What was the matter with Iowa?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

That is, with the Iowa Poll: In the past, Ann Selzer's Iowa Poll had frequently landed pretty much right on the money.

Every four years, results of the final survey would be released on the Sunday before the election. This year, that final poll showed Candidate Harris ahead of Candidate Trump by three points statewide, 47-44 percent.

We'll say this for the Iowa Poll—when it finally missed the mark, it held little back. Here's the current report on the topic in the Des Moines Register:

Pollster J. Ann Selzer: 'I’ll be reviewing data' after Iowa Poll misses big Trump win

Renowned Pollster J. Ann Selzer said Tuesday she would be reviewing her data to determine why a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released just days before the election produced results so far out of line with former President Donald Trump's resounding victory.

Trump handily won Iowa for a third time, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris by 14 percentage points with more than 90% of the vote counted―a sharp contrast to Saturday's Iowa Poll that had Harris leading by 3 points.

"Tonight, I’m of course thinking about how we got where we are," Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducts the Iowa Poll, said in a statement.

"The poll findings we produced for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth today. I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened. And, I welcome what that process might teach me."

As Kevin Drum noted last week, there are many ways a survey of this type can go wrong. So-called "margin of error" is only the start of the possibilities. And by the way, just a guess:

No journalist could possibly hope to explain the way that statistical artefact works. We couldn't exactly do so either, but at least we'd know not to pretend.

Simply put, everyone talks about margin of error, but no one does anything about it! In fact, basic "sampling error" comes into play if you're simply pulling red and blue ping-pong balls out of a big giant drum. 

Sometimes, the sample you pull out of the drum will match the proportion of red and blue balls found inside the drum—but a fair amount of the time, the sample you pull out of the drum won't be a perfect match.

That's how it works with ping pong balls in a big giant drum. If you're polling a presidential campaign, other factors come into play, potentially messing things up.

Many people won't answer their phone when you try to reach them. Some people will answer their phone, but they won't answer your question.

Some people won't tell you the truth if they decide to answer your question. Some people may have changed their minds by the time they cast their votes.

The possible ways a poll can go wrong continue on from there. 

On 24-hour "cable news," the pundits spend a lot of time, before an election, puzzling over the polls. At some point, this becomes an excellent way to kill giant amounts of time—a way to pretend you're presenting "news" as part of a process called "journalism."

This past Sunday, the Iowa Poll had Candidate Harris up by three points, with nine percent still floating around in the ether. (Three percent had said that they'd be voting for Candidate Kennedy Jr.)

For one brief shining moment, that's where matters allegedly stood. According to this AP post, here's where the statewide vote in Iowa stands with 98 percent reporting:

Statewide presidential vote, Iowa 2024
Trump: 55.9%
Harris: 42.7%
Kennedy Jr.: 0.8%

Three other hopefuls got handfuls of votes. Eventually, though, the day had to come:

Trump won by more than thirteen points! The Iowa Poll got it wrong.

NEW NORMALS: "The American people are pretty sharp!"

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

Except actually, nowe aren't: For at least a generation, it's been a standard bit of messaging from "highly educated," high-profile American pundits:

The American people are pretty sharp!

That has always made for excellent messaging. Whatever else may have been involved, repetition of this bromide helped pundits remain well liked.

The American people are pretty sharp? Actually no, we aren't! That includes this gaggle of "highly educated," high-end journalistsand who knows?

 In some cases, it's possible that some of those tribunes even believed what they said!

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolutionexcept to the extent that it may become one. Numbers changed in a limited wayin a way which makes total sense at a time when people feel, by a very wide margin, that the nation is on "the wrong track."

Tens of millions of neighbors and friends believe that we're on the wrong track. Having said that, so what?

In Blue America, we kept ignoring the still-unexplained, manifest strangeness which was allowed to transpire, for more than three years, at the southern border. To this day, we're still conflating the cost of living with the current inflation figure.

Our tribunes kept insisting that President Biden was sharp as a tack. Over on the Fox News Channel, they kept playing the pieces of videotape which seemed to debunk that claim.

Are we the people actually sharp? This morning, the C-Span web site has joined that of the Internet Archive. For a reason we can't explain, C-Span's website seems to be down. 

Has C=Span been hit by a cyberattack, like the Archive before it? We have no idea! But C-Span's failure to respond robs us of the chance to transcribe a trio of phone calls the network received during Sunday morning's broadcast. of Washington Journal.

How sharp are we the American people? Based upon our notes, the three calls were received, one after the other, starting at 8:55 a.m. Eastern.

