How Does Trump Plan to Win?

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Yesterday Donald Trump announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race.  I guess not too many people were surprised or hopefully not too surprised.  So, all the usual suspects are encouraging a war between Trump and DeSantis and all the usual NeverTrumpers are reiterating the list of Trump’s many “crimes.”   Blah, blah, blah.

Really, my only question is this.  Does Donald Trump have a plan to stop or at least match the ballot harvesting operations by the Democrats?  Because if not I can predict the outcome in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.  His opponent will win in those states.  And based on that his opponent will win the electoral college count.  It’s as simple as that.

Now he has two years.  But has he begun the process of rounding up the bodies on the ground and the infrastructure to call and visit that many people who don’t usually vote but can be persuaded to.  Has he studied the way the Democrats are currently doing it.  Does he know where he’ll run into trouble?  Does he have the lawyers on the ground to handle the challenges?  And does he just plain have the money to make something like this happen?

I won’t assume that just because the Republicans did nothing in 2022 about what happened in 2020 that Donald Trump will be equally helpless.  You would think that in places like Arizona where they had just seen the 2020 catastrophe that they would have been working behind the scenes to fix things or at least put together their own ballot harvesting initiative.  Instead, they did nothing.  I’d like to believe that Trump is a smart operator and he’ll contact the Republican organizations in each of these states and work with them to build a machine to get this done.  But no one is talking about it.

Look, no one wishes more than I do for a Republican party that is functional and agile.  Politicians are supposed to be the ultimate pragmatists.  They are supposed to be the masters of the backroom deal where coalitions are built by greasing the palms of the power brokers.  But long painful experience has taught me that the Stupid Party is a strange combination of corrupt and inept.  They combine the worst features of self-serving satraps and clueless rubes.  They feather their own nests but forget that they’re supposed to also advance their constituency’s agenda.  Stupid Party just doesn’t capture all of the Republicans’ qualities.  I think Useless Party is closer to the mark.

And unless Trump is going to build an organization from the ground up, he will have to use the existing Republican apparatus.  This is what makes me think that preparing to win 2024 by fighting ballot harvesting with ballot harvesting will not work.  It’s like pitting the Keystone Cops against the Three Stooges.  Sure, the Keystone Cops are pathetic and stupid but compared to the Stooges they’re like Navy Seals.

So that’s my thoughts.  If Donald Trump is already working to put together a ballot harvesting plan to beat the Democrats, then fine.  Or if he has some kind of challenge in the courts to eliminate harvesting that he is pretty confident will succeed then, also fine.  But if all he is going to do is run against Biden’s admittedly horrible record then he will lose exactly as the Republicans lost in 2020 and 2022.

So that’s my take on Trump’s run.  He’ll get the nomination.  But unless he changes his tactics he’ll end up with the same result as 2020.

What do you think?  Agree or disagree?  Some other point to make?

16NOV2022 – Quote of the Day

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Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.

Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before.

Jerome K. Jerome

 

And the Wisdom to Know the Difference

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The new schedule has begun.  Yesterday I spent the morning on fiction writing.  That was fun.  After that I wrote my post.  Today I headed off to the office for my first normal workday.  That was interesting.

I am under the weather.  Camera Girl and by extension Princess Sack of Potatoes gifted me some kind of cold-flu-virus-thingamajig involving sinuses, nose and throat suffering but mercifully no lung torture.  I’m doped up on over-the-counter marvelous miracle drugs that actually seem to abate most of the misery.  But I’m still only firing on seven cylinders which means this post may be a little off.

But all-in-all I’m feeling relatively upbeat about my new perspective on US politics.  I no longer have to agonize over whether Herschel Walker or Dr. Oz is going to squirm through the Democrat ballot harvesting dragnet.  It’s no longer my problem anymore.  I live in a country that has a single-party political system and it isn’t a party that’s going to favor me or my family.  All I have to worry about is whether I’m doing everything I can to produce a space where people like me can flourish.

And since I’ve just started this phase of my life, I’m cutting myself some slack.  I don’t have to solve all the problems of living in New England overnight.  But what I must do is begin thinking in this new way and continuously test and improve my assumptions about what can be done and what can’t.

