the daily howler: 2024

CHAOS: Do you expect chaos, the hopeful was asked!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2024

The chaos is already here: It's exactly as we noted in Friday afternoon's report.

On Sunday morning, October 13, the former president—the current candidate—was asked if he expects "chaos."

In fact, the question was more specific than that. Below, you see the question Candidate Trump was asked by Maria Bartiromo on her Fox News Channel program, Sunday Morning Futures.

Quite plainly, Bartiromo was asking about the possibility of "chaos" on Election Day. Just to establish a basic record, here's a slightly fuller transcript of the question Trump was asked:

BARTIROMO (10/13/24): One of the elements at the border has brought in Tren de Argua, this Venezuelan gang—quite dangerous. You told us about this...
It was an Afghan refugee [who was] charged with plotting an Election Day massacre.
TRUMP: Nothing surprises me.
BARTIROMO: What about that, though? Are you expecting chaos on Election Day?
TRUMP: No. Not from the side which votes for Trump.
BARTIROMO: But I'm just wondering if these outside agitators will start up on Election Day. Let's say you win. Let's remember, you've got 50,000 Chinese nationals in this country in the last couple of years. There are people on the terrorist watch list—350 in the last couple of years. Like you said—13,000 murderers and 15,000 rapists.
What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn’t think it’s going to be a peaceful Election Day.

Might there be "chaos" on Election Day? Is it possible that Election Day won't be "peaceful" this year?

Quite plainly, that's the question the candidate was asked. This afternoon, we'll take a fuller look at what he said in reply.

Will there be "chaos" on Election Day? That's what Trump was asked.

Especially in light of President Biden's remark, nothing was obviously "wrong" with the question. But in our view, the question from Bartiromo ignored a larger, more fundamental point:

With Election Day just sixteen days off, the chaos is already general.

We aren't speaking about physical violence or acts of physical disruption, as Bartiromo seemed to be doing. We're speaking about acts of moral and intellectual chaos—about chaos within the national discourse, to the extent that a discourse exists.

Within that realm, the chaos is general over the whole U.S.! We watched its manifestations all weekend long as we sat in our viewing chamber. We were able to observe the major players who keep bringing us this moral and intellectual—and journalistic—chaos.

A great deal of the moral and intellectual chaos is coming from this candidate himself. As Election Day draws near, his presentations get stranger and stranger, as noted in this report from print editions of today's New York Times:

At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity
Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.
The performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state, added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters.
[...]
Mr. Trump opened his speech at the airport in Latrobe, Pa., with 12 minutes of reminiscing about the golfer Arnold Palmer, who grew up in the Western Pennsylvania town and for whom the airport was named.
His monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis. Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity. He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris.
[...]
Mr. Trump urged his supporters to vote, telling them that they had to send a crude message to Ms. Harris: “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president.”

Given traditional norms, a type of chaos seems to be lurking in this public behavior. Then again, there was the steady flow of ludicrous presentations being made on Fox News Channel programs all through the weekend, with steady streams of clownish misinformation—but also with "coarse insults"—being offered to millions of viewers.

On programs aired by the Fox News Channel, the journalistic chaos was general. This afternoon, we'll show you a type of journalistic chaos which has been quite widespread on CNN and MSNBC.

In our view—we'd say unmistakably—the chaos was general on the Fox News Channel. As the week proceeds, we'll show you examples of the remarkable journalistic disorder being aired by employees of that corporate entity as Election Day draws near.

In our view, it's hard to miss an obvious fact—whatever its occasional merits might be, the Fox News Channel is primary a corporate propaganda channel. Then again, there's the conduct of another major news org—the aforementioned New York Times.

In fairness to the New York Times, the following words must be said. In its attempt to report and discuss the ongoing conduct of Candidate Trump, the paper is forced to enter journalistic territory for which there is no modern precedent.

No candidate for president has ever behaved in the way this candidate routinely does. This means that there is no established template for the way a major newspaper—a major newspaper like the Times—should report the highly unusual behavior of this particular nominee.

That said, and in our view, the New York Times still hasn't devised a respectable journalistic way to deal with this hopeful's behavior. Here, for example, is the fuller way this morning's news report starts:

At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity
Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.
The performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state, added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters.
It was unclear if the outbursts and insults were an expression of his frustration as the campaign grinds on or of his reflexive desire to entertain his crowds. At her own events on Saturday, Ms. Harris called attention to Mr. Trump’s temperament and his tendency to “go off script and ramble.”

Sad! Immediately after describing the candidate's highly unusual conduct, the newspaper gave its readers two (2) possible explanations for the candidate's conduct. Times readers were offered two choices:

It could be that the candidate is frustrated. Or it could be that the candidate is trying to entertain his crowds.

That was the entire menu; no other possibility was offered. In this way, the New York Times continues to whistle past the graveyard—journalistically, continues to play it safe, to duck and dodge and fail.

(Borrowing the language of Frost: Something they've been withholding has been making us weak.)

We single out the New York Times because it's the most significant news org in all of Blue America. The aforementioned Fox Fews Channel may be the most significant news org in the other America—over there in our modern Red America.

For now, forget the way the Times has covered, or has failed to cover, the aforementioned Candidate Trump. With respect to that other news orgs, the New York Times has aggressively refused to come to terms with the journalistic chaos being sown over there. But so it goes as a struggling (and possibly failing) nation approaches the same Election Day Bartiromo was asking about.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. With Election Day two weeks away, we'd have to say that the chaos is general over the two subdivisions of the United States.

We aren't speaking about the kind of chaos Bartiromo was asking about. We're speaking about the intellectual, moral, journalistic chaos which now pervades every square inch of our "national discourse," to the extent that some such creature is still drawing breath.

The chaos is general at the Fox News Channel. The New York Times keeps taking a pass—just keeps averting its gaze.

Sometimes, our own news orgs in Blue America contribute to the disorder in affirmative ways. We'll be examining all these unhealthy phenomena as the week proceeds.

As we conduct this exploration, we'll be returning to a form of President Lincoln's question—the question he asked in Gettysburg, though in a much different context.

At present, the chaos is general over the nation! Can some such very large modern nation expect to "long endure?"

Tomorrow: Calling the roll at the Fox News Channel

This afternoon: Jake Tapper, with a remarkable edit

SATURDAY: The problem here is very simple!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2024

President Lincoln's bet: Perhaps he was able to see where the culture would go!

Whatever the explanation might be, President Lincoln chose to state his gamble in the form of a question—in the form of a test:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers [sic] brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men [sic] are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

Could some such nation "long endure?" Speaking at Gettysburg, President Lincoln was willing to bet that it could.

Today we're engaged in another internal war. Across the sea, a different president—the (presumably) sociopathic Putin—is betting that Lincoln was wrong.

No one should know any better than Putin that empires don't tend to endure.

Our own nation was never exactly an empire. Today, though, it's a giant continental enterprise.

It encompasses many different regions and their varying culture zones. It includes many "identity" groups, none of which are "wrong."

The Soviet Union also encompassed many "identities." As a younger Putin sat and watched, that union came undone.

President Putin is betting today that President Lincoln was wrong. It's entirely possible that Putin is right. We'll work from this framework next week as we list the various players involved in the drama as the immediate endgame approaches.

According to experts, the problem here is simple. "We the people"—we the humans—aren't wired for this sort of work!

Our own view goes something like this:

"If history has taught us anything," it may have taught us that.

Full disclosure: We stumbled upon these musings today as we watched the first hour of the ridiculous propaganda show known as Fox & Friends Weekend. This morning, the highly paid friends in question were these:

Fox friends, Saturday morning
Rachel Campos-Duffy
Will Cain
Charlie Hurt

Fuller disclosure! The problem extends beyond that undisguised propaganda show and beyond those three "cable news" friends.

It even extends beyond the channel which airs that baldly ridiculous program. It extends all the way over to Us!

On balance, we Blues aren't wired for this sort of work either. We've proved it again and again.

What did Donald Trump actually say?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2024

Editing can be fun: Three cheers for Alex Griffing, breakout star of Mediaite. We see that he's done the transcribing we'd planned to do yesterday.

We refer to something said by Candidate Trump when he spoke with Maria Bartiromo last weekend on her Sunday Morning Futures program for Fox.