The American people are pretty sharp? Here's what three callers said, one right after another:

Caller One: Caller One said that she would be voting for Candidate Harris. She cited the fact that Candidate Trump has had three wives as the defining point of concern.

Caller Two: Caller Two said that he would also be voting for Harrisand he was predicting a blowout. He noted the fact that Candidate Trump doesn't have a pet, while Candidate Harris has a dog.

Caller Three: Caller Three said she'd be voting for Candidate Trump.  Who was in office when the Dobbs decision was reached? "The Democrats," she sagaciously said, plainly suggesting that the Dobbs decision was therefore the Democrats' fault!

You'll think that we're inventing these calls. You'll think that, but we aren't.

To our ear, there was no sign that these callers were anything other than fully sincere. We can't link you to the audiotape of these calls because C-Span, like the Internet Archive, is now, for some reason, down.

When we listened to those phone calls, we heard America singing, if only in very small part. Rather, we were hearing the voices of three fellow citizensthree of the well over 100 million neighbors and friends who would be going out there to vote.

In all honesty, we the humans aren't especially sharp, and there's exactly zero sign that we ever were. That includes the class of experts who get dragged into Blue America's messaging venues to feed us the porridge we like.

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolution. Candidate Trump will almost surely end up winning the nationwide popular vote, but only by maybe three points.

That's a change from four years ago. On the other hand, it isn't a giant change, given the circumstances under which this campaign took place.

How did we Blues approach this election? Let us count (a few of) the ways:

For starters, we operated under an amazingly braindead bromide:

Don't ask, don't let them tell!

Please don't interview Trump voters, we said again and again. Please don't ask them how the world looks to them. Don't ask them why they're supporting Candidate Trump.

Any time a major news org dared to do some such thing, we Blues begged them to stop. It's hard to be much dumber than that, but we (highly educated) Blues were constantly willing to try.

We didn't leave things there. Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern each afternoon, Blue America's "cable news" channel focused its attention on this pleasing porridge:

Trump Trump Trump Trump jail!

Lock him up, our tribunes said, all day and then into the night. In the process, they completely ignored the facts of life which were driving the outlook of The Others.

They ignored the outlook of the deplorables who went out and voted yesterday, even possibly of the "garbage" out there.

(Once President Biden had blurted that latter term, we insisted that Red America had blown right past his implied apostrophe! It's hard to be more pathetic than that, but as a tribe, we've always been willing to try.)

In the end, one of those deplorables called C-Span with that ridiculous claim about the Dobbs decision. That said, this is who we the people areand at some point, those of us in Blue America have to ask ourselves this basic question:

Do we like other people, or not?

All through the annals of human history, the general answer to that question has generally been no. We humans are wired to like our own, to refer to the Others as "trash."

That's where Candidate Vance just went, in the campaign's dying days. In part due to the landlocked nature of our own Blue American world, we are now looking ahead to rule by a gaggle like this:

The brain trust which has emerged: 
Donald J. Trump
Elon Musk
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
JD Vance
Tucker Carlson

Next in line will be fellows like Bannon. It was Bannon to whom Carlson made his latest confessionhis claim that our problems with hurricanes stem from our many abortions. That followed his account of the way he was bloodied in bed by unseen demons, even as his wife and his four dogs soundly slept.

We've now purchased rule by that peculiar crew, and on downward from there. To us, those people all seem to be disorderedbut the mental giants in Blue America all agreed, from beginning to end, that any such medical possibility must never be mentioned or discussed.

So it was decided by Usby the plainly brighter class among us the rational animals.

Are we humans "the rational animal?" Is it possible that we ever were?

Isn't it pretty to think so! A decade ago, writing for the New York Times, Professor Horwich shot that notion down.

Interpreting the later Wittgenstein, the professor brought in the mail. The highest achievements of western world thought were really "the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking," the professor said that the later Wittgenstein had said.

We think the professor got it pretty much right! Over here in Blue America, we motored ahead into an era when we pleasingly wiped away the age-old distinction between misstatements and lies.

So it went with our own muddled thinking, with a thousand examples to follow. Over there in Red America, the others were routinely able to see what our tribunes kept choosing to do.

On our side, we wanted to lock him up. The business types inside our own tribe's "cable news" channel kept using that as the pretty idea which would keep us returning for more.

On and on and on we went. On our side, we're so dumb that we somehow managed to convince ourselves that Stormy Daniels was a "feminist hero," based on the way she struggled and strained to shake Trump down for cash.

It's hard to be much dumber than that; we were willing to try. Over there, in Red America, the lesser breed was persistently able to see what we, the finer people, were haplessly trying to do.