So, for instance, my town is one of the few towns in my state that is measurably Republican in voting record.  So, we can elect Republican selectmen and school board members and a Republican state representative and state senator.  But we can’t elect a Republican US representative or senator.  So, that tells me that we can have quite a bit of influence in the local laws that are written and a little influence on state laws but basically no impact at the national level.

So that should be my basis for evaluating the future.  The state and federal government are the main threats to me.  They can increase my taxes, curtail my freedoms and poison the minds of my children and grandchildren with warped lies and dangerous fantasies about life.  Each of these threats require an evaluation to decide what preventative actions can be taken to protect against these problems.  And these actions have to be evaluated to see if there is a net positive or negative from having to implement them.

For instance, moving to a different state or a different country might protect me from losing certain freedoms or eliminate indoctrination of my children.  But what other things go along with that?  Would I have to sacrifice economic opportunities.  Or would I be forced to become a stranger in a strange land, someone who would always be thought of as an outsider?

So that’s why I’m going to cut myself a lot of slack.  Big changes like emigrating are not something you do lightly or quickly.  For now, I’ll concentrate on the small things like participating in local government.  And since I’ve made that move, I’m patting myself on the back and awarding myself all kinds of bonus points and participation trophies.

And that’s why I’m feeling so upbeat amid the wreckage and ruin of the mid-terms.  I don’t want to walk in the footsteps of the social justice types but I will quote one of their favorite messages, the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.  I’m going to do what I can and stop stressing about things that just don’t seem to be happening.

If someone appears who can get things done, I’ll support him.  If my small efforts put me into a position to accomplish some change on my own, I’ll do it.  And if all else fails I’ll keep my eyes open to know when and where to jump to avoid disaster.  That’s as much as I can think of.  And that’s what I’ll write about when I’m not writing stories or taking photos.

15NOV2022 – Quote of the Day

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How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call “castles in the air,” built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey’s nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life.

Jerome K. Jerome

 

Eulogy for the Stupid Party

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I had my regular Monday zoom call with the guys from my old job.  I told them about my adventures at the election last week and we caught up on plans for the Thanksgiving holiday coming up.  When I was asked about what I thought about the outcome of the elections I said from my point of view, the Democrats have figured out how to use mail in ballots to effectively guarantee their success in states that allow its use.  And until something is done to change things in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona we won’t be winning anymore national elections.

There were some objections to this statement.  Some felt that things could be done to make this problem go away.  My opinion was that the Republicans have already had two years to fix this.  They didn’t and from my point of view they probably won’t.

I guess the question is will this affect the grift that Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham and the rest of the losers that inhabit the Stupid Party act out.  Can they just go on sitting there accomplishing nothing and soaking up millions of dollars in kickbacks while pretending to “fight” the Democrats?  I wonder?  Is it possible that too many people have awakened to the reality of the racket that these “leaders” are running on us?  I’d like to think that’s the case.  I heard even Marco Rubio is talking about holding off on the leadership election until the dust settles on the mid-term fiasco and then see if there are enough senators with backbones to vote out Mitch McConnell and put someone in who actually cares whether the Republicans accomplish anything of their alleged agenda.

I guess that’s a fair test to watch for.  But what’s the good of changing the leadership in a party that can’t win national elections anymore.  And who can fix that except the state Republican parties.  How does a place like Arizona allow the Democrats to change the election laws to allow ballot harvesting and blatant fraud?  These are things that people with even a modicum of intelligence can challenge and resist.

But I see no sign of those things happening.  And because of that, the Stupid Party is consigned to perpetual loser status.  Well, at the very least it is some consolation that some of the worst offenders like McConnell and Romney may be given the heave-ho in the not-too-distant future.  I’ll take special joy if the voters of Utah come to their senses in 2024 and send Mitt packing back to Massachusetts to celebrate his declining years as the extremely conservative trans-woman we all know he wants to be.  As for McConnell, Kentuckians really need to wake up and decide whether having their senator be the minority leader is worth tolerating that weaselly excuse for a man.

It’s possible, I guess, that at some time in the future there could be a refurbishment of the Republican Party such that intelligent men could be put in charge of restoring it to some semblance of a functional organization capable of affecting conservative legislation at the state and national levels.  But for now, I consider it a lost cause.  At the local level, even in blue states, leaders appear to help accomplish some good for their constituents.  And in places like Florida a strong governor and legislature can enact conservative measures to protect their people from the chaos that has descended on this country.