With an assist from Griffing's transcription, here's the rather slender exchange which has generated a great deal of interest. You'll note that Trump was asked about a very specific possibility concerning Election Day:

BARTIROMO (10/13/24): It was an Afghan refugee charged with plotting an Election Day massacre.
TRUMP: Nothing surprises me.
BARTIROMO: What about that, though? Are you expecting chaos on Election Day?
TRUMP: No. Not from the side which votes for Trump.
BARTIROMO: But I'm just wondering if these outside agitators will start up on Election Day. Let's say you win. Let's remember, you've got 50,000 Chinese nationals in this country in the last couple of years. There are people on the terrorist watch list—350 in the last couple of years. Like you said—13,000 murderers and 15,000 rapists.
What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn’t think it’s going to be a peaceful Election Day.
TRUMP: Well, he doesn’t have any idea what’s happening, in all fairness. He spends most of his day sleeping.
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country—by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns and villages, they’re being inundated.
But I don’t think they're the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

Warning! We can't vouch for Bartiromo's numbers. A lot of bogus claims have been floating around the Fox News Channel with respect to the number of criminals who have recently entered the country. We can't vouch for the numbers Bartiromo offered there.

That said, that was the full exchange at that point in time. Bartiromo asked Trump about possible violence—about possible "chaos"—on Election Day. Quite explicitly, he then discussed the possibility that "the enemy within"—a bunch of radical left lunatics—could imaginably try to create some such chaos on that specific day.

Who was the candidate talking about? As is routine at this point, the candidate didn't make his meaning especially clear. At that point, Bartiromo moved on to a different topic, as you can see at Griffing's post

Clearly, Trump had said that some "radical left lunatics"—some "very bad people"—might need to be subdued by the National Guard, conceivably even by the military, on Election Day. But what sorts of "very bad people" did he have in mind?

Bartiromo didn't ask, and the candidate didn't say. Did this disordered candidate really mean anything at all? We can't necessarily say.

Forced to guess, we would have guessed that he might have had "antifa" types in mind. In his own post, Griffing mentions the campus groups who have demonstrated against Israel's conduct in Gaza.

One thing is clear. Nothing in this actual exchange suggests that Trump was talking about calling out the National Guard, or even the military, to subdue Nancy Pelosi or some such major political types. He was speaking about Election Day only, and nothing he said seemed to suggest that he was talking about subduing his political rivals.

All across Blue America's cable landscape, this exchange has been edited down to eliminate Bartiromo's question. With her question edited away, it becomes much less obvious that Trump was specifically discussing Election Day, full stop.

It's amazing to us that serious journalists would edit this exchange that way. But with increasing frequency, this is the journalism we have chosen as our heavily tribalized nation just keeps coming apart.

Much later in the interview, Bartiromo asked a totally different question—a question about Trump's possible second term. As he answered this question, Trump returned to his "enemy of the people" rhetoric, but also to the childish nicknames with which he has burdened the discourse.

Griffing has transcribed that later exchange. Much later in the interview, here's the question Trump was asked:

BARTIROMO: What will you do to guard against the bureaucrats undermining you in a second term?

That's the question he was now asked. To see the ridiculous things the candidate said—childish nicknames included!—click here for Griffing's post.

In that later statement, this childish, badly disordered man refers to Rep. Schiff as "the enemy from within." He goes on and on, then on and on, but he doesn't say anything about trying to lock Schiff up.

Creative paraphrase can be great fun. So can creative editing.

Increasingly, this is the journalism we have chosen. Such choices can be enjoyable, but they also can cause great harm.

Few things this candidate says make sense. We Blues should perhaps try harder.

A DISTANT LAND: Whitaker asked, and so did Baier!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2024

The obvious question not answered: With apologies, we're going to quote sacred Thoreau one more time. Once again, we refer to his longing to be transported to a type of distant land:

Walden; or, Life in the Woods
[...]
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Our former Middlesex County neighbor longed for a world in which writers would offer sincere accounts of their lives. If some writer had lived sincerely, he said, "it must have been in a distant land to me."

What did our former neighbor mean? As we noted in Monday's report, we assume he meant something like this:

Inevitably, he lives of others differ from our own, and do so to a large degree. ("Planet is dissimilar from planet," Yevtushenko said.) Someone who has live sincerely and is speaking sincerely will inevitably seem to be describing "somewhere I have never traveled"—a land distant from any land Thoreau had personally known.

We'll offer a twist on that longing. For ourselves, we'd love to see a public discourse in which professional journalists offered competent accounts of the public world in which we citizens live.

But alas! In the wake of Wednesday's performance by Bret Baier—after watching snatches of "cable news" last night, Red and Blue alike—it must be said that any such world would be a far distant land.

We Americans! We pretend that we are blessed with something resembling a "national discourse." We pretend we have something known as journalism, performed by respectable people who often "went to the finest schools."

In truth, some of the performers in question are obvious lost souls. Astonishingly, they live to go on the air in prime time each night and talk about who may be "banging" Jill Biden. They long to go on the air to compare Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg to a pair of "hippos."

(Tuesday night's Gutfeld! program. This is an endless theme on this demented primetime "cable news" program as Blue America averts its gaze.)

Some of our "journalists" are lost souls. Remarkably few of the people in question are impressively competent.

As we noted yesterday, at least one of the people apparently lives in a $37 million Palm Beach mansion. On Wednesday evening, on the Fox News Channel, this peculiar state of affairs seemed to be present for all to see in Bret Baier's gruesome work.

As we noted yesterday, Baier spent the second half hour on Wednesday night attempting to justify the various things he'd said and done during the first half hour. A trio of Fox News Channel hacks assured him that he had been great.

Yesterday, Baier claimed that he'd made a mistake in one part of his "interview" with Candidate Harris. We know of no obvious reason to believe what Baier said.

It's going to be a long, long time before we imagine that Baier is sincere. That said, he asked some perfectly sensible questions during the course of that gruesome half hour—and thanks to the invaluable Rev site, a transcript of the interview now exists.

(For that transcript, accompanied by videotape, you can just click here.)

One of Baier's questions is shown below. It came right at the one-minute mark, during the flood of interruptions with which Baier chose to begin.

You might call it a "loaded," rather partisan question. You might see it as an accusatory question designed to put the candidate in an awkward position.

We don't recommend the shape of this question. But it touches upon one of the largest (unanswered) policy questions of the current White House campaign:

BAIER (10/16/24): When you came into office, your administration immediately reversed a number of Trump border policies, most significantly, the policy that required illegal immigrants to be detained through deportation either in the U.S. or in Mexico. And you switched that policy—they were released from custody awaiting trial.
So instead—included in those were a large number of single men, adult men who went on to commit heinous crimes. So looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate "remain in Mexico" at the beginning of your administration?

Given the reference to heinous crimes, you might call that a "loaded" question. On the other hand, those heinous crimes really were committed, and Baier was asking a form of this extremely basic policy question:

What explains U.S. policy with respect to the southern border during the Biden Administration's first three-plus years?

Especially for those who watch Fox News, that's an extremely basic policy question—a question which lies at the heart of the current presidential campaign. On the other hand:

For people who watch CNN or MSNBC, that whole topic has largely been disappeared in the past few years. Nothing to look at, such viewers have essentially been told.

So it goes in a nation of silos! But what explains the border policies of President Biden's first three-plus year? Nine days earlier, on 60 Minutes, Bill Whitaker had asked that same question a bit more directly when he interviewed Candidate Harris.

In fact, as we noted in real time, he asked it three separate times:

WHITAKER (10/7/24): You recently visited the southern border and embraced President Biden's recent crackdown on asylum seekers. And that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that's the right answer now, why didn't your administration take those steps in 2021?
WHITAKER: I've been covering the border for years, and so I know this is not a problem that started with your administration. But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?
WHITAKER: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?

Was it a mistake to adopt those border policies? Whitaker asked three times.

Why did he ask three separate times? As we noted in real time, he asked the question three separate times because Candidate Harris kept refusing to answer the question. She kept changing the subject, speaking instead about the bipartisan border bill which appeared earlier this year.

That's an important topic too, but it isn't what Whitaker had asked her about. After her third refusal to answer, the CBS newsman moved on.

On Wednesday night, at the one-minute mark, Baier began to ask the same question in a more confrontational way. In our view, Whitaker's presentation was more professional on a journalistic basis. But Baier was asking an obvious question—and once again, Candidate Harris kept evading the thrust of the question.

As we watched on Wednesday night, we were disappointed by that evasion, bordering on dismayed. This has been, and remains, a very important issue within this campaign—and the candidate for whom we'll be voting just kept evading the question, first when Whitaker asked, then when Baier followed suit.

As with Whitaker, so too here—Baier asked several times. There was an obvious partisan edge to some of the ways he framed the question, but he asked it again and again.

Here he is, returning to this general question at the four-minute mark:

BAIER: Back to the original premise. Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, they are young women who were brutally assaulted and killed by some of the men who were released at the beginning of the administration, well before a negotiated bipartisan bill [in 2024]. ...This is a specific policy decision by your administration to release these men into the country. So what I’m saying to you, do you owe those families an apology?

