Crosscurrents in the news.

September 15, 2022

          The developments on Wednesday reflected the many crosscurrents that will dominate the news cycle until Election Day. On balance, the developments favored Democrats, but each new opportunity was twinned with a new challenge. In other words, it will be a nail-biter, and we should spend more of our time focused on action and less worrying about the media’s narrative. You are the story—even if news anchors and editors ignore that fact. The election is not inflation or polls or investigations or punditry. The election is the collective action of citizens urging one another to exercise the most awesome and majestic power granted in the Constitution: The right to vote. That is what matters most.

          Joe Biden spent a good part of the day at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where he touted the administration’s investment in electric vehicles. As usual, Biden is at his best outside the confines of the White House. He joked and bantered with the media as he revved the engine of a Corvette and said he would drive himself back to Washington. He also took the opportunity to promote the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden needs to do a lot more of the same because the September report on the economy showed that inflation was higher than predicted. As I said, every opportunity includes a challenge. Read on!

The August report on the economy.

          The media and stock market went into full “chicken little” mode over the August inflation report, but as one reader (Roger S.) noted, the drama was (mostly) a media-manufactured story. The reader quoted NBC News’ description of the inflation report as follows:

The alarming new inflation news sending shock waves into the stock market, as soaring inflation ran a hotter than expected 8.3%.

          The reader’s email continues:

The actual facts? The 8.3% annual rate is a DECLINE from 8.5% as of July and from 9.1% at the end of June. The actual price increase for just the month of August was 0.1%, and this brought the annual rate down to 8.3%.

The massive sell-off of the stock market was the result of disappointment that the sharp decline in gas prices—16% last month—was not sufficient to bring this month’s overall inflation figure into negative territory. 

But an increase of 0.1% (in August) is as close to a decline as you can get.

          The reader’s observations are well taken, up to a point. The fact that inflation increased by a smidgen despite a significant drop in gas prices is not good news. But an increase of 0.1% percent in the annual inflation rate between July and August hardly qualifies as “soaring” inflation, as reported by NBC. But inflation is something that journalists believe they understand, and it has the virtue of being reported in numbers that can be compared month-to-month. It’s much easier to say, “This month’s number is bigger than last month’s number” than to dig into the significance of those numbers.

          Ah, well! So it is, and so it always will be with inflation. The media and voters wrongly ascribe to presidents magical powers to control inflation they do not possess. But there is no convincing anyone otherwise. The “soaring” 0.1% inflation report should be dominating the news. But it is not. Thank you (again), Lindsey Graham!

Conservative reaction to Graham’s national abortion legislation.

          Thank you, Lindsey Graham, for creating a firestorm with your proposed legislation making abortion a crime in all fifty states fifteen weeks after conception. That proposal has overwhelmed the inflation news. Yesterday, I paused and considered whether it was fair and seemly to say, “Thank you, Lindsey Graham, for being stupid enough to give away the game before the 2022 midterms.” It turns out that even the most reactionary conservatives on abortion share my view of Graham’s intelligence.

          Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, slammed Graham’s proposal as follows:  

Really, where have you been Lindsey Graham? [Your proposal] feels like election interference! And I say this as someone who is so pro-life, I would love a total abortion ban, 15-weeks isn’t enough. But I’m also not dumb. [Democrats] are enthusiastic that Lindsey Graham is now making [the election] all about the one issue that Democrats could actually win suburban women on.

Is this midterm different? (Spoiler alert: Yes!)

   The polls are in turmoil and too close to call in races that matter. Two days ago, I wrote that anyone who doesn’t understand that “this election is different” should get out of the prediction business. Today, Nate Cohn of the NYTimes penned an essay that considered the question of “Whether this time really is different?” See Nate Cohn, NYTimes, Why Things May Really Be Different for This Midterm Election. In general, Cohn agrees that “This time may be different.”

          As Cohn explains, midterm elections are usually “referendums” on the sitting president, but this midterm appears to be a referendum on Trump and reproductive choice. As to Trump, Cohn writes:

Mr. Trump doesn’t just make it harder for Republicans to make the midterms into a referendum [on Biden]. He has made it less likely that Republican candidates will even try to make the midterms into a referendum. Republican candidates spent the primary season focused on earning the support of Mr. Trump and his supporters, rather than focused on Mr. Biden.

          As to the ruling in Dobbs, Cohn notes that the usual tendency of voters to put “the brakes” on legislative achievements by a sitting president has been replaced by the urge to put “the brakes” on the hijacking of reproductive freedom:

          [P]ublic opinion is something like a thermostat, in which the public moves to turn down the heat when policy runs too hot in either direction. . . . But this cycle, it’s the Republicans who achieved one of their most important policy objectives [when] the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and fulfilled a half-century-long political goal of the conservative movement.

          Again, I am not saying that Democrats will win. I am saying that the future is open to them in a way it has not been in several decades. It is up to us to convert that opportunity into success!

Another MAGA extremist wins a GOP Senate nomination.

          Extremist conspiracy theorist Don Bolduc won the GOP nomination for US Senate in New Hampshire. He will oppose Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Democratic PACS funded Bolduc, and Republican PACS opposed Bolduc—for the same reason. Both believe that the extremist Bolduc is less likely to defeat Hassan than the Republicans Bolduc defeated in the primary.

          The “conventional wisdom” is that Bolduc’s win is bad news for Republicans. See CNN, Tuesday was another bad day for Senate Republicans’ 2022 chances. But as we all know, conventional wisdom is irrelevant in this election cycle. What you do is relevant and outcome-determinative!     