What will President Trump do this time around? We have no way of knowing.

If he goes ahead with his apparently lunatic tariff plan, the economy may get very bad. If that happens, it will take a lot of violent rhetoric and action, in other areas, to keep us the people in line.

(Or he may just dismiss Jack Smith, then go play golf for four years. We have no way of knowing what the fellow will do.)

That said, there will likely be a lot of new normals in the days ahead. Almost surely, there's one thing which will never change:

We Blues will never understand the way we look to Others. According to a handful of actual experts, our human wiring doesn't equip us for some such task.

We humans aren't built for that task! Is a new beast slouching toward Bethlehem now, as one anthropologist foretold?

We the humans just aren't super-sharp! At some point, we Blues may have to ask ourselves this. It's a question straight outta Bill Clinton:

Do we like other humans, or not?

We've seen that claim again and again!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2024

The Times keeps looking away: We've just returned from a two-block hike to our voting place. Based upon the votes we cast after perhaps a three-minute wait, Harris and Walz will be elected today, along with Senator Alsobrooks.

Kweisi Mfume will return to the House. That said, our focus here will be this:

On a totally separate topic, Kevin Drum has presented (at least) his second post about EV charging stations—and about the ongoing, round-the-clock efforts to misinform us the people. 

Kevin starts in the manner shown below. We're omitting several graphics, which you can see at his site:

EV charging station update

Remember the old meme about how the federal government has spent $7.5 billion on EV charging stations but only three had been built? The meme needs to be updated. As of June, 17 stations have been built:

[Graphic] 

Hmmm. Still not very impressive, is it? But this is like looking at Hoover Dam in 1933 and being indignant that the government has spent a billion dollars and only poured one bucket of concrete.

At this point, we'll offer this:

In fact, we do remember that "old meme" about the EV charging stations! We remember it because we've seen the boys at the Fox News Channel pimp that mandated script again and again and again!

According to the standard messaging, it's just as Kevin relates! According to the children at Fox, the federal government has blown billions of dollars on this project—but almost no charging stations have ever been built!

(Was the number of charging stations as low as three at some point in time? In this report by Kevin from back in July, the number in the standard meme apparently stood at eight.)

We've seen Gutfeld and Watters sell that story again and again and again. As we've noted in the past, we've also seen Gutfeld refer to climate change as a "hoax," but also as "one of the major hoaxes."

That said, Kevin says this messaging about EV stations been nothing but bunk. Continuing directly, he concludes his new report with this:

The EV charging station project was designed from the start to finish in 2030. Here's how it looks if you extrapolate the current growth rate:

[Graphic]

We probably won't hit a thousand stations until the end of 2025. That's just the way exponential growth goes. But like Hoover Dam, the EV project is actually ahead of schedule even though there isn't much to see yet.

A project of this sort can't be accomplished overnight. Today, as back in July, Kevin reports that the project is proceeding as designed, or is perhaps a bit ahead of schedule.

On our own, we know nothing about this topic. That, of course, would also be true of almost everyone else. including the millions of people who (unknowingly) receive their programmed misinformation from the Fox News Channel.

Once again, Kevin is saying that the project in question is actually ahead of schedule. Assuming his report is accurate, Gutfeld and Watters have been misinforming us the people as they've laughed and smirked and chuckled and clowned about the completely ridiculous lack of charging stations which have been built to date.

We've seen this again and again on Fox. We've never seen this conflict reported, or resolved, by the high-minded keepers of the flame at the New York Times.

To appearances, the New York Times simply doesn't want to scuffle with the lesser breed over at Fox. Corporate tools like Gutfeld and Watters are allowed the run of their playpen, as long as they stay Over There, misinforming Red America's voters.

We live in two Americas now. Over there, on the Fox News Channel, the flyweights can do and say whatever they like. Under current arrangements, they 're allowed to behave this way without any fear of correction.

How much are these flyweights paid for this service? It's considered a breach in protocol if you even ask!

(This is a problem at Blue cable too. We'd say it's much worse Over There.)

NEW NORMALS: Candidate Harris is "trash," he said!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Did Yeats get it right? No one can say that this incomparable site isn't shaping the national discourse.

This very morning, Morning Joe began with a reading from The Making of the President 1960, the iconic book by Theodore White. We're forced to tell you this:

Inevitably, the reading came from the very first page of the famous book—from White's account of the voting that year in Hart's Location, the Dixville Notch of that day.

The leading authority tells us this about that northern hamlet:

Hart's Location, New Hampshire

Hart's Location is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. Since 1948, the town has frequently been one of the first places to declare its results for the New Hampshire presidential primary and U.S. presidential elections.

