was supposed to be the affordable care act, not a tax on working people in the form of increased premiums to subsidize health insurance for those who don't work hard enough to pay for their own. Half of the people on Obamacare are subsidized by the other half and as such the Obamacare disaster is the most regressive tax we have.
Being forced by the worthless federal gubernment to buy insurance I don't want, from a provider I don't like, for services I don't need at higher prices that subsidize those who don't work hard enough to pay for their own is essentially a tax.
As Bill Clinton said: “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world,”
And now the failed democrat party offers Obamacare to illegal aliens.
So Curtis get a job or start a business and pay for your own damn health insurance!.
2) Curtis, try to pay attention; the Biden administration’s disastrous embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine. However their incompetence can be compared to their Chinese spy balloon embarrassment. You have to be an idiot, a moron, a mental retard to think that Biden’s inauthenticity was “hard to fault”. The incompetent Biden administration abandoned 13 US Marines and an undocumented number of allies to the persecution and certain torture and certain death at the hands of the Taliban, the $1billion embassy and the Bagram Air Force Base which was the US only air base within a four hour air strike of China and Russia. You have to be a mental retard to think that this wasn’t the dumbest and most disastrous move in US military history all because Beijing Biden, the worst POTUS in history wanted to make a political statement on the history of 9/11.
3) While Putin is a thug, he is the bogyman that the corrupt DC swamp uses to propagandize the low IQ, uninformed voter base. The fact is that the CIA has murdered more people than Putin.
Concerning Ukraine the corrupt Washington DC swamp is making a fortune using the Ukraine war as an off shore money laundering scheme down to the life of the last Ukrainian. The arithmetic is just too big; $120 billion is just too much money, its three times the total defense budget of Russia and more than the GDP of Ukraine. The corrupt Biden administration refuses to give an accounting of where the money is going. The media ignores several significant matters:
A. Ukraine has one of the most corrupt Oligarchs in Europe, most of whom are descendants of the Nazi Germany SS
B. It was the CIA who ran a coop to overthrow the duly elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
C. Eastern Ukraine, specifically Donbas and Crimea, was part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, to appease his wife, made it part of Ukraine. The inhabitants speak Russian and practice a Russian culture.
D. The government in Kiev tried to force residents of eastern Ukraine to abolish their Russian heritage and language against their will
E. The eastern Ukrainians voted in a ballot referendum to keep their language and culture and it was ignored
F. The western Ukrainians actually began to bomb eastern Ukrainians
G. There were two Minsk agreements to end the Donbas fighting between Eastern Ukrainians and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The eastern Ukrainians ignored them
H. Sevastopol, in Crimea is Russia’s only winter port and is so strategic they are not going to give it up
I. Russia’s objective to start the war was to establish a land bridge to Crimea
J. They accomplished that objective in two weeks and Putin offered to negotiate a peace agreement, which Boris Johnson and Joe Biden refused
L. Putin would negotiate an agreement today but Biden has specifically told Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep fighting
M. There are reports that 80% of the military aid sent to Ukraine is being sold on the black market.
In closing, your jealousy of people who are far more intelligent and knowledgeable than you keeps percolating to the top.
Get ready for MAGA 2.0!
Absolutely agree! I am in the George Will camp. I did not leave the Republican Party, it left me. Joy. Love it.
Joe—-Great column, as usual. When I saw the headline, and read the piece, I couldn’t help but think of our late, great friend (as I do virtually every day), Greg Schneiders, wouldn’t he be enjoying all this immensely? Another point about Tim Walz—his liberalism is that of the Democratic/Farmer/Labor tradition of Humphrey and Mondale and others. Hardly radical. Finally, to underscore your point and Bo Cutter’s: The ONLY thing that matters this year is beating Trump. The ONLY thing.
I should have written at the top: In Memory of Greg Schneiders.
It is always rewarding to read Mr. Klein's thoughts. Almost brought tears. Thank you. If we are soldiers together in the fight against Trump, I am very proud to have Joe Klein in my unit.
