Tag: trump

Election Analysis

Shortly after January 6th of 2021, the day that Trump’s followers stormed Congress, I made a bet with my friend, John Grahm, who was worried that Trump would win the 2024 election.  Thinking Trump was quite a long shot to win, I gave him 10 to 1 odds, $100 to $1000, that Trump would not win the election; both of us hoped that I would win the bet.  We agreed that even if Trump did not run as a candidate for president, I would still win the bet.  At the time and even later on in the mid-term elections, in 2022, when all of the candidates that Trump backed lost, I thought for sure that the Republicans would pick another candidate.  So much for predicting the future.

Although there has been a myriad of reasons put forth as to why Trump won the election, I will offer my own take on Trump’s victory.   Many years ago, my father told me that liberals can be extremely intolerable.   Inasmuch as he had been a lifelong Democrat, hearing this from him surprised me.  Moreover, I am proud to say that my father’s clothing business in Elizabeth, New Jersey, prior to the vast civil rights legislation enacted in the ‘60’s, was the first of its kind to hire Blacks as employees.  I found that liberals/progressives, that is those that veer to the left on political issues, often believe that their view is the right one and are unwilling to listen to those that may harbor different opinions. 

The reflexive reaction for many of those on the left is that Harris lost the election because of the inherent racism and sexism of America.  In my opinion, this argument carries little weight when not that long ago our country elected Barack Obama, the first Black president, not only once but twice.  A reminder to all is that America was the first country on record to have a white majority elect a Black as its president.  At the end of the day when the votes were tabulated, Trump’s support by the Black and Hispanic populace surged as he won a greater proportion of their vote than in his earlier elections. Furthermore, Trump received more female voters in this election than in the election he previously lost in 2020.  Attacking the other side with this kind of argument is simply poor sportsmanlike behavior and only will serve in strengthening the Republican hold on the slim majority they had in the present election.  Unlike earlier elections, minority groups showed a disposition toward individual rather than group identity.  It can be no longer taken as a priori that Blacks or other minorities will automatically vote Democratic.  Although these voters chose to vote for Trump, a person whose leadership qualities I seriously question, I believe this trend of no longer voting for one party by people of color is a step in the right direction.

The underlying cause of Harris’ defeat wrapped itself in the left’s denial of anything wrong with the country, excluding Mr. Trump.  This denial became obvious when President Biden faced off with Mr. Trump in the first presidential debate where Biden’s performance was considered by all a disaster.  He eventually ceded his place in the election campaign to his Vice-President, Ms. Harris, who became the Democratic Party’s candidate without having to face the normal rivalry necessary in winning the nomination through the primary process.  To her credit, she was able to amass a great amount of money, over 2 billion dollars, toward her campaign, quite a bit more than Trump spent.  So, in this case, the old saw money can buy anything, including political power, did not hold.  Furthermore, she had the support of a number of stars, such as Taylor Swift, Mark Cuban, and Oprah Winfrey who assisted her run for the presidency.  In addition, she had the press and the news stations on television, with the exception of Fox, on her side.  All this but to no avail.

Her message of joy to the voters was quite a few chords off.  The inflation that liberals appeared to forgo in their message to the American public was not addressed.  This may have been due to the fact that the Democratic Party had become more interested in the identity politics of special interest groups such as L.G.B.T.Q., gender transitions and the spread of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in the workplace and on college campuses.  Rather than focusing on the issues   deemed foremost to many voters such as illegal immigration and inflation, the Democrats exerted their energy on a legal battle against Trump.  In a recent Op-Ed article appearing in the New York Times, Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, points out that “for decades, liberals have made the mistake of prioritizing legal victories over popular ones.”  He goes on to say that liberals (apparently, of which he is one) in their self-righteous attitude, failed to realize that this legalistic strategy may be seen by many others as a political weapon with the intent of doing Trump in.  Suddenly, Trump had become a symbolic David fighting the evils of the Goliath, on the side of Harris, represented by the massive government bureaucracy.

Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer to the New York Times, recently stated that after 2004, over 50% of Americans were not satisfied with the government.  Since that time, this lack of confidence in the institutions that form our government has clearly not improved and has been evident for some time.  As it turns out, the Democratic focus on trying to eliminate Trump through the legal system, missed the pulse of a large segment of the American populace that Bruni mentioned. 

The hope is that the Democrats will reorient themselves to the reality of where their fellow Americans are at, change tactics, with the effort of regaining the support of lower income workers that have gone over to Mr. Trump and the Republican party.  I am quite sure that identity politics will not accomplish this goal.  A better way would be to look at social class as the determining factor of their political agenda with the goal to perform better in the midterm elections in two years. 

One of the reasons I had hoped that Trump would lose the election was because he would no longer be the butt of late-night comedy featuring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Steve Colbert.  Unfortunately, this did not happen, and so we will be awarded for the next four years with their ad nauseum denigrating comments about soon to be President Trump.  They say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  The inimitable Johnny Carson, in my opinion, exceeded the comedic talent of the above three by far.  Of course, the counterpart of these jokes will be the monotonous cheers for Trump that, I’m sure, Fox News will air.

Presidential Debate

The presidential debate has come and gone.  As you all know already, most everyone believed that Kamala Harris decidedly beat Donald Trump in the debate.  There were some on the far right that spun the debate in a way that favored Trump.  Be that as it may, Karl Rove, a staunch conservative still supportive of Trump, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s debate performance was nothing short of “catastrophic.”  He went on to say that “Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock,’ which raises the question:  What does that make him.”