The population was 68 in the 2020 census. It was incorporated in 1795.

[...]

New Hampshire law allows towns with fewer than 100 residents to open the polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots...The tradition of first-in-the-nation voting in Hart's Location dates back to 1948.

That's how it's done in the Granite State. You may recall the famous old saying: 

As goes the state of New Hampshire, so goes no one else!

Fuller disclosure! According to that same authority, the population of Hart's Location was actually 7 (seven!) back in 1960. 

This seems to mean that someone is confused or misinformed in some way. We say that because White's famous book begins with this passage, as read over patriotic music on today's Morning Joe:

The Making of the President, 1960

It was invisible, as always. 

They had begun to vote in the villages of New Hampshire at midnight, as they always do, seven and a half hours before the candidate rose. His men had canvassed Hart’s Location in New Hampshire days before, sending his autographed picture to each of the twelve registered voters in the village. They knew that they had five votes certain there, that Nixon had five votes certain—and that two were still undecided. Yet it was worth the effort, for Hart’s Location’s results would be the first flash of news on the wires to greet millions of voters as they opened their morning papers over coffee. But from there on it was unpredictable—invisible.

That's the way the book begins. The population of the village was seven—but according to White, Kennedy's men had managed to locate twelve voters there! 

(In the end, how did Hart's Location vote? White's book hurries on, doesn't say.)

We ourselves had planned to quote from White's famous book today. We had planned to focus on the ways we now live in a vastly changed nation—in a nation which is much larger, to cite one basic example.

Candidate Kennedy won Texas that year, but he did so quite narrowly. Meanwhile, Texas was a different critter at that point in time.

Below, you see population figures for three Sunbelt states, but also for the United States as a whole: 

Total population, then and now:

Texas 1960: 9,579,677
Texas 2023 (est): 30,503,301

Florida 1960: 4,951,560
Florida 2023 (est.): 22,610,726

California 1960: 15,717,204
California 2023 (est): 38,940,231

United States 1960: 179,323,175
United States 2024 (est): 335,893,238

There were many fewer Americans then. Except during spring training, the modern-day state of Florida was virtually uninhabited!

This year, Nevada is an important swing state. It was basically empty back then:

Nevada 1960: 285,278
Nevada 2023 (est): 3,194,176

We were a much smaller nation. We were also much less "diverse," and given the way our brains are wired—given the way we humans are built—running a diverse democracy tends to be a challenging task. 

(Something else is true, and it's quite important in the current circumstance. Given the limits of human discernment, there is no well-intentioned impulse which can't be unwisely pursued. We'll expound on this fact in the days ahead—and that fact is even true over here in our own Blue America.)

Time moved slower in 1960, Harper Lee once almost said. Also, with a potent, shoe-banging external enemy inspiring everyone to cohere, it was somewhat easier to run a "democracy" then.

It was also easier because we didn't have national talk radio. Also because we didn't have "cable news." 

We didn't have any 24-hour imitations of news. We didn't have the Internet, and we didn't have social media. 

Huey Long had said that every man (sic) should be a royal. Thanks to the democratization of media, the watchword today is this:

Every nutcase a king! Also, every flyweight comedian!

Every nutcase, but also every "beast?" We'll offer examples below.

Candidate Kennedy squeaked out a win in 1960. Candidate Nixon narrowly lost. 

Last night, Dixville Notch split its vote—three votes for Candidate Harris, three votes for Candidate Trump. Meanwhile, is a beast slouching toward Bethlenem? We refer to the gloomy Yeats.

In the wake of the First World War, Yeats was perhaps a bit gloomy. His famous poem, The Second Coming, was written in 1919. The leading authority on the poem offers this overview:

The Second Coming (poem)

“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920...The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to describe allegorically the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry...

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, and before the British government had decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.

To understand Yeats′s cosmology it is essential to read his book A Vision, where he explained his views on history and how it informed his poetry. Yeats saw human history as a series of epochs, what he called "gyres." He saw the age of classical antiquity as beginning with the Trojan War and then that thousand year cycle was overtaken by the Christian era, which is coming to a close. And that is the basis of the final line of the poem: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

According to Yeats, a beast was slouching toward Bethlehem. Today, more than a century later, we can't quite say he was wrong.

Are beasts advancing on our own culture, such as it is? In this, our vastly changed semi-nation, we will start with this:

Yesterday, during a rally in Atlanta, a candidate who was severely mistreated as a child and as a youth gave voice to his pain in this way:

VANCE (11/4/2024): The citizens of this country are not garbage for wanting to afford groceries and a nice place to live. But in two days, we're going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C. And the trash's name is Kamala Harris.