You might even call that a "hostile" question. On the other hand, it involves a blindingly obvious policy question:

Why did the Biden Administration maintain those permissive border policies over the first three-plus years? And was that a mistake?

Baier kept asking variants of that question; the candidate kept failing to answer. At the seven-minute mark, Baier framed the question as shown:

BAIER: During that time, you said repeatedly that the border was secure. When in your mind did it start becoming a crisis?

Oof! That involves an awkward part of the candidate's record as vice president. Once again, Baier received a non-answer answer—at which point, he made one last attempt:

BAIER: There were 90-plus executive orders that were rescinded in the first days. Many of those were Trump border policies.

I’m not going to stay here [on this topic] because there’s other things to talk about. But you frequently talked to the Border Patrol Union for support of that bipartisan bill and they did. They supported it, but they also just endorsed Donald Trump and said you’ve been “a failure with border security.” Why do you think they said that?

That was a form of that same question. Again, the candidate failed to offer a direct answer of some kind. As with Whitaker, so too here. The candidate failed to speak to a blindingly obvious set of policy questions:

What explains the border policies of the first three-plus years? Why didn't President Biden take the actions he recently took at some earlier point? Was that a mistake?

Full and complete disclosure:

When such questions are asked, Candidate Harris is being asked about a set of major policy decisions made by someone else!

There was no such official as President Harris during the past four years. These decisions belong to President Biden, not to the vice president who served in his administration.

For all we know, it's even possible that Vice President Harris argued against those policy decisions. To the best of our knowledge, there's no way to know at this time, one way or the other.

That said:

First by Whitaker, then by Baier, the candidate was asked about a set of major policy decisions. As things turned out, have those decisions turned out to be a mistake?

She kept refusing to answer. Because we're hoping that she'll win this election, we were dismayed when she did.

In fairness, the candidate is in an awkward position here. Given the way our politics works, it's always difficult for a sitting vice president to oppose the sitting president's policy decisions, even when the sitting vice president is running to replace that president.

(See Vice President/Candidate Hubert Humphrey, running to replace President Lyndon Johnson as Vietnam continued to rage in 1968. Humphrey finally broke with Johnson on Vietnam—and, by standard reckonings, this came just a bit too late.)

In fairness, Harris is in a difficult spot with respect to this policy question. On the other hand, it's a blindingly obvious question, one which is playing a major role in the current campaign.

It's a very basic question. On Wednesday night, the candidate still didn't seem to have a good way of responding.

We were dismayed as Baier's loaded questions went unanswered. We were dismayed because we're going to vote for Candidate Harris and because we hope she'll win.

That said:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But our "national discourse" barely exists at the present time.

On Red America's cable news channel, policy at the southern border has been a major point of concern over the past four years. On Blue America's cable news channels, millionaire hosts have long averted their gaze.

Nothing to look at, our own tribe's cable news channels have said. And in the wake of Wednesday's event, Blue America's cable news has largely disappeared this substantial part of the Baier-Harris exchange.

Sad! In this area of concern, Red America's cable news hacks have actually been more on target than Blue America's counterparts. That said:

If a fulsome discourse exists somewhere, it exists in a far distant land from here.

Within what's left of our national discourse, we Americans currently live inside two giant silos. In Blue America, we're largely been told, for the past four years, that this topic doesn't exists. If Candidate Harris fails to win, this will be one of the major ways that former president Donald J. Trump ends up in the Oval again.

In our view, Baier's performance was egregious on Wednesday night. As we've told you in the past:

You can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps. It simply can't be done.

We thought Baier's behavior was egregious, inexcusable, baldly partisan in tone. On the other hand, he kept asking a very basic question, just like Whitaker did.

Tomorrow: What explains what President Biden did? Our own (completely speculative) semi-theory about this puzzling question

We lost half the day to an Internet scam!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2024

A review of what happened last night: We'd planned to show you what we meant when we referred to the "doctored-adjacent" videotape of What Trump Was Asked and Said.

We refer to something Trump was asked when he appeared with Maria Bartiromo last Sunday on Fox. Sadly, the bulk of our day was eaten up as we battled with an online financial scam.

For that reason, we can't show you the full transcript of last Sunday's exchange. Instead, we'll leave you with some basic points about What Happened Last Night:

Bret Baier's behavior: In our view, Baier disgraced himself with his appalling behavior last night. At the New York Times, Michael Grynbaum isn't real far behind, given the mush-mouthed, "both sidesy" way he has now described last evening's events.

In our view, Baier's behavior was a disgrace. Last evening, in the 6 o'clock hour, he spent the first half hour attacking Harris. He then spent the second half hour attempting to justify the three hundred things he had done.

The other hirelings said he'd been great. Harold Ford played along.

Bret Baier's Palm Beach lodgings: Did you know that the fair-and-balanced anchor in question recently purchased a $37 million Palm Breach mansion? We didn't know that either!

As a bit of professional courtesy, the mainstream press corps agrees that such matters must never be discussed. But it's just as we told you a long time ago:

You can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps.

We're sorry, but no—it can't be done! Meanwhile, also this:

Who's being naive [now], Kay?

This is a problem within Blue America's multimillionaire pundit corps, as well over there in the land of the Red. This has been a problem in Blue America dating back to the days when Jack Welch ran NBC News.

What's up with those polling figures? Has anyone ever produced a set of polling figures like the ones Fox News has now offered? According to those new polling results, Trump is ahead by two points nationwide—but Harris is ahead by six points across the seven key battleground states!

Do those numbers make any kind of sense? We spent the day entangled in a scam, so we haven't had a chance to see what anyone may have said.

Concerning the southern border: As Bill Whitaker did on 60 Minutes, Baier asked an obvious question about policy at the southern border from 2021 right on through early 2024.

Candidate Harris failed to answer this obvious question again.

Tomorrow, we'll walk you through that disappointing aspect of her performance. You can also look forward to this:

Before the week is through, we'll discuss an emerging theory in which we try to explain why the Biden Administration—not "the Harris Administration"—may have decided to do what it did.

For the record, our theory predates this recent post by Kevin Drum—and our theory may be laughably wrong. But people have asked and asked and asked about why the border was handled the way it was for those first three years, and no one has ever tried to explain, even when they're directly asked.

This year's election may well be decided by these (almost) four years of silence—years of silence which rolled by as the millionaire stars of Blue America's cable news acted like there was nothing to look at there. Instead, the stars stayed focused on the sacred task of getting Trump locked up, a type of focus the Harris campaign seems to have cast aside as a political loser.

(As of last night on All In, Rachel Maddow was still obsessing about Stormy Daniels! Reportedly, Maddow is paid $30 million per year.)

On balance, we've been badly served by those massively-paid giant TV stars. The giant sums our stars get paid are a Baier-style problem too.

You can't run a middle-class democracy with a millionaire press corps?

We thought we'd just say it again.

A DISTANT LAND: "Just let me finish," the newsman said!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2024

Palm Beach is forever: Is there any possible chance the latest poll is "right?"

We refer to the latest poll from Fox News. Yesterday, results of that survey were reported, including on the Fox News Channel itself.

Those new results seem very odd. Online, the news report at the Fox news site starts off exactly like this:

Fox News Poll: Trump ahead of Harris by 2 points nationally
Former President Trump is ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential contest 50%-48%, according to a new Fox News national survey. That’s a reversal from last month, when Harris had a narrow advantage.
Harris, however, is ahead by 6 points among voters from the seven key battleground states...
That raises the question of whether the Democrat could win the Electoral College while losing the national popular vote. In 2000 and 2016, it was the GOP candidate who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.

Is anything like that possible? Given recent electoral history, is it even imaginable that Candidate Trump could win the nationwide vote by two points, with Candidate Harris sweeping to substantial wins in the battleground states?

In theory, everything's possible! That said, some polling results may seem to come to us from a far distant land.

Yesterday, (we believe) we saw Bret Baier announce the two-point nationwide lead for Candidate Trump. After Baier proceeded to "interview" Candidate Harris, we did see Martha MacCallum come on the air and announce that Harris was ahead by six points across the battleground states.

Given recent history, those numbers seem to come from a distant land. For the vast majority of American citizens, so do the basic facts about Brett Baier's Florida mansion.

Last evening, the interruptions came thick and fast as Baier "interviewed" Harris. If it's dark comedy you enjoy, the dark comedy arrived quite quickly, during the session's first two minutes.

Below, you see Baier's first question for Harris, along with what immediately followed. Also, you see his first array of interruptions, the second or third or fourth of which includes an unintentionally comical twist.