Listening to the debate, I felt as if it came from a skit from Saturday Night Live.  The one critical difference, however, was that rather than an actor impersonating Trump, he was impersonating himself.  His assertion that democrats favor abortion after nine months at the birth of a child was so absurd that one of the moderators countered by telling him there had not been a shred of evidence to support such a claim. His preposterous statement that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were devouring the cats and dogs of their owners was an example of such an absurd statement that Saturday Night Live would be hard pressed to find something as ridiculous.  Subsequent, to the debate, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, Republican, spoke powerfully on behalf of the Haitian immigrants.  He maintained that they are helping to bring a depressed city back to life.

Although Kamala Harris was considered the victor in her debate performance, she had the good fortune of being aided by her opponent, Donald Trump.  In fact, Trump represents one of the biggest assets that Harris brings to the election.  Harris showed uncanny wit in the way she lured Trump into making a fool of himself.  An example of this occurred when Harris blocked and parried the question of how she would handle immigration policy in the future.  Rather than answering the question, she pointed out that at Trump rallies many leave early because of boredom.  Given his inflated ego, she predicted correctly he would take this personally and defend himself.  

Harris offered an economic plan that has yet to be fleshed out in details.  Inasmuch as her advisers don’t want her to unnecessarily disclose information that might offend certain groups, her projected economic policies remain unclear.  Although Harris handled Trump and the debate quite deftly, polls indicate that she did not gain too much from her performance.  She has challenged Trump to a follow-up debate that Trump has declined all well knowing that a second debate would certainly not increase his influence on voters.

My wife, Lisa, and I saw the debate at the Jewish Community Center in Long Beach.  At the debate, there were mostly women and a few of us good men who set up materials for creating packages.  These packages were Abortion Comfort Kits to be distributed to Orange County and San Bernadino’s Planned Parenthood.  We formed an assembly line in which each person on the line would insert an article into a gift bag.  The articles we put into these bags included menstrual pads, oreo cookies, Kind bars, tea bags, Kleenex and friendship cards that people wrote on with supportive messages that offered comfort to those seeking an abortion.

The project has united women’s groups with Planned Parenthood, which has touched the lives of more than 1200 women.  These women have come from states all over the country where the rules vis-à-vis abortion are much more stringent than here in California.  I am proud of my wife, Lisa, the president of the National Council of Jewish Women–Greater Long Beach and West Orange County, who has spent many hours working on this project.  I admired the enthusiasm displayed by these women in carrying out what I consider a task of great worth.

The First Presidential Debate of 2024

A while back I wrote a blog titled:  The Muhammad Ali Syndrome.  In that essay, I pointed out that Muhammad Ali made the mistake, like many athletes and other professionals, of not knowing when was the best time for him to exit his boxing career.  Many commentators thought it was best for him to quit boxing after his upset win in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) over George Foreman in the 8th round.  But he persisted to fight way beyond what his body could endure resulting in permanent debilitating brain damage.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently wrote an article in the New York Times called:  The Reason It’s So Hard for Powerful People to Walk Away.  Grant maintains that rather than walk away from a losing proposition people often double down on their decisions because it feels better to be a fighter than a quitter.  He has labeled this phenomenon “escalation of commitment to a losing course of action.”  Subsequent to President Biden’s poor performance in his debate with Donald Trump last week, Biden has appeared to fall into this very same trap insofar as he has refused to throw in the towel by terminating his presidential campaign for the Democratic party.  His perseverance has held steady despite several of his past supporters stating that they would like him to withdraw his candidacy from the coming election in November.

Currently, no one knows exactly what President Biden will decide to do in the future.  But as Adam Grant mentioned, if Biden listens to the people closest to him such as family and top aides, he is receiving advice that is hardly objective but rather tinted with those susceptible to confirmation bias.  Regardless, I would recommend that whoever debates Mr. Trump in the future, be it Mr. Biden or another candidate, that that person focuses on Trump’s pattern of lying.  In the debate for presidency between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter on October 28th, 1980, in responding to Carter’s attack on Reagan vis-à-vis his position on Medicare, the latter said: There you go again.”  That comment received much laughter from the audience then allowing Reagan to explain where Carter was misconstruing what, in fact, he really believed about Medicare.  So then, why not have whoever does debate Trump, assuming there will be a debate, focus on Trump’s lies by mentioning something like the following: “Mr. Trump every time you make a false statement, I’m going to respond to it by using that famous line of the great communicator, Ronald Reagan, and say:  There you go again.”  This may appeal to the Americans who remember and loved Reagan, many of whom, of course were Republicans.  The motive here for Biden, of course, would be for him to expand his base with the potential pool of voters that are undecided as to how they will vote.

The format of the first debate was such that the commentators that presented each candidate with the questions were not going to fact check each of their statements.  That chore was to be left to the two participants in the debate.  Unfortunately, President Biden failed to call Mr. Trump on many of the falsehoods he made during the debate.  One very blatant lie Trump made was when he asserted that some Democratic states are allowing abortions after the 8th month of a woman’s pregnancy right up to the birth of the child.  When I heard this, I was surprised that Biden did not react to this obvious “Trumped” up statement.  Ironically, one of the few comments Trump made that had a ring of truth to it was when Biden was having difficulty expressing himself, Trump said: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of his sentence and, I don’t think he did either.”  I’m quite sure Trump’s followers appreciated that rejoinder.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Peggy Noonan declared Trump’s behavior as characterological whereas she believed Biden’s evident lack of coherence was neurological.  What a shame that our country is being represented by two leaders, one an individual with sociopathic tendencies, and the other one showing clear signs of aging.  These two are being backed by their parties with the belief that they are the best of all candidates to defeat their rival from the other party.  I hope this political game does not result in deleterious consequences to us, the citizens of America.