AUDIENCE: [Cheers, applause]

VANCE: All right. So let me leave you with one final thought...

"In a clearing stands a boxer?" Fuller lyrics below.

For now, to see the candidate call his opponent "trash," click here for the C-Span videotape. Then, move ahead to minute 55.

For better or worse, none of the candidates called anyone "trash" during the 1960 campaign. Regarding Vance, we've made this suggestion before:

A child who is mistreated in the remarkable ways he describes in his own famous book may show the effects of such abuse at later points in his life. This seems to be another way we humans are built. It isn't the fault of the child.

Candidate Vance was calling her trash. During the now-famous Garden Party, she was portrayed as a prostitute. Also, the persistently thoughtful Hulk Hogan seemed to portray her engaging in oral sex.

In Blue America, our tribunes quickly disappeared this array of gender-based insults. This instant abandonment of the woman also seems to be part of the way we human beings are wired.

As of yesterday, Candidate Vance was calling her trash! Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is now offering this account of our problems with stormy weather:

Tucker Carlson Says Abortions Cause Hurricanes in Election Eve Broadcast

Tucker Carlson, a top surrogate for former President Donald J. Trump who spoke at the Republican National Convention this summer and made racist claims at a Trump rally last week at Madison Square Garden, said on Monday that the increased occurrence of hurricanes in the United States was a consequence of abortion—which he characterized as “human sacrifice.”

Appearing on a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a right-wing political strategist and Trump ally who was just released from prison, Mr. Carlson repeatedly portrayed abortion—a medical procedure—as a kind of religious human sacrifice. He dismissed scientific research that links global warming to the increased potency and frequency of hurricanes, saying instead that “it’s probably abortion, actually.”

“I’m sure I’ll be attacked for saying this, but I really believe it,” Mr. Carlson said, adding, “You can’t participate in human sacrifice without consequences.”

Throughout his 25-minute appearance on Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Mr. Carlson described himself as a secular person but spoke of politics in starkly religious terms.

Mr. Carlson also described nuclear weapons as “demonic,” adding that they were created by “not-human forces,” and asserted that the U.S. military had “consistently” targeted and killed Christian populations since the end of World War II.

The account of this fellow's "bizarre remarks" in the past few years continues on from there. 

For better or worse, the Times still hasn't reported Carlson's recent bombshell disclosure—his revelation that he was attacked and bloodied by demons in the middle of the night while his wife and his four dogs continued to sleep, without awakening, right there in the same bed.

Trump and Vance and Carlson oh my? Let's throw in Elon Musk, who has become a major player in the ongoing "democratization of media"—in the process designed to make every fruitcake a king.

Stating the obvious, there's no perfect way to run a "national discourse." The discourse wasn't perfect in 1960. Grudgingly, White seems to acknowledge this fact at one point in his book.

Today, the discourse is an unmistakable joke. (Frequently, it's a "dirty" joke.) Part of the joke involves the way the finer elements in the news business have agreed to avert their gaze from the encroachment of the possible beasts.

Trump and Vance and Carlson oh my! Are beasts slouching toward our own Bethlehem as we go to the polls?

On Morning Joe, Joe was reading a passage about a village during a simpler time. 

White's book describes the start of a political era. Is that major political era slouching toward a very dangerous end?

This afternoon: Unreported far and wide! Gutfeld and Watters edition

Fuller lyrics: Fuller lyrics, from Paul Simon (1968):

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the remainders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains...

 Simon's song is deeply humane. We've suggested that you pity the child but strip the adult of power. 


What explains the way Iowa votes?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Also, Semafor tattles: How does the state of Iowa vote in presidential elections?

In recent years, the state's pattern has been hard to explain. Here's the way the state voted in 2008:

Iowa presidential election, 2008
Obama: 53.9%
McCain: 44.4%

Obama won by almost ten points. Here's where things went from there:

Iowa presidential election, 2012
Obama: 52.0%
Romney: 46.2%

Iowa presidential election, 2016
Trump: 51.2%
Clinton: 41.7%

Iowa presidential election, 2020
Trump: 53.1%
Biden: 44.9%

Offhand, we can't puzzle that out. Consider the shift in statewide voter sentiment from 2012 to 2016:

Nationwide, the Democratic candidate lost a bit less than three points from 2012 to 2016. The party went from Obama's 51.1% nationwide vote in 2012 down to Clinton's 48.2% four years later.