Let's hope the current Dem pooh-bahs -- the ones who put this Harris/Waltz ticket together -- are reading you, Joe.
Joe, do you believe that the toxic partisanship dividing the United States will be relieved if The Democrats win? Do you think they will make the bold structural moves needed to make politics representative, honest, accessible to all and fun again?
I believe Trump is a one-off. I think the power of his venom is unique. But I don't think the Dems are capable of transcending their caucus-identity-politics. Things will be better without Trump...but this is an old, rutted democracy that needs some new ideas.
Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure I share your confidence that Republicans will move back towards the center let alone sanity. My fear is that they will double down, as will the progressive DNC, creating even more polarization. Sometimes systems need to be subjected to Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. Sometime The Republic is going to have take heed of Washington’s and Hamilton’s warning about the danger of party politics and vote for Independents. RFK Jnr is no weirder than Trump and not much weirder than Harris, would build a more balanced Administration and take on campaign finance and electoral reform. If not now when? PS. If the reason is you believe Trump will destroy The Republic then we have a more existential problem….that The Republic isn’t fit for purpose in today’s world. Personally I have faith that The Judiciary, States, Legislature and Armed Forces are more than a match for even the most deranged POTUS.
Here’s to the joy again of being a Democrat and the hopes that now go with it. Biden’s place in history is secured, and should she win, electoral gods permitting, Biden will be regarded forever for rising up in 2020 and stepping down in 2024 as the heroic savior of our country.
On another note, it’s easy, now, for those of us thoroughly vaxxed and boosted, to forget what it was like in the dark early days of the pandemic. Nobody, from the CDC on down, really knew what we were up against, how bad it could be. In this neighborhood of a major eastern city the rescue sirens sounded all day and into the night for weeks (or was it months?) on end. But there were 2 things urban teachers (in particular) knew all too well: one, running classrooms in that fear permeated, locked down atmosphere, in those buildings, (masks, children?) would be barely doable, if at all, and two, the teacher would get sick in those close quarters and potentially die. Nobody knew then if the time out of school would be detrimental, or that much of Zoom instruction was ridiculous. In those months before the vaccine especially, to err on the side of caution was perhaps the best option.
Joe, thank you for writing this. I have been back and forth every day, Trump or Harris. Many of the progressive policies are so vile to me but I think the country can survive 4 years of Harris/Walz and have a reset in 2028. I’m not so sure we will be able to have a fair election in 2028 if MAGA takes power. I realize that may sound hyperbolic but it seems like the safer path is to vote for Harris.
Joe, good column, with a few exceptions. I think many of the positive values of socialism are infrequently held by those claim to govern as "socialists", making the use of the label perjotative. In the same way, many of the positive values of capitalism are overcome by its actual practice in an anarchical way here in the United States. As we have seen over the last several decades, claims to be either can sanctify opppression. Any attempt to dimimish, to disrespect a style, process or state of being by using a one-word term to describe it - a word which, by itself is empty without an accompanying list of the values being questioned - should be ignored. As an example, the term "liberal" is used as a slur, but the term "liberal democracies" is positive, and used to describe how we exited the middle ages. Sound bites do not contribute to productive dialogues or illumination of any topic, never have, never will. Plus, there's context for every utterance. Talking about "defunding the police" meant to stop letting the police kill black men and women, to replace brutality with humane treatment, not to get rid of the police, as we heard when the discussion had more than two words. And we all know it's a stupid idea to begin with. Honestly, too many people, especially the media, react to outlandish claims and threats like the mob in Blazing Saddles, when the black sheriff holds a gun to his own head and tells everyone to "back off or I'll shoot this n*****r in the head" and they say "Stop, I think he really means it!" (or words to that effect). When do facts and common sense join the discussion? When are things too stupid to repeat? Wht does the press ask Harris about what T***p has said about her instead of asking about policy issues that are so important to the position of the Presidency? When will we grow up about life? Jeez!
Excellent column! You summed up why I am voting for Harris/Walz!