I hope everything I think about Donald Trump is wrong.
donald trump
I Voted for Harris
On Sunday, I voted (early) in this year’s elections. I voted for Kamala Harris for president, and I think you should, too.
Why did I vote for her? Let me tell you.
I voted for her not for any specific policy promise or rhetorical flourish. I voted for her because I think that when she is sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and an issue is brought before her that she needs to decide, her first thought is going to be “what is the best decision for the country?” If Donald Trump is sitting at that desk, however, I think his first thought will be “what is the best decision for me and my friends?” That difference is the only reason I needed to make my decision. But I’ll go a little further for the rest of you.
I think Kamala Harris will surround herself with appointees, advisors, and assistants who will also be thinking “what is best for the country?” I think she will seek out the smartest, most capable people possible. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has already told us who he’ll be looking to appoint, and who he won’t, and I don’t think they’ll be working for our best interests. I don’t trust the cadre around him, and I don’t trust his judgment in finding more appointees or advisors.
You can look at any of the campaign nonsense you want—taxes and tariffs, deplorables and enemies, fascism and greatness—none of what they’re saying today will matter after the inauguration. The only thing that will matter is who is making the decisions, and what is uppermost in their minds when they make those decisions. That’s why I voted for Kamala Harris, and why I urge you to do the same.
Announcing way too early?
I’ve been mulling the current presidential election season. Specifically, I’ve been wondering if Joe Biden might have more easily opted to be a one-term president if he hadn’t had to announce his attentions so far in advance of the election. After all, if he’d said—in April 2023—that he wasn’t running for another term, he would have been a lame duck for 21 months, nearly half of his term.
So I’ve dug out the data from the primary era of presidential campaigns, to see if my assumption was correct. Here’s what I found.
Lyndon Johnson was in the race ten months before election day. On March 12, 1968, he won 49 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, barely beating Eugene McCarthy’s 42 percent. Four days later, Robert F. Kennedy got into the race. Johnson announced his withdrawal from the race March 31, 1968, 219 days before the election of 1968.
Richard Nixon authorized the formation of his re-election campaign committee on January 7, 1972, 305 days before the election of 1972. He won the election in one of the greatest landslides in presidential history.
Gerald Ford launched his presidential campaign July 8, 1975, one year and 117 days before the election of 1976. He lost a surprisingly close race to Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter launched his re-election bid on December 4, 1979, 336 days before the election of 1980. He lost handily to Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan announced his re-election campaign on January 29, 1984, 282 days before the election of 1984. His margin of victory was almost as large as Nixon’s.
George H.W. Bush announced his re-election campaign on February 12, 1992, 265 days before the election of 1992. He lost a three-way race to Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton announced his re-election campaign on April 14, 1995, one year and 202 days before the election of 1996. He won in another three-way race, becoming the only president to win two terms without ever garnering a majority of the popular vote.
George W. Bush announced his re-election campaign on May 16, 2003, one year and 171 days before the election of 2004. He won in a less contentious election than his first.
Barack Obama announced his re-election campaign on April 4, 2011, one year and 213 days before the election of 2012. He won in a closer election than his first.
Donald Trump announced his re-election campaign on January 20, 2017—the day he was inaugurated—three years and 288 days before the election of 2020. He lost the election.
Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign on April 25, 2023, one year and 191 days before the election of 2024.
Conclusion: it wasn’t Donald Trump or the 24-hour-a-day give-us-an-election-so-we-don’t-have-to-report-actual-news news cycle that caused Joe Biden to have to announce so early. Rather, it was Bill Clinton who started this absurd trend, and Biden is just doing what his predecessors did. (I’m leaving out Ford because he was a special circumstance in so many ways.)
Also, how long before the election a president starts running for re-election doesn’t seem to have an effect on the outcome of the election.
| President | Re-election Announcement | Days Until Election |
| Richard Nixon | January 7, 1972 | 305 |
| Gerald Ford | July 8, 1975 | 482 |
| Jimmy Carter | December 4, 1979 | 336 |
| Ronald Reagan | January 29, 1984 | 282 |
| George H.W. Bush | February 12, 1992 | 265 |
| Bill Clinton | April 14, 1995 | 567 |
| George W. Bush | May 16, 2003 | 536 |
| Barack Obama | April 4, 2011 | 578 |
| Donald Trump | January 20, 2017 | 1,383 |
| Joe Biden | April 25, 2023 | 556 |
Who else is he paying, or paying him?