Statewide in Iowa, the Democratic candidate lost more than ten points over that same period—from Obama's 52.0% all the way down to Clinton's 41.7%.  That was a very large drop—almost four times the nationwide norm. Four years later, Biden only won back three points.

Offhand, we can't explain that statewide voting pattern. Now, the Iowa poll suggests that Candidate Harris might actually win the Hawkeye State! (Or possibly not, of course.)

In our view, tis a dream devoutly to be wished. Is it going to happen? We have no idea.

Meanwhile:

On this very morning, fire trucks from the New York Times arrived at the scene of the fire.  As noted this morning, we refer to this "News Analysis" piece from the front page of today's print editions:

NEWS ANALYSIS 
Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds

It took just two minutes for former President Donald J. Trump to utter his first lie of the evening, claiming once again that the 2020 election had been stolen.

By four minutes into the televised interview on Thursday night, he was claiming that this time around “we’re leading by a lot” in the polls, setting up another false claim of a stolen election should he lose on Tuesday.

[...]

Truth is not always an abundant resource in the White House under any president, but never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts... 

The analysis piece goes on at great length. It arrives at the scene of the conflagration clownishly late in the game.

As we've long noted, the endless misstatements of Candidate Trump should have formed a major "news hook" long ago. As we've frequently noted, when a major party nominee makes so many crazy misstatements, that behavior should count as front-page news every time it happens. 

(Stating the obvious, endless unsupported claims about past and future "stolen elections" should be viewed as especially noxious, given the basic structure of our failing American system.)

The Times has arrived at the scene of the blaze just as the ashes fly. Apparently, some people inside the New York Times may have agreed with this assessment as this candidate's lunacy—and the silence about it at the Times—continued to move along.

This morning, Semafor tattles! At that site, Max Tani describes the apparent unrest in a lengthy report which starts in the manner shown:

In a frank internal meeting, The New York Times wrestled with its political role

With the 2024 presidential election a few weeks away, one question was top of mind for staff at The New York Times: Had the paper’s leadership noticed how many Democrats had become furious at it over its coverage of Donald Trump?

The Times, and the American media at large, absorb endless vitriol from the right. At a rally Sunday, Donald Trump joked that he wouldn’t mind if another would-be assassin had to “shoot through” the press pen to get to him.

But when the country’s most influential newsroom assembled at the paper’s New York headquarters for a nearly 90-minute-long off-the-record Q&A with the paper’s top editors on Oct. 24, some of its journalists voiced a different set of concerns about the 2024 election and how its outcome might shape the paper’s future.

Semafor obtained a recording of the meeting, which offers extraordinary insight into a key American institution under intense external scrutiny and internal pressure...

The report is there for all to peruse. To read the report, click here.

The Times has arrived at the scene of the crime. Election Day is tomorrow.

In our view, this silence has been a form of journalistic inanity pretty much all the way down. We leave you with this week's top question:

Might this journalistic failure to perform also turn out to be one of our nation's deeply destructive "new normals?"



NEW NORMALS: 30,000 people at 3 in the morning!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Then, as now, new normals: Way back in 1960, at the dawn of a new political era, it was apparently part of an array of new normals.

Theodore White wrote the book about that year's storied presidential campaign. At one point, he described the sudden arrival of "the jumpers." 

To this day, White's book carries a famous title: The Making of the President 1960. At one point, White says that the jumpers arrived on the scene after that campaign's famous first TV debate:

WHITE (page 331): One remembers, of course, the jumpers. The jumpers made their appearance shortly after the first TV debate when from a politician Kennedy had become, in the mind of the bobby-sox platoons, a “thing” combining, as one Southern Senator said, “The best qualities of Elvis Presley and Franklin D. Roosevelt.” The jumpers were, in the beginning, teen-age girls who would bounce, jounce and jump as the cavalcade passed, squealing, “I seen him, I seen him.” Gradually over the days their jumping seemed to grow more rhythmic, giving a jack-inthe-box effect of ups and downs in a thoroughly sexy oscillation. Then, as the press began to comment on the phenomenon, thus stimulating more artistic jumping, the middle-aged ladies began to jump up and down too, until, in the press bus following the candidate, one would note only the oddities: the lady, say, in her bathrobe, jumping back and forth; the heavily pregnant mother, jumping; the mother with a child in her arms, jumping; the row of nuns, all jiggling under their black robes, almost (but not quite) daring to jump; and the double-jumpers—teenagers who, as the cavalcade passed, would turn to face each other and, in ecstasy, place hands on each others’ shoulders and jump up and down together as a partnership. The most endearing jumping I saw on the long campaign occurred in Florida—in Miami. One of the schools had trooped its children out onto the lawn to see the Presidential cavalcade go by, as was the custom in most communities for both candidates. By some misjudgment of logistics, the school authorities had put the older children—the seventh- and eighth-graders—in the front row while the tiny kindergartners and first-graders were drawn up several paces behind the big ones on the grass. The big girls jumped, of course, as was to be expected. But one could see behind them two files of little ones in their gay-colored jumpers and smocks, jumping up and down in their ranks as if they were colored balls being bounced by an unseen hand. The little ones could see nothing at all over the shoulders of the seventh- and eighth-graders, but they were jumping nonetheless.