But as a national organization someone should drive a stake through the heart of this undead beast and put it and us out of our misery.

Rest in peace.

The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) – A Movie Review

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This movie is not strictly speaking a WW II movie.  It is a chronicle of the events leading up to the death of German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

James Mason plays Rommel.  It opens up with a British submarine off the coast of German occupied North Arica.  A platoon of commandoes is landed by rafts to assault the headquarters of the German Afrika Corps.  The commandoes storm the building and pour machine gun fire and grenades into the living space.  As German reinforcements arrive the British soldiers retreat.  One man is too badly wounded to escape.  As he is captured, he asks the German soldier, “Did we get him?”  And the German soldier scornfully answers in the negative.

The “him” that the Briton meant is Rommel and the suicide mission proclaims the enormous respect that Rommel’s enemies have for his skills in war.  But unfortunately for their mission Rommel was at that time being treated in Germany for a case of nasal diphtheria.  But before he can recover, the British attack his forces in the second Battle of El Alamein and Rommel is summoned by Hitler back to the desert to ward off this attack.  Unfortunately, Berlin only sends Rommel, not tanks, ammunition, men or even fuel to run the tanks they still had.  Orders are given to stand and fight to the last man.  Rommel disobeys the orders and arranges a tactical retreat to save his men.  But exhausted and still sick he is forced to return to hospital in Germany.  And his army is defeated and captured by the British and Americans.

Recovering from his illness he is visited by Dr. Karl Strölin (played by Cedric Hardwicke), the mayor of Stuttgart and an old friend of Rommel’s.  We learn that many senior officials in Germany have lost faith in Hitler and are looking for a way to remove him from power.  Rommel rejects the idea and warns his friend not to discuss this idea with him.  He declares himself to be a soldier and not a politician.  His friend warns him that a time will come when he will have to face the consequences of being a soldier in Hitler’s army.

Now Rommel is directed to help lead the defense of the French coastline against the expected invasion.  The supreme commander of the German forces, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (played by Leo G. Carroll) explains to Rommel that Hitler has taken complete control of the strategy of the invasion defense.  He explains that the strategy is being decided based on astrology and that instead of reinforcing the beaches they are concentrating on the coastal cities.  When D-Day arrives Berlin refuses to allow troops to redeploy to reinforce Normandy and so the Allies break loose from Normandy and begin their march to the Rhine.

The officers who are planning to assassinate Hitler once again approach Rommel for his support.  He tells them he must first attempt one last time to convince Hitler to redeploy his forces to avoid catastrophe.  He meets with Hitler but is rebuffed and told to remain in place and fight to the last man.  Rommel tells the coup leaders to go ahead with their plan.  But before the assassination attempt Rommel is injured when his staff car is strafed by enemy aircraft and crashes.  While he is recuperating in a hospital the attempt on Hitler is carried out but he is only injured.

After release from the hospital Rommel is sent home without any military orders and all mention of him disappears from the war effort.  One day he is called from Berlin to sat that a deputation would arrive at his home to discuss his future assignment.  But instead, when it arrives he is told that an investigation has convicted him of treason and he is given the choice of secretly committing suicide by painless sedative or being garroted.  But Rommel says he would prefer to answer the charges in open court to at least make his statement in public.  But then the officer adds that if he agrees to take the silent suicide his reputation will be preserved and wife and son will be taken care of.  If he decides to go public no such guarantees apply.  And so, he goes to his death.  The movie ends with the recitation of a speech that Winston Churchill gave honoring Rommel for his courage in risking his life in attempting to eliminate Hitler and thereby save his country from catastrophe.

This is a very unusual movie in that the Second World War is only the backdrop for the dramatic action of the plot.  We’re shown a great general, a consummate professional, learning that detaching his duty as a soldier from his responsibilities as a human being is sometimes impossible.  He is brought to understand that obeying the orders of a madman cannot fit under his warrior’s code.  Mason is usually interesting to watch in a movie and this one is no exception.  If nothing else he has one of the most distinctive and commanding voices in the history of cinema.  The movie is not highly dramatic.  It’s almost understated considering the circumstances and the people involved.  I would recommend this movie to students of history and those who enjoy a cerebral movie experience.

14NOV2022 – Quote of the Day

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A boy’s love comes from a full heart; a man’s is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man’s sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy’s heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.

Jerome K. Jerome