That's the only statement we'll highlight in this ridiculous mess:

BAIER (10/16/24): You know, voters tell pollsters all over the country and here in Pennsylvania that immigration is one of the key issues that they're looking at this election, and specifically the influx of illegal immigrants from more than 150 countries. How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the last three and a half years?
HARRIS: Well, I'm glad you raised the issue of immigration because I agree with you. It is a topic of discussion that people want to rightly have, and you know what I'm going to talk about right now, which is—
BAIER: Yeah, but just a number. Do you think it's one million, three million?
HARRIS: Brett, let's just get to the point, okay? The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired. And—
BAIER: So your Homeland Security Secretary said that 85 percent of apprehensions—
HARRIS: But I'm not finished. I'm not finished. We have an immigration system—
BAIER: It's a rough estimate of six million people—
HARRIS: —that needs to be—
BAIER: —have been released into the country. Let me just finish, and I'll get to the question. I promise you.
HARRIS: I was beginning to answer you.

At that point, Baier added a mini filibuster. We'll post that text below. To watch the entire "interview," you can just click here.

At any rate, there you see the first two or three or four interruptions, depending on how you're counting. Imaginably, the first interruption could even perhaps be defended, although the sheer volume of insistent interruption became absurd and indefensible as the auto-da-fe adjacent "interview" rolled along.

Just that quickly, though, the dark comedy arrived on the scene! "Let me just finish," the major star of cable news said at one point to Harris.

"Let me just finish, and I'll get to the question." He even included a promise!

Too funny! "Ler me just finish," the newsman said, as if he was the person running for office and she was the querulous journalist who wouldn't let the public hear what the candidate had to say!

"I was beginning to answer you," the actual candidate said. From there, Baier continued along with the aforementioned filibuster as the nominee finally realized that, at least for the moment, she would just have to sit and watch.

For our money, Baier staged an inexcusable gong-show in those opening moments, and the behavior continued from there. We'll guess that a mansion which exists in a distant land may have been part of the calculation which lay behind this procedure.

Despite what Lawrence O'Donnell would later angrily claim, Baier is not typically part of the extensive propaganda wing of the Fox News Channel. Yesterday, for whatever reason, another side of Bret Baier seemed to arrive on the scene.

Was that mansion in Palm Beach some part of Baier's calculation? Long ago and far away, the Washingtonian's Mimi Montgomery had perhaps pre-explained last evening's inexcusable performance by Baier.

Montgomery's report appeared in October 2023. Headline included, her report started like this, with plenty of photos to follow:

Fox News’s Bret Baier Lists DC Home for $32 Million—a Potential Record

A potentially record-setting DC home has just gone on the market: Fox News’s Bret Baier and his wife, Amy, are listing their French chateau-style [upscale Washington DC] home for $31.9 million, reports The Wall Street Journal. If it goes for asking price, it’ll be the most expensive residential sale in DC history...
The 16,250-square-foot estate was completed last year and sits on 1.47 acres, with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and two half-baths. Other touches include a custom bar in the living room with a floor-to-ceiling wine display; a primary suite with two primary baths and heated floors; a home gym; a cinema; a spa; a two-story, indoor sports court; and a golf simulator. Throughout the gated property, you’ll also find a paved motor court with a fountain, tiered gardens, a 56-foot-long heated pool, a chipping and putting green, and two three-car garages.
This isn’t the Baiers only recent real-estate news: They purchased a $37 million Palm Beach mansion earlier this year. They sold their previous DC property, an over 10,000-square-foot home in Phillips Park, for $6.5 million in 2021, according to DC property records.

For the record, it was almost surely the "floor-to-ceiling wine display" which drove up the asking price on the newsman's otherwise modest 16,250-square-foot D.C. estate. The background to the proposed sale of that mansion might seem to go like this:

When Baier acquired the $37 million Palm Beach crib, he apparently had to let his French chateau-style Washington D.C. estate go! That said, according to Montgomery's report, the Baiers have been movin' on up in the real estate world over past four years:

The heartwarming story might be titled, Up from The Middle Class! By dint of hard work and coupon-clipping, the Baiers have come all the way up from the relative poverty of their previous 10,000-square-foot shack—all the way up to the Palm Beach cottage they'd already managed to acquire.

Just a guess! For most American citizens—for those who live in Red America and for those who live in Blue—knowledge of Baier's Palm Beach mansion exists in some unexplored distant land.

As we've noted many times in the past, information like this about media figures is almost never mentioned or discussed by other media figures. We'll guess that it wouldn't occur to many voters that a figure like Baier is moving and shaking in the distant land described in Montgomery's report.

That said, is it possible that the gentleman's Palm Beach mansion played a role in the way he conducted yesterday's "interview" of Candidate Harris? In this case, we're going to say that some such thing is extremely possible!

In our view, Lawrence O'Donnell went over the top in various ways as he ranted about Baier's journalism on last evening's Last Word. O'Donnell has many strengths as a journalist, but this is a less helpful impulse to which he's strongly inclined.

He tends to get his Boston Irish up, at which point he starts referring to everything as a "lie." So it went last night, though there were other problems with his angry, 12-minute opening statement, which you can watch by clicking here.

At one point, like almost everyone on CNN and MSNBC, O'Donnell played a lightly doctored piece of videotape from Trump's appearance on Fox last Sunday morning with Maria Bartiromo.

(Is that edited bit of videotape better described as "doctored-adjacent?" We'll leave that up to you!)

However you want to score it, we regard that edited videotape as basically misleading. It's not as bad as what Baier did throughout the course of last evening's "interview," but it reminds us of a basic point:

If somewhere there does exists a discourse run by fully competent journalists, that discourse is taking place in a far distant land from here.

In our view, Bret Baier adopted a new role last night:

Normally, he isn't part of the extensive propaganda wing of the Fox News Channel. He isn't Hannity and he isn't Gutfeld. He isn't even Judge Jeanine, and he isn't Laura Ingraham.

In his normal performance, he isn't like the nine (9!) regular co-hosts who patrol the Approved Tribal Landscape as part of the Fox & Friends franchise. We refer to the nine (9!) co-hosts who appear on Fox & Friends, on Fox & Friends Weekend or on Fox & Friends First.

He certainly isn't Mark Levin, also known as The Man Who Screams. He isn't like the rotating panelists who all agree with each other about every point on The Big Weekend Show.

Normally, Baier actually doesn't function as part of that well-equipped army, but last night, he plainly did. Just a guess:

People sometimes get released by Fox, and Baier may have a note on that Palm Beach mansion he has to keep up.

Baier's performance was awful. Four hours later, O'Donnell came on and ranted in a familiar way.

For ourselves, we were disappointed—almost dismayed—by at least two parts of the candidate's performance. Here's what will happen next:

On Fox, voters will be told about those parts of her performance all day long today and then on into the night. On CNN and MSNBC, those non-answer answers by Candidate Harris will be disappeared—will be swept far away.

Does a competent national discourse exist somewhere, monitored and moderated by a fully competent press corps?

If so, that discourse is underway in a land far distant from here. We'll try to get to that doctored videotape in the next few days. We'll definitely look at two non-answers by Candidate Harris in tomorrow's installment.

Did someone gain from last night's event? We have no idea! Candidate Harris may have gained a bit of support, or it could be that she lost some.

Meanwhile, could that new Fox News poll possibly be "right?" Is it possible that Trump could win the nationwide popular vote, but get swept away in the battleground states?

Our answer to your question is this:

Polling comes and polling goes—but Palm Beach may be forever.

Tomorrow: Once again, Harris is asked about the southern border during the first three years

Saturday: At long last, our emerging theory about southern border policy during those first three years

He blustered ahead from there: "Let me just finish," the newsman implored, and then he blustered ahead.

The candidate was getting in very few words. Continuing our transcript from above, here's what the newsman said next:

BAIER: Let me just finish, and I'll get to the question. I promise you.
HARRIS: I was beginning to answer you.
BAIER: And when you came into office, your administration immediately reversed a number of Trump border policies, most significantly the policy that required illegal immigrants to be detained through deportation, either in the U.S. or in Mexico, and you switched that policy. They were released from custody awaiting trial. So instead included in those were a large number of single men, adult men, who went on to commit heinous crimes.
So looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate Remain in Mexico at the beginning of your administration?

On and on the newsman went as the candidate sat and watched. In the modern media landscape, it's Palm Beach mortgages which must be paid, attention perhaps a bit less.

Kevin Drum nails the Fox News Channel!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2024

A rarely discussed distant land: Sometime in 2023, we began watching the Fox News Channel on a much more regular basis.

We did so because we'd come to feel, rightly or wrongly, that MSNBC's major programs had become unwatchably bad. Our incomparable complaints:

Total agreement on all points among all panel members. Unbelievably trivial legal minutia pretty much all the way down.
Near total focus on seeking ways to "lock him up." Refusal to pay attention to the types of actual issues and actual topics which affect the lives—and affect the votes—of people who aren't solidly inside Blue America's political camp.