Two decades earlier, bobby-soxers had reportedly squealed for Frank Sinatra too. But as part of a presidential campaign, we're willing to guess that the jumpers were part of a new normal.

Were the jumpers a figment of White's imagination? Apparently not. The oral history of the campaign includes recollections of this conduct by other people who, like White, were actually physically present. It was a bit like the Beatles before the Beatles, observers have sometimes said.

Arguably, the jumpers were part of an emerging new normal. Elvis had already hit. The Beatles would soon arrive.

In White's view, this was the first election of the emerging TV era.  For the record, Candidate Kennedy was a bit of a dreamboat in the eyes of many observers. That would include our own (Boston-born) mother and older sister, assuming that memory serves.

For the record, it was a much different country then. The country had a much smaller population, and the population was much less racially and ethnically diverse. Meanwhile, our own emerging political era has been defined by the so-called "democratization of media"—by the emergence of technologies which forcing us to adopt a modernized version of Huey Long's famous bromide:

Every crackpot a king.

Every crackpot a king! This may end up as the new normal of this dangerous time.

The TV era has come and gone. The current election campaign is playing out in the era of the Internet and social media—and in the age of cable TV, with its round-the-clock imitations of TV "news."

The current election campaign is playing out in a much larger nation, but also in the era of the unfettered fruitcake. Still and all, the enthusiasm was apparently great on the final weekend of 1960, when Candidate Kennedy returned to his native New England for his last two days of campaigning.

Realities were quite different then! The Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy, swept to victory through much of the solid South, winning North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. 

(Neither candidate won Alabama or Mississippi that year. Those states were won that year by a straight segregationist ticket.)

Candidate Kennedy reached the White House thanks to the pre-civil rights South! At the same time, the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, won all three Pacific coast states—Washington, Oregon and California—and he took three of the six states in Kennedy's native region.

Candidate Kennedy spent the last two days campaigning right there in New England. The nation was much smaller then, but the enthusiasm in lower New England was apparently quite high. White describes what happened when Kennedy arrived at the airport in Bridgeport, Connecticut shortly after midnight on that last Saturday night:

WHITE (page 339): From the airport to Waterbury, where Kennedy was to rest that night, is only twenty-seven miles; yet it was to take two hours to drive that twenty-seven miles. Every child, every man, every woman, every grandmother and grandfather on whom [Governor] Bailey and his organization had a string of loyalty, was there in the damp to greet the returning hero. Up the Naugatuck Valley’s old Route 8 they went—through Shelton, Derby, Ansonia, Seymour, Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, Union City, through all the craftsmens’ villages of this seed bed of American technology. There at every crossroads, at midnight and at one and at two in the morning, they were waiting with torchlights and red flares to cheer and yell “We love you, Jack.” Outside every fire station on the route, the Bailey men had lined the fire engines, their red beacons and red winkers flashing and revolving in salute in the night...

He arrived at the Roger Smith Hotel in Waterbury, Connecticut, at three o’clock in the morning, and 30,000 people waited on the old New England green before the hotel to yell for him. He was tired; it was three o’clock in the morning; but they wanted him. So he climbed out on the balcony of the hotel, with the spotlights illuminating him from below, and from high on the balcony he spoke over the crowded green...

It was a much smaller nation then. But according to White, 30,000 people were standing there at 3 in the morning, wanting to hear Jack speak.

After three hours of sleep, the campaigning began again, in what was plainly a different political nation. Judging from appearances, the candidate felt that he even had to battle for victory in the states of lower New England—in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts as well:

WHITE (footnote, page 341): All the last Sunday and Monday of the Kennedy campaign were spent in New England except for four hours touching down at rallies in Long Island and the northern New Jersey slums. The schedule, to be precise, read over the forty-eight hour period: Waterbury, Wallingford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Suffolk County, Teaneck, Jersey City, Newark, Lewiston (Maine), Providence (Rhode Island), Springfield (Massachusetts), Hartford (Connecticut), Burlington (Vermont), Manchester (New Hampshire), and Boston (Massachusetts).