Donald Trump is a convicted felon, joining the ignominious ranks of Aaron Burr[1], John C. Breckenridge[2], and John Tyler[3]. Even though his conviction was on the least consequential of the four cases currently pending against him, we now live in a world where a former President of the United States is a convicted felon. But does it really mean anything? Those who support him so ardently will continue to support him. Those who do not support him don’t need new reasons to not support him. And the undecided voters—the key to most elections in this country—are a small and shrinking percentage this time around, since the major candidates are both completely known quantities.
The conviction itself is not the sad event. The sad event was when Donald Trump shamed the office by fomenting insurrection during the ballot counting. It was the entire year of 2020, when he spent so much effort making people mistrust the electoral system, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to win a fair election. It was when he urged others to help him cheat just to retain the office he could not legitimately claim. And those things will be adjudicated in the further trials… if they are ever allowed to proceed.
The current conviction is simply a confirmation of what we’ve known about Donald Trump all along: that he’s a liar, a grifter, a thief, who will do or say anything to protect himself, regardless of its legality or morality.
While the actual crime is fairly small potatoes, it is entirely in keeping with Trump’s character. What makes it so egregious is that it was committed by a presidential candidate. But even that is something we should (unfortunately) have come to expect from him. He keeps telling us who he is; we are the fools for constantly being surprised. He keeps begging us to pay attention only to the show that he is, to not look behind the curtain. And that’s what this case was about: the hidden back-story that is even less appealing. And that’s been his entire career. Keeping a porn star from saying he’s a sexual predator? That’s tiny. What I want to know is why is he still the only president in living memory to not release his tax returns? What is hiding in those documents that he so assiduously does not want people to know about him?
[1] Vice President Aaron Burr (1801–05) arguably committed treason by working with Mexico to overthrow Spanish rule in 1807, but was acquitted due to the paucity of evidence.
[2] Vice President John C. Breckinridge (1857–61) was representing Kentucky in the US Senate in 1861 when he declared that the Union no longer existed and that Kentucky should be free to choose her own course. He enlisted in the Confederate army, was indicted for treason in U.S. federal district court in Frankfort on November 6, 1861, and on December 2, 1861, the Senate declared him a traitor and expelled him.
[3] President John Tyler (1841–45) presided over the Washington Peace Conference in February 1861, which was an effort to prevent the Civil War. The convention sought a compromise, but Tyler voted against the conference’s resolutions. At the same time, he was elected to the Virginia Secession Convention, and presided over it as well. Tyler voted for secession, and negotiated the terms for Virginia’s entry into the Confederate States of America. On June 14, he signed the Ordinance of Secession, and then was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress, where he served until just before his death in 1862. In November 1861, he was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives but he died of a stroke before the first session could open in February 1862. Because of his allegiance to the Confederacy, his was the only presidential death to go unrecognized in Washington.
Justice delayed is… what the guilty want
Donald Trump has proven one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: his “delay delay delay” legal strategy is brilliant, and nearly always effective.
The defendant has the right to a speedy trial, but perhaps there should be some consideration of the victim in that dictum, too. In these multiple cases, the defendant doesn’t want a speedy trial. The longer the trials are delayed, the more doubt can be sewn, and the greater the chance he can escape ever having to stand trial at all. The victims, in the meantime, have no recourse. We appear to have suffered from his actions—but await the outcomes of several trials to determine if in fact his actions caused harm and were contrary to the law. We continue to suffer from the lack of resolution of those cases, and there’s nothing we can do.
Don’t pay any attention to logic
I find it ironic that Donald Trump keeps pushing for “complete and total presidential immunity” to block his forthcoming trials for orchestrating an attempted coup (see, for example, this article). Follow it through logically: if a president has complete and total immunity, wouldn’t President Biden ordered Trump’s immediate imprisonment, probably in a supermax prison or a deep hole in the ground? “For the national good,” of course. But even if he shouldn’t do it, well, complete and total presidential immunity.