At any rate, we began to watch Fox News. It had been a while since we'd spent a lot of time doing that.

We were surprised by what we saw. Indeed, we remain astonished by what we now see, on a daily and nightly basis, within that distant land.

Does Blue America really know what happens inside that land? It's right there on cable for all to see. But is anyone in Blue America actually watching this channel's programs—and if so, are Blue America's major news orgs willing to report what is taking place?

With those questions as background, we strongly recommend a new post by Kevin Drum. The post starts as a report about Candidate Trump—but it ends with a note about Fox.

The headline pretty much speaks for itself. Here's how Drum begins:

Notes on Trump’s Bloomberg interview
Here are a few miscellaneous thoughts about Donald Trump's sit down at the Economic Club of Chicago with Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait. The full thing is on YouTube,,,

In that passage, Drum is vastly understating the force of the content which follows.

Other observers have focused on the candidate's many evasions during yesterday's interview session, or on the various political topics on which Trump was questioned.

Instead, Drum offered a laundry list of alleged groaners by Candidate Trump concerning economic issues. Here are two examples:

[At one point] Micklethwait made the mistake of asking Trump precisely what he'd do to cut waste in the government. It probably seemed like a nice, concrete question, but Trump wouldn't answer. Instead he took the opportunity to yet again brag about how he saved $1.7 billion dollars almost overnight on a new pair of Air Force Ones. All he had to was call the CEO of Boeing and ask, something that no one before him had ever thought to do.
This is yet another Trump fantasy. He played no role in negotiating the Boeing contract, which ended up where everyone always thought it would. But no one ever challenges him, so he keeps repeating this tall tale every chance he gets.
On the subject of fantasies, Trump also insisted that he gave Apple a break on tariffs but only if they started manufacturing in the US. And they did! They opened a factory in Austin to make Mac Pros.
Except for one little detail: that factory opened in 2013, long before Trump was around. But he's been taking credit for it anyway since 2019.

Concerning the opening of that Apple plant, Drum provides a link to a New York Times "news analysis" piece from November 2019.

(From that 2019 report: "The moment was part of a bizarre afternoon in Texas, where the president played up a six-year-old factory as evidence of his three-year-old presidency’s success in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States.")

Concerning Trump's claims about Air Force 1, Drum provides a link to his own report for Mother Jones back in 2018. (Headline: "Here’s the Unremarkable Story of America’s New Presidential Jet.")

All across Blue America's landscape, the candidate has been mocked for his rambling evasions during yesterday's session, but also for his trademark groaners and howlers. But at the end of Drum's post, he offers this additional account—a brief account of what was being said in a far distant land

After it was all over and Trump had done nothing but repeat his usual lies and demonstrate that he knows nothing about the economy, his fans at Fox News immediately began marveling at Trump's masterful performance in schooling Micklethwait. Why, Trump's command of economics was so overwhelming the poor guy never stood a chance. Seriously, they said that. It's a case study in toadying unrivaled in recent history.

Kevin left it there. For examples of the buckets of praise being dumped on the candidate's head, we recommend David Gilmour's report at Mediaite.

Headline included, Gilmour starts like this:

Sean Hannity Gushes Over Trump After Chaotic Interview With Bloomberg Editor
Fox News host Sean Hannity delivered effusive praise for former President Donald Trump following a chaotic interview with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, lauding Trump’s performance as his “all-time greatest moments on the campaign trail.”
Despite the former president’s meandering responses and frequent tangents during his interview on Tuesday at the Economic Club of Chicago, at one point answering a completely different question to the one asked by Micklethwait.
The sense that the interview was not going well seemed underlined as pro-Trump talking heads rounded the wagons to heap excessive praise on the former president. Fox News host Mark Levin, watching live, wrote on TruthSocial that the appearance was “extremely impressive” and the interviewer “screamingly hostile.”
Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller also went all out: “President Trump’s Bloomberg interview at the Economic Club of Chicago was the greatest live interview any political leader or politician has done on the economy in our lifetimes. Period.”

Videotape is provided. In that one statement, Miller comes close to having the candidate replace Raymond Shaw as "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most [intelligent] human being I’ve ever known in my life."

Can such a nation long endure—a nation half-Red and half-Blue? More to the point, can our nation long endure when major orgs in Blue America refuse to report the foolishness being trafficked to millions of people, around the clock, within that distant land?

(Also, when such orgs ignore the undisguised ugliness which passes without comment each night on the astonishing Gutfeld! show?)

Blue orgs don't seem to want to tangle with Fox. Can a nation locked inside Red and Blue silos expect to long endure?

For extra credit only: Opening joke on Monday evening's Gutfeld!:

GUTFELD (10/14/24) Happy Monday, everybody.

So in a viral clip, a McDonald's worker accidentally mistook Bill Clinton for Joe Biden.
At first, Bill was disappointed. Until he realized this means he might be able to bang Dr. Jill.
[AUDIENCE GROANS]
Yeah, too old for him.

On Gutfeld!, someone is always trying to "bang" or [BLEEP] Jill Biden. This garbage can gets opened each night. It goes downhill from there.

There's never an ending to Paris, Hemingway said. So too with Greg Gutfeld's anger and moral disorder, or with his flyweight panels.

A DISTANT LAND: At the Post, Bump gets it right!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2024

Angelina's distant land: We were thrilled by the version of Candidate Harris which emerged yesterday as she spoke with Charlamagne tha God.

More on that this afternoon. For now, if we had a Pulitzer prize to bestow, we'd give it to Philip Bump.

Bump's report appeared yesterday in the Washington Post. (The Post calls his piece a "column.") In it, Bump transcribes one of the "answers" Donald Trump gave during his widely-discussed "town hall" event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.

Trump went on stage in Oaks, Pennsylvania at 6:56 p.m. Kristi Noem was serving as moderator of the event.

(To view the entire C-Span videotape, you can click right here.)

At roughly 7:10 p.m., Noem introduced a conventionally attractive, youngish woman identified only as Angelina. This was the question she asked, the second of the night:

ANGELINA (10/14/24): My name's Angelina, and I was raised in a Philadelphia Democrat household—a union household. As a blended—as the mother of a blended family, my top issues are the same issues that face all Americans.
Illegal immigration hurts black Americans. Inflation hurts black Americans, and dangerous cities hurt black Americans.
[APPLAUSE]
Like my fellow Americans, my grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?

To see Angelina ask that question, you can simply click this.

That was the question this young woman asked. For the record, she's asking about one result of recent inflation, not about current inflation itself.

That was this young woman's question. In his report in the Washington Post, Bump performs a heroic measure. He transcribes the entire five-minute monologue presented by Candidate Trump in lieu of a response.

We say in lieu of a response because nothing Trump said, in that entire five minutes, addressed this young mother's actual question. Instead, the candidate wandered the countryside, touching on every possible topic except the specific topic he'd been asked to address.

This particular Q-and-A[bsence of an answer] was the sole subject of Bump's report in the Post. Dual headline included, here's the way Bump began:

Here’s how Donald Trump would lower grocery prices
In his own words.

Donald Trump’s town-hall-style campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday understandably attracted more attention for its conclusion than for its contents. But the actual question-and-answer period did provide useful insights that should not be overlooked.
One of the questions posed to Trump—apparently prescreened by the campaign—came from a Black woman standing behind him on the stage. Reading from a card, the woman said she had been raised in a Democratic, union household in Philadelphia before (as other question-askers said as well) seeing the light about America’s problems—and, in particular, how they affect the Black community.
“Like my fellow Americans,” the woman said, “my grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?”

So begins Bump's report. Heroically, he proceeds to present Trump's entire five-minute reaction, in which the candidate fails to provide anything resembling an answer to the question he'd been asked.

In all honesty, we can't recommend three cheers for Bump; we'll restrict ourselves to two-and-a-half. We do that because Bump never directly articulates the point his essay was plainly designed to display:

He never directly states the obvious. In his rambling and endless non-answer monologue, Candidate Trump never says a word that is directly relevant to the perfectly decent question he had been asked.

This sort of thing has been happening roughly forever with this particular candidate. (Full disclosure: In some of her recent interviews, it must be said that Candidate Harris has avoided answering direct questions too.)

That said, it seems to us that major orgs like the New York Times have largely avoided coming to terms with the strangeness of this particular candidate's statements and behaviors. In our view, that's especially true of the truly crazy things he frequently says—No one was present at Harris's rally!—but also with respect to the violent ideation and rhetoric to which he routinely turns.

Still, two-and-a-cheers for Philip Bump for performing the time-consuming process of transcribing Trump's non-response. We won't be posting that lengthy transcript here—we want to move on to a different point—but you can read the text of the full filibuster by clicking to Bump's report.