Another day, another DOJ investigation revealed.

          The FBI seized the phone of “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell who spends more time fomenting insurrection than running his business. After his phone was seized, he said that he runs his entire business from his phone, proclaiming, “I don’t have a computer!” Who runs a business without a computer? But I digress. The point is that the FBI seized Lindell’s phone in connection with an investigation of Colorado election official Tina Peters, who breached that state’s election systems and provided software code to election deniers. See Rolling Stone, Trump Is Very Upset ‘Pillow Guy’ Mike Lindell Got His Phone Seized at a Hardee’s Drive-Thru.

          Before the seizure of Lindell’s phone, it was not clear whether a federal grand jury was investigating the Colorado election breach by Peters. (She is under indictment from a county grand jury in Colorado.)

          The existence of a federal inquiry into a voting systems breach is very good news. County clerks and state-level IT professionals across the nation should take notice that giving access to confidential voting materials relating to a federal election is a felony. It’s all fun and games until someone goes to prison for ten years.

How bad is it for Putin?

          The war in Ukraine is not going well for Putin. How bad is it? Very bad. Sixty-five local officials in Russia have called for Putin’s resignation over the failures in Ukraine. See The Daily Beast, Now It’s 65 Russian Officials Demanding Putin’s Ouster. In a totalitarian regime that does not tolerate dissent, the widespread criticism of Putin signals that the genie is out of the bottle, the cat is out of the bag, and it’s too late to close the barn door.

          Per the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Putin has apparently started a “charm offensive” to regain favor among Russian “military bloggers”—called “milbloggers”—who have been highly critical of battlefield losses by the Russian army. When Putin is reduced to sweet-talking milbloggers to shore up his political standing, you know things are going badly.

          In addition, the ISW is reporting that Putin is allowing Russian media to report on military setbacks in northeast Ukraine as a precursor to blaming senior military officers for the failures. See Newsweek, Kremlin is Protecting Putin By Admitting Russia’s Defeats in Ukraine: ISW. Per the ISW,  

The Kremlin’s acknowledgment of the defeat is part of an effort to mitigate and deflect criticism for such a devastating failure away from Russian President Vladimir Putin and onto the Russian Ministry of Defense and the uniformed military command.

          All of this is embarrassing for Russia’s cheerleader at Fox “News”, Tucker Carlson, who hosted a pro-Russian guest last week. That guest, retired US Colonel Douglas MacGregor, claimed that Ukraine is on the brink of defeat. See The Independent, Tucker Carlson guest claims Ukraine near defeat – despite stunning successes against Russian invaders.

          I note here that dozens of international media outlets are reporting on Wednesday that Putin survived an assassination attempt on September 14th. All of the reports seem to trace back to an unsourced report on the Telegram app hosted by “General GVR,” an anti-Putin blogger. I won’t link to the reports because I don’t want to drive traffic to unreliable media outlets, but you can search for yourself. Until a reputable outlet confirms the story, it is rumor and disinformation—which, of course, could be part of a cyberwar campaign by Ukraine!

Usage Note.

          I wrote above, “midterm elections are usually referendums on the sitting president.” If you have already sent an email telling me that the correct plural is “referenda,” please see J. Grant and Y. Taoko, The Referendum Conundrum: Referenda or Referendums? Political Science and Politics, June 2011, Cambridge University Press. The authors explain,

Scholars often use referenda as the plural for referendum. This choice is a hypercorrection—it may sound like proper Latin, but it is not. Referendums is always the correct choice. . . . The Latin gerund has no plural form. In pluralizing referendum, we are no longer using Latin but an anglicization, which should follow the rules of English pluralization.

          See also Google Ngram Viewer, “Referenda vs Referendums.”

          Isn’t language fun and exciting?

Concluding Thoughts.

          I sometimes worry that I am repeating the mistakes of unhinged, conspiracy-obsessed MAGA extremists who have fallen into a gravity well of delusion that prevents them from seeing reality. Is Trump as bad as I (and others) make him out to be? Yes, he is. Accepting that fact, is it appropriate to continually point out the danger posed by Trump? Yes, it is.

          I was once again disabused of any doubts about Trump’s danger to democracy and overall depravity by his comments on Wednesday. During an interview, he praised insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police as she led a violent mob through a broken window leading to the House floor, where members of Congress were still being evacuated. Trump said that the officer who acted to protect members of Congress was “a disgrace” and that “It’s a terrible thing to a lot of people who have been treated very unfairly. We love Ashli.” In contrast, Trump has never expressed support or concern for the officers who were brutally attacked (and killed) by the insurrectionist mob.

          Details aside, Trump’s comments amount to praise for someone who was using violence to overturn the 2020 election. That fact should shock every American and should disqualify Trump from support by any Republican. But not a single Republican condemned Trump’s comments praising a violent insurrectionist and blaming an officer who acted to protect members of Congress from a mob that Trump summoned.

          So, “No,” we can never say it enough: Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. He is depraved, amoral, immoral, and unfit to be a member of civilized society, much less a future president of the United States. He belongs in prison for his many crimes. No decent politician, no person who claims to promote religious values, no American who claims to love our country should support Trump for another minute.

          As you knock on doors, text, post, phone, and write, recognize that you are helping to protect America from Trump and from everything he represents. Although it may not always feel like it, your efforts are noble and important. In an evenly divided electorate, efforts that affect the margins may shape the history of a great nation. Stay strong, and keep the faith!

          Talk to you tomorrow!