In other presidential news, last night I spoke to Central Texas Mensa about the presidents. My talk, “Hail to the Chiefs! (and their Vice Presidents, and First Ladies…)” was very well received, and I was thrilled with the audience. I’m available to speak to your group, as well.
Giving Donald Trump too much oxygen
Dear CNN and MSNBC (I’m sorry, those were the only two news channels I could get to yesterday):
I found it ironic, watching your coverage August 3rd, that so many of your anchors, reporters, pundits, and guests repeated the comment that “Donald Trump is sucking up all the oxygen in the political room,” while what you were doing was giving it all to him. The story that you gave wall-to-wall coverage yesterday—a grifter, liar, and multiple business failure had been indicted and was being arraigned for serious crimes against the American people—could have been adequately covered in five minutes at the top of the hour with another one-minute recap at the bottom.
From your business point of view, I understand the appeal: your team didn’t have to ferret out actual news stories, and it’s much cheaper to just keep talking about politics as if the election were next week, rather than fifteen months in the future. But maybe we need to bring back the fairness doctrine, and give all the candidates equal air time. Because Donald Trump’s third indictment—as serious as the alleged crimes are (and I sincerely hope he is quickly found guilty)—certainly did not merit our undivided attention all day yesterday. When the trial is actually happening, sure, we’ll need to see that. But the preliminaries we’re suffering through? The live coverage of his motorcade from his golf course to Newark Airport? Were you proud of the story you were telling yesterday? I wouldn’t have been.
Donald Trump is going to try to avoid prosecution by announcing his candidacy
This spit-balling may—unfortunately—not be so far-fetched: how likely is it that Donald Trump formally announces his candidacy for President in the election of 2024 this month? CNN is asking if the announcement would make it harder for the Department of Justice to bring charges against him, but that’s too rational a debate. They’re also opining that it will scare off his rivals for the Republican nomination. But again, they’re looking at it from a logical point of view, not Donald Trump’s.
I think the actual plan is to announce so that he can then turn to his followers and say, “They’re indicting me because they don’t want me to win.” It makes everything that is said about him—and every move and statement from the House January 6th Select Committee—look like nothing more than political posturing, rather than actual legal governmental proceedings. It’s like “not guilty by reason of insanity” writ large. Rather than facing the music for his prior bad acts, he’s trying to once again skate by. How many times did he say “you can’t attack me because I’m the President”? He’s about to do it again.
He doesn’t want to be President, he wants to be Dictator. He’s made an entire career out of being a grifter and a con artist: misdirect the marks by whatever means possible while picking their pockets. He thought he could do it as President of the United States (and he probably did), but the con isn’t over. He has more to steal, more legal consequences to avoid, more damage to do.
I keep asking myself what is hiding in his tax returns, that he’s never released them (one would think that such a great business man would be proud to show them). What he’s not telling us about himself and deals with other world leaders. Did you notice that the Trump International Hotel has been sold, so soon after he left office? So soon after he could no longer shake down foreign delegations by having them stay in his hotel?
Donald Trump remains a clear and present danger to the United States of America. In Trump, Mitch McConnell found the perfect front man for his decades-long plan to rewrite American society. And now that his Supreme Court is doing it, what more damage can Donald Trump do to this country? I shudder to think.
See also, “Donald Trump’s ‘slow-motion coup’ is becoming a runaway train.”
Of course he’s hiding things. The question is: what is he hiding?
I don’t know if anyone is really surprised that boxes of what should be public presidential records were secreted out of the White House to Donald Trump’s own property. He has a very long history of attempting to keep his actions secret. Instead of being surprised that he did so—again—we should be asking “What is he hiding?” What, for instance, is lurking in his tax returns that he has worked so hard to keep secret? Who does he owe money to? Who did he owe money to while he was president, and how much of those debts were reduced by means other than simple repayment? How much money did he receive from which foreign countries during his administration?
The ostensible purpose of the current investigations are to see how much he was the impetus for the attack on the Capitol building in January 2021, but I think we should also be asking just how much of an independent actor he was during his presidency, and how much he was indebted to—and acting on behalf of—others.
This Washington Post article is what prompted me today.