Angelina asked a question. The candidate offered an endless non-response. With that, we turn to Angelina herself—but mainly, to the "distant land" from which her question may seem to have emerged.

As noted, Angelina is a youngish woman who we'd describe as conventionally attractive. In our view, she displayed a strikingly pleasant demeanor at Tuesday evening's event.

She seems like someone you'd want as your next-door neighbor. She said she's the mother of a blended family. Bump describes her as Black.

She grew up in a Democratic household, but she seems to be a Trump supporter. She seems like a thoroughly pleasant person. The question we pose is this:

Within what distant land was Angelina's decision made? From what sort of distant land has her decision emerged?

We ask this question for an obvious reason. Here inside Blue America, those of us who will be voting for Candidate Harris often act as if the people who vote for Candidate Trump hail from some such unknown land.

We can't imagine why a decent person would make so unlikely a choice. Baffled in this particular way, we turn to our various demonologies to explain our nation's Angelinas.

We take out our bombs and begin calling names. But then, this real Angelina appears.

For ourselves, we can't imagine voting for Candidate Trump—but we also know that tens of millions of fellow citizens will be doing just that. In our view, we inhabitants of Blue America are engaging in mountains of denial when we refuse to acknowledge the fact that there could be reasons for such a vote which aren't based on racism or bigotry, or on some other deplorable quality.

Sadly, there are quite a few reasons why people like Angelina might have decided to turn their backs on the contemporary world of Blue America, or on the works of the Biden Administration itself.

Sadly in our view, Candidate Harris is currently saddled with some of the downsides of President Biden's behaviors and decisions—but also with the downsides of some of the judgements she herself made in the past.

When we within Blue America's silos refuse to acknowledge the existence of those downsides, we're engaged in the same act of denial and delusion we frequently attribute to Trump voters systemwide.

For ourselves, we don't agree with Angelina. We'll be voting for Candidate Harris. She'll be voting for Trump.

That said, she seems to be a good, decent person. Why has she decided to vote for Trump? If you squint a bit, you can perhaps begin to see the across the border into a version of sacred Thoreau's "distant land:"

Walden; or, Life in the Woods
[...]
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

On the one hand, Angelina almost seems to live in a distant land. Why in the world would someone who wasn't a snarling racist decide to vote for Candidate Trump?

For those of us who are willing to be "confined by the narrowness of [our own] experience," there may be no possible answer to that question. On the other hand, Angelina seems to be completely sincere—and she's not only a fellow citizen, she's also somebody's neighbor and she's somebody's friend.

We Blues! Being human, we're often willing to be confined by the narrowness of our experience. This keeps us from knowing how to persuade people to cross the border into our own Blue America—to abandon that far distant land.

What explains Angelina's decision? We'd like to see somebody ask!

That said, journalists at the New York Times often seem, at least to us, to be huddled in a second type of "distant land"—and the same is true of the endless array of spear-chuckers who work for the Fox News Channel. Tomorrow, we'll turn to those distant lands.

Yesterday, speaking with God, Candidate Harris began to break loose. We acknowledge the decency of the world's Angelinas, but we're hoping it's not too late.

Tomorrow: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." (Other distant lands.)

Is something wrong with Candidate Trump?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024

Taboos decimate discourse: As you may have heard, Candidate Trump ended up staging an unusual event in Oaks, Pennsylvania last night.

It started out as a typical if somewhat ersatz "town hall," with citizens directing questions to Candidate Trump and Kristi Noem moderating.

Governor Noem was especially insulting toward Candidate Harris. This is part of the way our rapidly failing national culture works at the present time.

For starters, what made the event a bit ersatz as a "town hall?" Because the questions and questioners had been pre-selected by the Trump campaign, it was really just a standard Trump rally speech. All the usual presentations were offered amid a slight change in the staging.

You can watch the C-Span video here. C-Span has augmented the tape since we watched it early this morning, but we'll proceed as best we can.

As it started, the evening was normal. You can see Trump introduced by Noem eight minutes into the C-Span tape, and he does start taking questions. This produces the same old rambling answers, until medical emergencies halt the proceedings on two separate occasions.

(Apparently, it was very hot in the hall.)

Whether to his credit or not, the candidate struggled ahead for almost an hour in the face of these interruptions. At 1:05 on the C-Span tape, you can see Trump and Noem saying, "Thank you, everyone."

That's when the music seizes control of the night.

The musical part of the evening continues along from there. It continues for well more than half an hour, depending on when you want to say the unusual event reached its end.

We don't exactly agree with Kevin Drum's pair of posts about this event. Nor do we agree with the way this event is being played by the Washington Post.

In his second post, Kevin links to the report in the Washington Post. For Kevin's first post, click here.

Here's the dual headline which sits atop Aaron Blake's report:

How big a political problem is mental acuity for Trump?
Polls show it’s nowhere near as big as it was for Biden, but it has grown as a liability for Trump—amid increasingly strange scenes.

All in all, we see two problems here:

First, does this event raise a question of "mental acuity" in a way which parallels the earlier questions which still surround President Biden?

We aren't entirely sure that it does. More to the point, how about this:

Should Blake by focused on what "polls show" about this—on the "political problem?" Or should he be focused on the (potentially dangerous) medical reality, to the extent that the medical reality can be discerned?

In our view, the polls are important, but so is the truth. Kevin seems to like Blake's report. We think Blake's report is a continuation of the same old set of taboos.

In the case of CandkidateTrump, there has been a longstanding press corps taboo against discussing the possibility that he is clinically ' diagnostically disordered, perhaps in a dangerous way.

In the case of President Biden, a certain taboo seemed to keep Blue America's press corps from exploring the possibility that he had developed some sport of cognitive shortfall.

(That possibility was extensively examined within Red America's press. This is one of those areas where the Fox News Channel was arguably closer to journalistic relevance than was the New York Times.)

In each case, a joint taboo is or was in effect: For better or worse, journalists will not ask (carefully selected) medical specialists to offer their professional views of the apparent evidence. In the case of the Blake report, the Post has gone straight to issues of the polls, thereby sidestepping the more essential question of the medical reality.

Indeed, Blake goes straight to thumb-sucker ideation, quickly referring to Candidate Trump's alleged difficulty "pronouncing words." The larger question about Candidate Trump has always involved something else—his possible sociopathy.

For better or worse, journalists like Blake, and orgs like the Post, are never going to go there. They're going to run to a safer and sillier ground:

Can Candidate Trump pronounce words?

Whatever may or may not "be wrong with" Candidate Trump, the more dangerous parts of his affliction almost surely don't match the kinds of problems which may still be afflicting President Biden. For the record, from the June 27 debate right up to the present day, the Post and the Times have refused to engage in serious reporting about President Biden's possible condition.

In short, taboos have guided every part of this two-headed mess, right up to the present day.

To our eye and ear, there are major questions about Candidate Trump's medical / psychological / psychiatric state. These questions were laid out in detail in 2017:

For better or worse, Blue America's major orgs have taken a total pass, just as they later did with respect to President Bien.

The Post and the Times have taken a pass for years. This isn't about pronouncing words, and it almost surely isn't the same situation as obtained (as obtains?) with President Biden.

Finally, how strange was last night's town hall event?

In our view, it was unusual, but it wasn't gigantically strange, especially given the circumstances.

(In case we haven't noticed by now, Candidate Trump has gone a very long way doing a wide assortment of things which depart in some way from the norm.

In our view, last night's event was much less strange than the endless array of very strange, menace-laced things this candidate relentlessly says. That said, our orgs have steadfastly refused to establish that dangerous state of affairs—his endless array of very strange statements and claims—as a basic front-page news hook.

The New York Times finally published a thumb-sucker piece last week. In our view, Blake has largely followed suit.

The danger here is something different. For better or worse, these major orgs—including MSNBC—will just keep taking a pass.

Within the last two weeks, the Times has twice examined the Harris "word salad." Today, we have pronouncing of words.

For better or worse, these timid news orgs want to leave things right there.

A DISTANT LAND: "How Could the Election Be This Close?"

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024

Bret Stephens tries to explain: Will Candidate Harris win next month's election?

At this point, there's no way to know.

Is she even ahead at this point? That's unknowable also!

On this morning's Morning Joe, the usual pundits began pushing back against the recent appearance that Harris's numbers have slid a bit in the nationwide polling.

Late in the 6 o'clock hour, an indignant John Heilemann insisted that "the race is tied, statistically." But in the limited sense that Heilemann's statement is true, that doesn't mean that the race is tied out there in reality—or in the electoral college.

It's widely assumed that, under current arrangements, a tie election in the nationwide vote goes to the Republican candidate in the electoral college. It's widely assumed that Candidate Harris may have to win the nationwide vote by as much as four points to be able to win in the college.

