Substantive proposals

Well, that and national abortion protection.  And home buyers' subsidies.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A cautionary moment

From Sarah Kendzior's substack.

I had long predicted both Trump’s win and that his goal was to rule like an authoritarian kleptocrat. These predictions were derided in 2016 but have now become mainstream to the point of spawning a cottage industry. Unfortunately, the cottage industry does not address the root causes of American autocracy but reduces them to Trump — and Trump alone.

[...]

As a result, Americans are forced to live forever on the precipice, while politicians and pundits feign opposition for profit. They need you to see Trump as a novel and singular threat, instead of a long-time player in multiple corrupt networks — because they inhabit those same networks, as do their financial backers.

[...]

The Autocracy Cottage Industry [...] would rather join the Trump administration and then write tell-all books about crimes they witnessed but did not stop. They would rather pass the same repressive policies Trump did but cloak them in gentler rhetoric. They fundraise off your fear.

[...]

Instead of fighting the autocrat or analyzing the institutional corruption that rendered the US the first country in history to let a coup plotter run for president, an “opposition” swarming with scammers bolstered Trump’s brand — elevating it instead of ending it.

[...]

Trump’s voters no longer consider him a threat, even though a record number did in the months after the Capitol attack. The lack of punishment for committing sedition has convinced them that Trump is innocent, which he is not, and further inflamed his base.

But lack of accountability does not bother Vichy Democrats or Never-Trump Republicans or the predatory scammers surrounding them. It keeps them in business. For their operation to succeed, the public must abandon critical thinking in favor of cult logic. Memes and mantras replace contemplation and compassion, rendering humans indistinguishable from bots.

[...]

In their formulation, there is only Trump and Not-Trump. Your thinking must never extend beyond that binary.

Nor can your knowledge of history. Or you will see a recurring cast of corrupt characters guiding politics, some of whom — Elliott Abrams, Michael Chertoff, Jamie Gorelick — pop up in both Democratic and GOP administrations for decades on end.

You will notice parallels to Trump’s rise in war criminals like Dick Cheney, who was elevated to power in the 2000 SCOTUS ruling buoyed by a riot led by Trump advisor Roger Stone.

You will note that Cheney is endorsing Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and that Harris is “honored” by his support.

Harris cannot control who endorses her. But her warm response to Dick Cheney’s approval should be greeted with alarm — particularly when war criminals are welcomed into the Harris fold while antiwar protesters are rejected.

  Sarah Kendzior

Dick Cheney, and other staunch Republicans, including Alberto Gonzales, W Bush's apologist for terror Attorney General.

Bush-era Republican operatives, unable to function in the chaos of MAGA, saw an opportunity to remake the Democratic Party, which had been lurching to the right since the 1990s, and took it. They left receipts: the conservative Lincoln Project is Harris’s fourth biggest donor. Change in Democratic Party policy is determined by donations — not only the Lincoln Project’s — and then rationalized with the Trump/Not-Trump binary.

Kendzior, an author and anti-war progressive who has made St. Louis her home for many years, is a literal student of authoritarian regimes. She's something of a Cassandra for Americans, whom the mainstream label a crank.

I listen to the Trump-converted "never Trumpers" on podcasts and welcome their support for Harris, but while they see the danger in MAGA, they are cheering Harris' "move to the center." I don't think Kendzior is being alarmist here. What she doesn't say is there really is no other choice right now. The choice IS binary. We just have to hold on to what we need to do to correct the flirtation with fascism the country is experiencing when Harris gets in office.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me-oh my-oh

Rather than trying to balance loyalty to Biden against catering to the desires of the electorate, Harris’s strategy should focus entirely on catering to the public with no attention whatsoever to Biden’s feelings.

There are certainly issues where Biden has taken a popular stance or achieved something popular that Harris can take credit for. On those issues — letting the federal government negotiate prescription-drug prices, signing a bipartisan infrastructure law, reducing health-care costs — she should proclaim her agreement and highlight her tie-breaking vote.

But there is no rule requiring Harris to own every action Biden has taken. She can even say that she disagreed with him. Her role as vice-president was to give the president candid advice in private and support him in public, but now that she is running for his job, she can advocate her own ideas.

And Biden is, on the whole, a liability for Harris.

  New York Magazine

Must agree.  Although I'm sure she will always consider Joe's feelings, she can simply state that she care deeply about him, is thankful for the opportunity he gave her, etc., while putting country first.

Exactly why Biden has proven so toxic has confounded Democrats. I sympathize with their bewilderment. The economy is excellent, and people should be crediting Biden’s management rather than blaming him for an inflation surge that was mostly beyond his control and has almost entirely receded.

At this point, alas, public opinion is what it is. And I fear that Democrats have allowed their sentiment that Biden has gotten an unfair rap to cloud their judgment.

[...]

The best data point Biden’s defenders can summon on behalf of his political viability is the party’s midterm performance, in which Democrats forfeited the House majority but lost fewer seats than a first-term incumbent typically would. But that modest success can be explained by a combination of a backlash against the Dobbs decision, the general unacceptability of the Republican opposition, and the fact that Democratic candidates for Congress had some natural distance and didn’t have to run as Biden superfans. Nothing about the 2022 midterm elections contradicts the overall fact that Biden is an unpopular president.

[...]

If Biden has an unpopular stance, Harris should simply oppose it. People understand that she couldn’t undermine her boss. Harris can say she privately disagreed with some of Biden’s positions on fiscal management and immigration enforcement but supported them because she was a good soldier. Alternatively, if she didn’t disagree with any Biden decisions at the time, she is free to say that she disagrees with them now and wants to go in a different direction.

[...]

“Kamala Harris is not the candidate for change nor is she the candidate of the future,” a Trump spokesperson tells the Times. “Kamala Harris is the vice-president right now, and whether she likes it or not, she is responsible for the economic, immigration, and foreign-policy crises over the past four years.”

Uh, no.

The vice-presidency is a strange office, lacking any formal authority. Its inhabitants have generally lamented the powerlessness of the job.

[...]

The vice-president has no constitutional power. If the president wants to do something Harris doesn’t like, Harris can’t stop him. She is therefore not responsible for any policies she doesn’t wish to associate herself with.

[...]

Kamala Harris Should Cut Joe Biden Loose

Yep.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Harris policy bullets

Project 2025 puts the final nail in the middle class coffin

While Kamala Harris wants to build the middle class again.

Some details of the Harris Plan