Stop Treating the Republicans Like Buffoons; It’s Not a Winning Strategy
I was just listening to the talking heads on MSNBC (tuned in late, so I didn’t hear who they were). They exemplified for me, yet again, why the Democratic Party can have more registered voters, can even win elections, and still manage to be its own worst enemy.
The talking heads today were laughing about the Republican Party. In their view, the Republican Party doesn’t stand for anything, so it can’t possibly attract enough votes to win anything. One of them said “I think the Republican Party is going to have to be spanked again — they’re probably going to lose 25 seats in the election of 2022, reversing all historical trends for presidents losing seats in the midterm — before they wake up and realize they don’t stand for anything, and that they have to get rid of Donald Trump.”
And why did this catch my ear? Because I’ve been hearing dyed-in-the-wool Democrats say exactly the same thing for two decades. A political reporter friend of mine, twenty years ago, told me that the Republican Party was dying and would soon be dead. “Look at the last presidential elections,” he said to me then, in the aftermath of the election of 2000. “The last time the Republicans won a majority of the popular vote was in 1988. They’re dying.” It’s now five elections farther on. The Republican candidate won a majority of the popular vote only once more, in 2004. And yet there has been a Republican in the White House 60% of the time since he told me the party was dying.
It goes farther. We’ve had ten Congresses since the election of 2000, twenty years. In that time, the Senate had a Democratic majority for five Congresses, ten years, half the time, and a Republican majority the other half of the time. In the House of Representatives, there was a Democratic majority for only three Congresses, six years; the Republicans held the majority seventy percent of the time. And in this most recent election, which the staunch Democrats hail as a victory in retaking the Senate, look a little deeper. Consider the popular votes for each of the contested Senate seats in the elections of 2020. You may be as surprised as I was that the popular vote totals in all those elections combined are pretty darn close to 50–50, Republican and Democrat. The 50 Republicans in the Senate are not merely an artifact of two Senators per state regardless of size. There really are almost as many people voting for Republicans as for Democrats. And yes, I know, I’m playing with data. Of the four most populous states, only one had a Senate seat up for election in 2020. But my point remains: laughing off the Republicans is not a winning strategy.
Consider the election of 2016. How did the Republican candidate win the presidency? He won because the Democratic presidential campaign got complacent. They decided the goal was to run up the popular vote total, rather than remembering the rules of the game. Whether you like it or not, we have an electoral college, and the way to be elected President is to win the electoral college. That’s what the Republicans did in 2016.
Yes, the Republicans are acting like both thugs and buffoons. Their massive campaign to make it more difficult to vote is thuggish behavior of the most transparent and abhorrent sort. And their refusal to even adopt a campaign platform for the election of 2020 shows what a joke the party’s leaders think their party has become, that instead of publicly standing for issues, they’ll simply follow their chosen god-figure.
But if the Democrats are serious about enacting good, long-lasting changes, making things better for us all, they’re going to have to do far more than laugh at the Republican Party and demonize its chosen leaders. They’re going to have to be serious, they’re going to have to win over the undecided, middle-of-the-political-spectrum voters who hold our noses each time we vote for a Republican or a Democrat. I’m still ashamed to admit I voted against Donald Trump, rather than for Joe Biden, but both parties are most effective at pushing me toward the other, rather than drawing me to themselves.
And while President Biden does seem to be talking the talk, he’s going to have to get the rest of his supporting cast on board. The laugh fest I saw today is emblematic of one of the Democrats’ main problems. I may agree with them, that Donald Trump is a jerk and Mitch McConnell is a liar, but repeating that is not a reason that will convince voters to go for the Democrat in 2022 or 2024. And they’d better not be deluding themselves that “anyone who thinks can see that.” It’s like commercials advertising the “best-selling whatever”: popularity is not a rational reason to buy something, but people do it because they want to be associated with the winner. Donald Trump is a schmuck, but he presents himself — and a lot of people seem him — as a winner. The Democrats are not going to be able to tear that down with their laughter (though Trump may do it to himself); they’re going to need to show that they are effective winners.
And now, as I’ve finished writing this, MSNBC is starting its 5 o’clock program talking about “A GOP that has gutted itself,” pointing to their loss of the Senate and the White House. Those talking heads are delusional.
Ian Randal Strock 