That's one possible source of gloom for those of us in Blue America. This morning, in his weekly conversation with Gail Collins, Bret Stephens—he won't be voting for Candidate Trump—cites a second possible problem:

Three Weeks to Go, and That’s All Anyone Is Sure Of
[...]
I sense she isn’t closing the sale. At this point, we should assume that Donald Trump has a secret three- or even four-percentage-point advantage in the states that the polls are missing, just as they did when he ran in 2016 and 2020.

At least as things appear at this point, a certain limited number of states will end up deciding the electoral college. Is it possible that Candidate Trump will outperform his current polling numbers in those battleground states?

Will there be a hidden vote for Candidate Trump—a hidden vote the polls are missing? We don't have the slightest idea! There's zero way to know such things—and there' no way to know, with absolute certainty, that the race is currently "tied."

Either candidate could end up winning—and ten of millions of neighbors and friends are going to vote for Candidate Trump. For many of us in Blue America, those tens of millions of fellow citizens seem to live "in a distant land."

As we laid it out yesterday, we're making a play on Thoreau's turn of phrase. But we'll be employing that evocative turn of phrase in several ways this week.

Fuller disclosure! In last week's Conversation, Stephens and Collins started by pondering a familiar type of question. It's a type of question those of us in Blue America have been asking at least since 1988, when Saturday Night Live's version of Candidate Dukakis couldn't believe that he was "losing to this guy."

Below, you see the start of last week's Conversation. In our view, the headline speaks to a certain shortcoming which exists right here in Blue America, where the smartest and best people live:

How Could the Election Be This Close?
Bret Stephens: Gail, why isn’t Kamala Harris running away with the election? The race in the battleground states is basically a tie, despite Harris spending three times as much money as Donald Trump and having a much bigger ground game—and despite Trump putting in a terrible debate performance and generally making a spectacle of himself, or worse, every time he opens his mouth.
Gail Collins: Hmm. I guess I should refrain from pointing out that I’m being asked that question by a person who has yet to commit to voting for Harris himself.
Bret: Much as I love to inflate my importance, I think I’m more of a symptom of Harris’s problems than the cause.

How can the election be this close, that plaintive headline asked. Stephens began to answer that question last week—but in this morning's Conversation, he lays it right on the line in a fuller discussion of what may be holding Candidate Harris back.

Warning! We don't exactly think Stephens is wrong in the critique he offers today! In a bit of foreshadowing, this week's rumination on the election starts with this:

Three Weeks to Go, and That’s All Anyone Is Sure Of
[...]
Bret: Switching topics: Gail, any thoughts on Harris’s media tour?
Gail: Seemed to go pretty well. No signs that she’s going to be a sensational presidential conversationalist, but she seemed pleasant, well prepared and not nuts, like some candidates I could mention.
What did you think?

No signs that she’s going to be a sensational presidential conversationalist? In that slightly snarky disclaimer, even Collins seems to suggest that last week's "media tour" wasn't a giant success.

As the exchange continues, Collins keeps putting the best face on things. Eventually, Stephens makes a simple, direct assessment—and we can't exactly say that he's just totally wrong:

Bret (continuing directly): I’m glad she put herself out in front of at least one real journalist, Bill Whitaker of “60 Minutes,” who pitched no softballs and didn’t let her off the hook when she tried to evade certain questions, as she so often does.
Gail: Well, sometimes does.
Bret: On the other hand, I can’t believe she had no real answer to a question about what she’d do differently from President Biden, when he’s one of the most unpopular incumbents in recent history. And she generally gives the impression of someone who is either trying to hide her real views or hide the fact that she doesn’t have real views.
She’s just not a great candidate, which was my worry about her all along. And I sense she isn’t closing the sale. At this point, we should assume that Donald Trump has a secret three- or even four-percentage-point advantage in the states that the polls are missing, just as they did when he ran in 2016 and 2020.

"She’s just not a great candidate," Stephens says. With that, a full disclosure:

In our view, Candidate Trump is, by far, the worst general election candidate in modern American history. But we can't say that Stephens is totally wrong about Candidate Harris, whether in that initial assessment or in what follows

Gail (continuing directly): Have to admit I’m worried about the apparent lack of enthusiasm among Black and Hispanic men. Barack Obama did a good job tackling that problem in a recent speech, but we need a lot more politicians and celebrities to speak out. Enthusiastically.
Bret: Maybe Harris should do more to help herself. She has two big problems: A lot of voters, including me, fear she isn’t really up to the job, which could be the reason she’s mostly avoided tough interviews.
Gail: Hey, she’s getting better at that.
Bret: If you say so. She also hasn’t really articulated why she wants the job or what she means to do as president, other than to be a kind of consensus seeker. My advice—and I realize she’s not asking for my advice—is a town-hall event in front of an audience of undecided voters that dispels this impression and offers her vision for the country. That would be a good place to start, assuming that vision is more than just a list of wan liberal talking points and vague references to “my plan.”

So said Stephens, whenever this piece was composed. For ourselves, we would offer this:

From the beginning, we've stressed the fact that Candidate Harris has faced a major disadvantage, given the way she had to enter the race very late in the game, from a standing start.

That would have been a major challenge for any presidential candidate, but we have to admit that we agree with much of what Stephens has said. To some extent, we'd say that Collins may also agree, if only in secret, based on that original statement.

In our view, Candidate Harris delivers a sensational speech. That said, among major politicians on the national stage, she has proven to be remarkably limited when it comes to answering even the most basic questions.

Stephens is right! She didn't serve herself well last week with her answers to questions about how she differs from President Biden, or with her refusal to answer Whitaker's thrice-told question about the southern border.

That doesn't mean that Harris couldn't turn out to be the best president we ever had. But if we're wondering why her numbers seemed to go sideways last week, that may be part of the answer.

In our view, Candidate Trump is almost surely the worst candidate who ever sought the office. That said, tens of millions of neighbors and friends don't see things that way.

It doesn't help when we the people of Blue America put our tribal blinders on and refuse to see the possible reasons why some people won't be voting our way this year. In our view, there are quite a few possible reasons for such a vote.

We ourselves don't agree with such assessments. But we're talking about possible reasons which are neither crazy nor strange.

We inhabitants of Blue America are frequently quick to say that the people who are voting for Trump have chosen to block out reality. In many instances, that may be true—but it doesn't help our tribe, or the nation or the world, when we refuse to see the reasons which may be driving some Red American voters.

For many of us in Blue America, people who are voting for Trump seem to live in "a distant land." We then turn to our most unflattering Storylines to explain why those otherized people would decide to do such a thing.

In fact, there are quite a few "distant lands" operating in this year's election landscape as our faltering nation continues to slide toward the sea. We'll be exploring several of those "distant lands" as the week proceeds.

As of Sunday night, it looks like Candidate Harris has decided to come out swinging much harder. We think that's a very good decision, and we hope she succeeds.

"I sense she isn't closing the sale," Stephens says in today's Conversation. In that same Conversation, he trashes Kari Lake and Ted Cruz and also Bernie Moreno. He expresses his admiration for Sherrod Brown and for Ruben Gallego. He says how much we as a nation gain from Haitian immigrants.

He takes Blue America's side in all those matters. That said, we can't say that his short-term assessments of Candidate Harris are just totally wrong.

Her problems will of course only begin when she actually wins this race. Given our view of Candidate Trump, we can only hope that she succeeds, in a major way, over the next three weeks.

Tomorrow: Exploring another type of "distant land"

BREAKING: We won't be posting until this afternoon!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024

Distant lands appear: We're losing a chunk of time this morning. For that reason, we won't be posting until this afternoon.

As of today, we're exactly three weeks out from Election Day! Various "distant lands" are coming into view, some of them possibly located not all that far from our own sprawling campus here in Blue America.

(It seemed to us that today's Morning Joe was littered with misrepresentations, possibly of the "they doth protest too much" type.)

Who's ahead in the White House race? This afternoon, we'll most likely be starting right there.

None of the others are being duped?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2024

So suggests Charlie Warzel: Why are so many people going to vote for Candidate Trump? Over here in Blue America, inquiring minds do—but also don't—seem to want to know.

Back in 2020, 74.2 million people did vote for Candidate Trump. That's a very large number of people—but why in the world did they do that?

We voted for Candidate Biden ourselves. In that sense, we may not be the right people to ask.

If you want to know why all those other people voted for Trump, it might make sense to go and ask them! That said, many of us in Blue America have criticized major news orgs for asking such questions as that.

Please don't speak to the Others, we've heatedly said. We'd call that a deeply human impulse, but one which may not be constructive.

Along these lines, we were puzzled by something Charlie Warzel said in a new essay for The Atlantic. He starts with several things we agree with completely. Under a dual headline, his essay starts as shown:

I'M RUNNING OUT OF WAYS TO EXPLAIN HOW BAD THIS IS
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.