Even in New Haven and Hartford, Providence and Springfield, Mass.! So it went as an array of new normals were taking shape at the start of a new political era.

That was the first election of the TV era. Ours is the era which bears this challenging banner:

Every crackpot an influencer. 

We're going to learn, in the next few days, if that earlier era has fully reached its end. We're going to learn if a whole new set of normals now obtains.

Concerning one point, there can be little doubt. The inane behavior of the New York Times has been part of the current new normal. 

On the front page of this morning's print editions, this "News Analysis" by Peter Baker appears above the fold. With the sirens of its fire trucks screaming, the Times has arrived at the scene of the fire comically, clownishly late:

NEWS ANALYSIS 
Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds

It took just two minutes for former President Donald J. Trump to utter his first lie of the evening, claiming once again that the 2020 election had been stolen.

By four minutes into the televised interview on Thursday night, he was claiming that this time around “we’re leading by a lot” in the polls, setting up another false claim of a stolen election should he lose on Tuesday.

By five minutes into the program, he had turned to assailing his successor’s record in office and was claiming that in the last few years the country had experienced “the worst inflation we’ve ever had.”

None of that was true. And that was just the first 300 seconds. For the rest of the evening, Mr. Trump spouted one statement after another that was fanciful, misleading, distorted or wildly false. He rewrote history. He claimed accomplishments that he did not accomplish. He cited statistics at odds with the record. He described things that did not happen and denied things that did.

[...]

Truth is not always an abundant resource in the White House under any president, but never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts...

Never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts? 

It isn't Baker's fault, but the New York Times has arrived on the scene comically, clownishly late. It has finally arrived at the scene of the blaze with this "News Analysis" concerning one part of what may turn out to be our flailing nation's new normal. 

Later, the tragicomedy continues as Baker offers this:

“No one in American politics has ever lied on this scale,” said Bill Adair, a Duke University professor and author of “Beyond the Big Lie,” published this fall. “His impact is not just in the volume and repetition of lies that he tells but also in the way that he has affected the culture of the Republican Party. He has made it more acceptable to lie, and that’s clear when you listen to debate on the House floor and you hear his lies get repeated, or you watch Fox and you hear his lies get repeated."

Let us start by noting that neither Baker nor Adair knows if this candidate's endless wild misstatements actually qualify as "lies," or if they might the product of a wildly distorted discernment—a distorted discernment of a type the Times (and the rest of the upper-end press) has steadfastly refused to contemplate or discuss.

No one knows of those endless wild misstatements are actually "lies"—and no one has been willing to interview the kinds of (carefully selected) medical specialists who might be able to offer an informed judgment about this important possibility. To that we'll add an additional point, one we've repeatedly noted:

You watch Fox and you hear his [misstatements] get repeated? 

We the people do in fact hear those wild misstatements repeated, on an hourly basis, all over the Fox News Channel. Along with the rest of its journalistic avoidance, the Times has agreed that this basic fact of modern life—this basic "new normal"—must never be reported, analyzed or discussed. 

Within the realm of the New York Times, no one should ever say the names of the Fox News Channel stars! Also, no one should ever report the things they've repeatedly said and done.

The Times has agreed to disappear the existence of that new normal. For better or worse, it has also agreed to bury the sweeping possibility concerning the possible medical / psychiatric disorder which may have produced the endless wild misstatements it describes today as "lies."

Last night, on CNN, Lulu Garcia-Navarro finally said it. "It's not normal," she said, speaking of the peculiar behavior of this particular candidate on this campaign's final weekend.

We'll try to link you to tape of that exchange. At Raw Story, Kathleen Culliton describes that discussion here.

The cyberattack on the Internet Archive may mean that we won't be able to show you what Garcia-Navarro said. Sadly, that successful cyberattack may turn itself out to be one of our "new normals."

As a nation, we seem to be encountering quite a few potential "new normals" as we await the outcome of tomorrow's vote. That said, it's all over now but the waiting! 

Tomorrow, we'll offer a few more notes about the respective arrays of new normals—the new normals of 1960 as opposed to the potential new normals now.

A new political era arrived on the scene in 1960. Let's borrow today from Yeats as we contemplate our own new normals. We'll let sacred Yeats frame our basic question:

To what extent is a rough beast, its hour perhaps come round at last, slouching towards our own Bethlehem, hoping to be born?

This afternoon: Semafor squeals—tattles, blows the whistle