It's true that the American discourse is currently driven by mountains of madness. In our view, it's true that these waves of madness create "an American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on."

We completely agree with those opening judgments! But as Warzel continues directly, we find ourselves puzzled by this:

Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.

Once again, it's true! As matters stand at the present time, it's true that "a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality."

But why does Warzel go on to offer that second assessment? Why does he say that "the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but [are] willing participants" instead?

Why in the world should we draw that sweeping conclusion? As Warzel continues along in his essay, we can't see that he ever explains.

It's true! Thanks in large part to the so-called "democratization of media," American citizens are now exposed to an unrelenting stream of false and misleading claims. The question we ask is his:

Many people do end up repeating such claims. But why should we assume that none of those people are being duped? Why should we assume that all those people are "willing participants" in the spread of misinformation, as Warzel seems to claim?

Being human, we inhabitants of Blue America are strongly inclined to drift in this direction—to drift in the direction of assuming and asserting the worst about all the Others, not excluding the 74.2 million people who voted for Trump last time.

In the circumstance described by Warzel, is it really true that none of those people do, in fact, believe the false claims and are, in that sense, "dupes?" Is Warzel saying that all the people who repeat false claims are doing so in full knowledge that what they're saying is bogus?

Easy to be hard, we'd say. Also, we'd be inclined to say this:

Given the way we humans are wired, we're strongly inclined to draw such sweeping conclusions about those very bad people, the Others. Especially at tribalized times such as this, such assessments are bred in the bone.

In a similar vein, why do people vote for Candidate Trump?

Back in 2020, more than 74 million people did! If you want to know why they did, you should possibly just go out and ask them.

Some of their answers won't make sense. On the other hand, some of the answers they give you might not necessarily seem to be totally nuts. We'll be puzzling about this matter all through the course of the week.

Charlie Warzel's a good, decent person. We'll admit that we were puzzled by what he apparently said.

A DISTANT LAND: How in the world could this race be tied?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2024

Notes from a distant land: Back in the day—back at the start of the current century—these acts of political self-sabotage typically came from Blue America's big Hollywood stars.

In one election, the (politically) clueless act came from Whoopi Goldberg. (She was of course well intentioned.) In another election, the (politically) clueless act came from Larry David.

In each case, a close presidential campaign was sidetracked, for several days, by discussion of the (politically) clueless behavior of a Hollywood star. In one instance, the Gore campaign was negatively affected. In the other case, the political harm was done to Candidate Kerry.

At that time, this was the way those of us in Blue America would imperil our own nominees. Increasingly, Blue America's political leaders now perform these acts themselves.

Over the course of the past three or four days, we've been dismayed by what happened when Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer got together with Liz Plank, a Canadian podcaster, to create an ill-advised bit of video about the (little-known) CHIPS Act.

Whitmer is a very successful second-term Michigan governor. Perfectly predictably, the videotape she and Plank created inspired a wildfire across Red America—across a very broad land.

Whitmer has now apologized to Catholic leaders in that (battleground) state for what she and Plank have wrought. If you think that votes don't get affected this way, we'd pose Al Pacino's famous question again:

Who's being naive [now], Kay?

We'll offer links to reporting about this unfortunate matter below. In our view, the bad political judgment here pretty much went off the charts.

Sadly, this wildfire burned through the countryside at a time of declining poll numbers for Candidate Harris. Such surveys can only be approximations, but this is part of a news report in today's Washington Post:

Trump chips away at Harris’s national advantage, two new polls show
A new ABC News-Ipsos poll, conducted from Oct. 4-8, showed that among likely voters, Harris led Trump 50 percent to 48 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. Last month, the same poll found Harris at 51 percent support among likely voters compared to Trump at 46 percent.
An NBC News poll also conducted from Oct. 4-8 and showed an even split between Trump and Harris, with each garnering 48 percent support among registered voters. In that same poll last month, Harris was up by five points—another result within the poll’s margins.
A CBS News-YouGov poll conducted a few days later, from Oct. 8-11 but released also Sunday, found less of a shift.

And so on from there. Summarizing:

At ABC/Ipsos, Harris had lost three points on her nationwide lead. At NBC News, she had lost five points—and the nationwide race was now tied.

There is no way to be sure, but it's generally agreed that a tie vote in the nationwide popular vote would result in an electoral college win for Candidate Trump.

Recent history also suggests—though there's no way to be sure—that a similar electoral college outcome would accompany a two-point nationwide win by Candidate Harris.

In the face of this current trend, Whitmer and Plank were putting their cleverness on full display. Red America responded with fury, in a way which could move votes in Michigan and all across the land.

So it goes! So it goes as our own imperfect tribe tries to keep Candidate Trump out of the White House.

At this site, we'll be voting for Candidate Harris, but a certain question is widespread wherever Blue American discernment is sold. That basic questions goes like this:

How can this race be tied?

This very morning, Jonathan Alter, a good decent person, offered a version of that question when he appeared on Morning Joe.

Long ago and far away, we lunched with Alter, in bright sunshine and even al fresco, at the 2000 Democratic Convention. Jonathan Alter's a good, decent person—but we were disappointed by what he said today, part of which went like this:

I did have illusions about roughly half the American public.

We can't yet post his fuller statement. Until the Internet Archive returns, it may be that we will never be able to post the full text of what Jonathan said.

But that was Alter—a good, decent person—giving voice to a certain view about every Trump voter in this wide, highly varied land. By way of contrast, when Candidate Hillary Clinton made her unhelpful statement about that "basket of deplorables," she said that only half of Candidate Trump's supporters could be judged that way.

We thought Jonathan's statement was very Blue but was also unwise.

Why might someone vote for Candidate Trump? Attention Kamala Harris voters! There exists a wide array of reasons why someone might vote for Trump!

We're going to vote for Harris ourselves, but we've been dismayed by the performance of her campaign—by the performance of the candidate herself—in the past week or two.

We don't how who's going to win this election, but we weren't surprised to hear that she seems to have been sliding a bit in the nationwide polls. That brings us back to a certain statement about a distant land.

Last week, we quoted sacred Thoreau, right there in the second paragraph of Walden. No, this wasn't a political statement—but its imagery has been ringing in our heads:

Walden; or, Life in the Woods
[...]
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Sacred Thoreau quickly acknowledged "the narrowness of [his] experience." He said he understood his own experiences well, but perhaps not so much when it came to the lives of others.

He said he wanted other writers to give sincere accounts of their own lives. If such people have lived sincerely, the famous writer evocatively said, those people had been living in "a distant land to me."

What did the gentleman mean by that last statement? We assume he was lurking in the region inhabited by Yevtushenko at the start of his poem, People:

People

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

"Planet is dissimilar from planet," Yevtushenko said (in translation). Quickly, he moved on to this:

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man [sic] who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth’s creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

Our view? In this lament for the millions of people who lost their lives under Stalin, Yevtushenko was saying something like this:

Every other person lives in "a distant land to me." His or her experiences are essentially unknown to me—indeed, to all of us who view that person from the outside.

Our planet is filled with millions of other people—with many millions of the earth's creatures. Our planet contains the worlds of many millions of such people—"Of whom, essentially, what did we know?"

Plainly, no one else will ever be as smart or as decent as those of u in Blue America are widely known to be. That said, other people are people too—and their experiences, perceptions and understandings may not align with our own.

In Blue America, we often see our tribunes expressing puzzlement about how anyone could be voting for Candidate Trump. Quite often, we proceed to offer our own unflattering explanations of the motives behind such decisions. As the great anthropologist Gene Brabender said:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

Where did this great anthropologist "come from?" He came from the planet Earth!

Even here in Blue America, it seems that we "only talk so long." Also, we may not be strongly inclined to wonder about the private worlds of others

During the course of this week, we'll be reporting from a region of gloom as Candidate Harris tries to insert a bit more punch into her (recently faltering) campaign.

We'll be voting for Harris ourselves. But why might somebody else be voting for Candidate Trump?

We'll report this week from a distant land—from a distant land inhabited by neighbors and friends who live right down the street!

As for those of us within our own tribe, could we declare a moratorium on our obvious cleverness for maybe the next three weeks?

Could we put a lid on our obvious brilliance? On our stores of tribal snark?

Governor Whitmer apologizes to Michigan's (many) Catholics: In our view, the reaction to the wonderfully clever video would have been easy to predict.

In our view, the political cluelessness put on display is puzzling but hard to miss. Under our faltering nation's current journalistic arrangements, Red Americans have already heard about this. Blue Americans never will.

For the initial report in the New York Post, you can just click here. For a subsequent report about the governor's apology, you can just click this.

At Mediaite, readers were given "just the facts." For those barebone facts, click here.